Abstract: Federal laws guarantee students with documented disabilities certain accommodations in higher education classrooms. However, to receive such accommodations, students must navigate a tapestry of bureaucratic steps–a process which often reproduces existing inequalities. In this paper, I explore how the formal accommodations system in higher education reinforces "compulsory able-bodiedness," or the social and political institution that maintains able-bodiedness as the norm, by: 1) reifying "able-bodied" and "disabled" as clear, distinct categories, 2) relying on a medical model of disability that neglects many individuals' unique experiences and presents barriers to care, and 3) reinforcing able-bodiedness as a default, casting disabled bodies as outliers in need of accommodations. Then, I draw on bell hooks's concept of "engaged pedagogy" to outline concrete strategies for faculty to de-center compulsory able-bodiedness in classrooms through the redistribution of power. In doing so, faculty may attend to all students' unique embodied learning needs and collaborate with students on strategies to meet those needs and reimagine power structures.
Jamie O'Quinn (2026) studied this question.