Cerilli Caroline, Zhu Jiafeng, Varadaraj Varshini, Campanile Jessica, Sweeney Fiona, Smith Jared, Yenokyan Gayane, Swenor Bonnielin
Disability Health Research Center, Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America.
Center for Education in Health Sciences, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2025 Jan 22;20(1):e0317920. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0317920. eCollection 2025.
Disabled people face social and environmental barriers to higher education, yet there is a dearth of clear, publicly available information on university websites related to accessibility and disability inclusion. Our team previously developed disability inclusion scores for the top 50 universities offering undergraduate programs based on funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and found low scores overall. Building on that, this study examines the relationship between disability inclusion (as scores ranging from 0 to 100 points) and six university characteristics for these 50 universities. The six university characteristics examined were U.S. News National Universities 2021 rankings, geographic region, year of institution founding, total number of undergraduates, public or private status of the university, and presence of an undergraduate disability studies program. Results indicate that university characteristics were not significantly associated with disability inclusion scores (p>0.05 for all university characteristics). The average scores across all categories of each characteristic fell below 72 points. These results indicate a gap in disability inclusion across all types of universities examined. Highly funded universities should evaluate their campuses for disability inclusion.
残疾人在接受高等教育时面临社会和环境障碍，然而，大学网站上缺乏关于无障碍设施和残疾包容的清晰、公开可用的信息。我们的团队此前在美国国立卫生研究院（NIH）的资助下，为提供本科课程的前50所大学制定了残疾包容分数，结果发现总体分数较低。在此基础上，本研究考察了这50所大学的残疾包容情况（分数范围为0至100分）与六个大学特征之间的关系。所考察的六个大学特征分别是《美国新闻与世界报道》2021年全国大学排名、地理区域、建校年份、本科生总数、大学的公立或私立性质以及是否设有本科残疾研究项目。结果表明，大学特征与残疾包容分数没有显著关联（所有大学特征的p值均大于0.05）。每个特征所有类别的平均分数均低于72分。这些结果表明，在所考察的各类大学中，残疾包容方面存在差距。资金雄厚的大学应该对其校园的残疾包容情况进行评估。
