Procedural Gatekeeping and Disability in Doctoral Admissions

This paper examines how procedural gatekeeping operates within doctoral admissions systems to exclude disabled applicants prior to academic evaluation. Focusing on UK higher education, the analysis identifies four interacting mechanisms: procedural gatekeeping, administrative neutrality, institutional time compression, and the fiction of enforceable rights. Through case study analysis and engagement with the Equality Act 2010, the paper demonstrates how institutions maintain formal compliance while producing exclusionary outcomes through administrative architecture. The paper contributes to debates in disability studies, higher education policy, and legal theory by exposing the structural gap between formal rights and operational practice. Intellectual Property Notice Giulia Assistant® is a registered trade mark of Alessandro Grassini Grimaldi in the United Kingdom under number UK00004298171, with legal protection effective from 20 November 2025. The Giulia System® and the Equilibrium Ledger® form part of the same research and governance architecture. No part of this framework may be reproduced or implemented without appropriate attribution.