Higher Education Opportunities for Students with Disabilities

Since post-Apartheid in South Africa, there has been significant efforts to include persons who have been previously disadvantaged in teaching and learning in higher learning, and in professional employment. As it all starts from professionalisation, all diverse students including those with disabilities, are being afforded opportunity to access professional learning. However, from the decolonial perspective, the finding is that, while at surface value levels, there are opportunities for students with disabilities to access professional learning, the hidden structure of coloniality and its effects continue to influence their exclusion. Students with disabilities are only patched onto the system and not totally included, hence those who cannot hold on fall away. The chapter first presents affordances and opportunities provided to students with disabilities to access professional learning an institution of higher learning. Decolonial theory is used to analyse the specific opportunities afforded, to reveal why students with disabilities remain excluded despite the affordances. The chapter seeks to contribute to the broad issue of low throughput for formerly disadvantaged social groups in higher learning and the exclusion of persons with disabilities from professional employment. Universal Design in Learning is proposed as a way in which teaching and learning in higher learning could be organised so that all diverse students’ learning needs are considered from the outset.