No One Left Behind: Inclusivity of Students with Disabilities in Accessing Higher Education in India

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-618-5_26How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Students with Disability; Higher Education; Accessibility; Inclusivity; Equal Opportunity

Abstract

The students with disabilities (SwD) are having a legal right in accessing higher education. Such legal right is to ensure inclusive education in spite of the persistence of notable obstacles like physical infrastructure, attitudinal and technological arrangements. The enrollment ratio in higher education is increasing gradually nowadays, but still SwD struggles with inadequate support services and inaccessible curricula. The landscape of the higher education system in India is advancing day by day with the advent of National Education Policy which made a huge and significant transformation through the aspiration of inclusivity and equity in the higher education system in our country. Though this strategy has been considered, but still significantly, the focus that is given to the school level education is not given to the higher education. Even India’s profile in Disability inclusive Education Practices in India - UNICEF Regional Officer for South Asia, states that the SwD are less in number to participate in and complete their higher education in comparison with other peers.

Undoubtedly the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPWD) Act 2016 states that inclusive education as the ‘system of education wherein students with or without disabilities learn together and system of teaching and learning is suitably adapted to meet the learning needs of different types of students with disabilities.’ The National Assessment and Accreditation Council also insist the adoption of criteria related inclusivity under ‘Institutional Values and Best Practices’ whereas it defines the criteria related to ‘differently abled (Divyangjan) friendliness’ with an intention to provide such facilities like lift, ramp/rail, braille software, restrooms, scribes for examination and special skill development programmes and etc.,

Despite these prominent legal frameworks on inclusivity in education, there is a significant gap between the ideals and their implementation in Higher Education Institutions in India. The absence of real understanding of barrier free acceptance and diverse environment undermines the principles of social justice and equal opportunity. This paper aims to put forth the very need of addressing the concerns of SwD in accessing Higher Education. This paper also highlights the role of higher education institutions to adopt the strategic approach in compliance with inclusiveness to enable the SwD to access the higher education without any impediments. Further, this paper intends to provide suggestions like how to structure training and sensitization programmes for all stakeholders that support the inclusiveness in the higher education institutions.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - R. Ramya
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/06
TI  - No One Left Behind: Inclusivity of Students with Disabilities in Accessing Higher Education in India
BT  - Proceedings of the 18th National IQAC Conference (ICon 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 333
EP  - 348
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-618-5_26
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-618-5_26
ID  - Ramya2026
ER  -