Navigating inaccessibility: family access work in school transportation for disabled students in Ontario, Canada

Despite decades of research, policy efforts, and rights-based legislation, disabled students and their families still encounter significant school transportation barriers that undermine their equitable access to education. This paper presents findings from interviews with disabled students and their parents in Canada’s Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. Informed by a critical disability studies perspective, the analysis reveals the extensive ‘access work’ that families perform to navigate school transportation systems. Types of access work range from temporal and emotional labour to administrative and advocacy tasks. Such access work is often required to compensate for shortcomings in school transportation planning and service delivery. The paper concludes with recommendations for policymakers, school boards, and transportation service providers. These recommendations concern school bus scheduling and route planning, family engagement strategies, disability-informed training, transportation safety protocols, extracurricular access, as well as accessibility and policy alignment.