Toutain, C. (2019). Barriers to accommodations for students with disabilities in higher education: A literature review . Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability , 32 (3), 297–310. https://www.ahead.org/professional-resources/publications/jped

[no doi reported]; also located on ERIC online database: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1236832

Specific accommodations were not identified in advance for this expository literature review. Various barriers that students with disabilities have faced when accessing and using accommodations in postsecondary education were investigated.

This review of literature incorporated research findings from 23 peer-reviewed journal articles, including qualitative (interviews, focus groups, reflexive journaling), quantitative (scenario response, interviews, surveys), and mixed (qualitative and quantitative) methodologies. Students with a variety of disabilities in postsecondary education in the U.S. were participants in the studies examined.

A review process was used to explore three databases: Academic Search Premier, ERIC, and PsycINFO; the inquiry focused on postsecondary education in the U.S. A date range was not applied in advance, to allow for insight into how accommodations might have changed over time; studies that were located were published in the period 1992–2017. The concept of barriers was broadly defined in order to examine the ways that various barriers have interrelated and affected students. Research focusing on transition-related barriers and faculty or staff actions and perspectives on accommodations were excluded from this review to focus on student perspectives of accommodations, with limited complicating factors.

The researcher described a typology that emerged to describe barriers across the research: (a) knowledge, (b) function, and (c) attitude barriers. The primary themes associated with these types of student barriers were further described: (a) awareness (or lack thereof) of accommodations resources; (b) ability for, or challenges to, securing accommodations; and (c) internal dynamics dissuading use of accommodations—including faculty refusals to implement, accommodations found not functional or not helpful, and motivation for using or not using accommodations. using or not using accommodations.