Cripping the architecture of academic ableism: Advancing a critical reconceptualisation of Universal Design in Danish higher education beyond accommodation and checklistification

TY - CHAP

T1 - Cripping the architecture of academic ableism

T2 - Advancing a critical reconceptualisation of Universal Design in Danish higher education beyond accommodation and checklistification

AU - Fristrup, Tine

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2026 Tine FristrupORCID Icon. All rights reserved.

PY - 2025/8/8

Y1 - 2025/8/8

N2 - This chapter advances a critical reconceptualisation of Universal Design in Danish higher education, examining how contemporary implementations often function as defeat devices that create an illusion of accessibility while failing to challenge fundamental ableist structures. Drawing on Dolmage's framework of academic ableism and Campbell's theorisation of ableist normativity, the analysis interrogates how superficial accommodations and checklistification approaches perpetuate rather than dismantle systemic and structural barriers. Through an interdisciplinary lens, the chapter demonstrates how prevailing notions of inclusion often reinforce neoliberal-academic-ableism. The theoretical intervention contributes to ongoing debates about accessibility and institutional transformation by proposing a cripped approach to Universal Design that moves beyond technical compliance towards understanding it as a transformative political process. By examining these dynamics through the intersection of ableism, temporality, and institutional power structures, the chapter offers new pathways for conceptualising and implementing genuinely inclusive approaches in Danish higher education, embedded in international research. The analysis ultimately argues for the necessity of reconceptualising Universal Design as an ongoing collective process of institutional transformation that confronts and disrupts academic ableism while fostering more liberatory educational futures beyond social exclusion in Danish higher education. "The architecture of academic ableism", conceptualised in this chapter, emerges from the author's ongoing research on educational ableism in the Danish education system, documenting disabled learners' educational stories of social exclusion.

AB - This chapter advances a critical reconceptualisation of Universal Design in Danish higher education, examining how contemporary implementations often function as defeat devices that create an illusion of accessibility while failing to challenge fundamental ableist structures. Drawing on Dolmage's framework of academic ableism and Campbell's theorisation of ableist normativity, the analysis interrogates how superficial accommodations and checklistification approaches perpetuate rather than dismantle systemic and structural barriers. Through an interdisciplinary lens, the chapter demonstrates how prevailing notions of inclusion often reinforce neoliberal-academic-ableism. The theoretical intervention contributes to ongoing debates about accessibility and institutional transformation by proposing a cripped approach to Universal Design that moves beyond technical compliance towards understanding it as a transformative political process. By examining these dynamics through the intersection of ableism, temporality, and institutional power structures, the chapter offers new pathways for conceptualising and implementing genuinely inclusive approaches in Danish higher education, embedded in international research. The analysis ultimately argues for the necessity of reconceptualising Universal Design as an ongoing collective process of institutional transformation that confronts and disrupts academic ableism while fostering more liberatory educational futures beyond social exclusion in Danish higher education. "The architecture of academic ableism", conceptualised in this chapter, emerges from the author's ongoing research on educational ableism in the Danish education system, documenting disabled learners' educational stories of social exclusion.

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105014553042

U2 - 10.4324/9781003491408-10

DO - 10.4324/9781003491408-10

M3 - Book chapter

AN - SCOPUS:105014553042

SN - 9781032749860

SP - 175

EP - 196

BT - Inequality, Education, and Social Exclusion in the Welfare State

PB - Routledge

CY - London

ER -