What's Love Cot to Do with It? An Argument Against Institutionalizing People with Severe Physical Disabilities

This article, based on the author's experience, takes a critical look at the basis for the bias toward nursing home placement for people with severe physical disabilities. The author writes that the roots of such institutional bias lie in anti-Black racism and ableism. She lists parallels in the federal responses to Hurricane Katrina and the COVID-19 pandemic as examples of a "politics of disposability" for vulnerable and invisible communities. She longs to end her fear of being placed in a nursing home, and places hope in the work of disabled activists and allies committed to the community presence and participation of disabled people.

The "New Normal" for Disabled Students: Access, Inclusion, and COVID-19

During the COVID-19 pandemic, disabled students were vulnerable not just to the virus, but disruptions in education as schools shifted to remote delivery. Using Jackson and Mazzei's thinking with theory methodology, this qualitative study centers the voices of disabled students and their lived experiences with access and inclusion in higher education, before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic. We identified the social model of disability as our theory to "plug" into interviews. Results indicate that disabled students turned to self-accommodations during COVID-19, creating DIY accessibility. The lack of required outside meetings allowed many disabled students to better focus on their health and education by avoiding physically taxing activities. Furthermore, interviews revealed that disabled students see disability as a commonplace event, similar to work or family commitments, and advocate for a reimagining of how we frame fairness in higher education. Although student experiences with pandemic learning and accessibility varied, nearly all participants expressed a desire to keep the flexibility and grace they experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, and advocated for an ethic of care for all students as most schools return to full, "normal," education. Based on the interviews, we provide suggestions for how to increase accommodations and access in the post-COVID-19 classroom.