The Question of Access Disability, Space, Meaning

IN REVIEW The Question of Access Disability, Space, Meaning Tanya Titchkosky. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press. 2011; 192 pp; ISBN: 978-1-44264-026-9, cloth $55 CAD.

TANYA Titchkosky's fine new book is stimulating and worthy of note. In The Question of Access she takes the reader on a refreshingly forthright journey through the physical and temporal landscape of the modern university. She examines how disability and impairment is understood (or not), within the academy. In the process the author turns the traditional, individualized, medicalized, problematic, understandings of disability and impairment on their head.

In six chapters Titchkosky, a disabled academic, questions the way in which the underlying philosophy of the academy determines how academic space is organized and prioritized for some and not for others. Similarly, how support is provided for some and not for others.

The author maintains that practices do not evolve in a vacuum and the perception of disability is culturally imbued. Consequently, how disability is understood has a direct impact on how it is framed and addressed. Disability is rarely conceived as a shared, regular or natural part of public space but rather a social anomaly.

The unexpectedness of disability in academic space...