Experiences and Academic Success of Black Students with Disabilities in Higher Education

Abstract

This systematic literature review provides an extensive synthesis of the empirical, theoretical, and policy research on Black students with disabilities in higher education in Canada and the United States. Grounded in the Preferred Reporting Items to Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses approach, this study incorporates the perspectives of critical race theory, Black feminist thought, disability studies in education, and disability critical race theory to examine racism and ableism as mutual, structuralizing forces. The results indicate that Black students with disabilities experience a spectrum of systemic marginalization across the stages of education, including racialized academic tracking, Eurocentric and inaccessible curriculum, unequal accommodation practices and microaggressions. These barriers are intensified by financial precarity, mental health inequities, and a radical absence of representation in faculty and institutional administrations. The results suggest that institutional approaches frequently isolate race and disability, culminating in policies that overlook intersectional harm. This study concludes that transformative changes must extend beyond compliance-driven diversity and access programs to encompass justice-driven intersectional reforms in pedagogy, policy, funding, and institutional culture. The findings underscore the need to prioritize Black students with disabilities when redesigning higher education systems to foster substantive equity and inclusion.

1. Introduction

In contemporary schooling, higher education is broadly characterized as a key driver of social progression, career access, and individual change (Kromydas 2017). However, this idealized narrative is based on the endemic myth of meritocracy—the expectation that academic regimes function as impartial adjudicators and personal merit determines outcomes. This myth conceals the core structural inequalities within postsecondary institutions in countries such as Canada and the United States (Ladson-Billings and Tate 1995). Beyond equity, the academic experiences of students from historically marginalized backgrounds are subjected to legacies of systemic discrimination. These legacies are evident in Eurocentric curriculum, educational practices based on assumed normative learning styles, and institutional practices that foster pro-White and ableist attitudes (Henry et al. 2017; Dolmage 2017). Despite the widespread implementation of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, real transformation remains limited because most tend to view marginality and restructuring to address it as a choice instead of a requirement.

In this context, Black students with disabilities are one of the most critically under-examined populations in higher education research and policy (Blake et al. 2025; Stapleton and James 2020). Although approximately 24% of postsecondary students in Canada are identified with a disability, only a small percentage receive formal accommodations, and major discrepancies emerge when data are disaggregated by race (Statistics Canada 2020; Dunn et al. 2008). Black students with disabilities are forced to bear a dual burden: they are less likely to receive disability-related assistance due to racialized stigma and institutional suspicion and are more likely to face denial or negative responses when requesting for assistance. Scholars have interpreted these experiences through the lens of racialized ableism, a combination that produces specific forms of exclusion (Annamma et al. 2013; Cameron and Jefferies 2021). Black students with disabilities experience obstacles at every stage of education, including being over-represented in special education (which often limits their academic opportunities; Parekh and Brown 2019; York University n.d.), facing discriminatory admission procedures (Longueépée v. University of Waterloo 2020), and experiencing alienating campus cultures in higher education (Mireles 2022; Whitaker 2025).

Research Gap and Rationale

A critical gap in higher education research is the absence of an integrated analyses to understand how racism and ableism operate together to shape Black students with disabilities social experiences and academic outcomes while in university or college. Research continues to analyze race and disability as independent systems which results in EDI and accessibility programs that establish new forms of discrimination. The review fills this knowledge deficiency through its analysis of existing research. The first obstacle in solving this crisis is the long-held separation between academic research and institutional policy. Traditional literature on education has viewed disability from deficit-based and medicalized perspectives. These perspectives frequently view students with disabilities as problems that require solutions, instead of focusing on the mechanisms through which institutional inaccessibility exacerbates the challenges these students face (Erevelles 2011). Meanwhile, studies on racial inequalities in schooling typically focus on the experiences of Black students without actively exploring the neurodevelopmental and embodied realities of groups such as those with chronic diseases, learning disabilities, or mental illness (Iqtadar et al. 2020). This fragmented approach renders Black students with disabilities invisible because they are situated between two analytical frameworks: race and disability. This divide is also evident in policy: while diversity offices often fail to incorporate disability justice, accessibility services frequently operate on the basis of a colorblind model that overlooks the mediating role of race in access to support. What emerges is a body of knowledge and a system of institutional interventions that are poorly equipped to understand or address intersectional harms against Black students with disabilities, which continues their erasure by the system.

To address this erasure, I conducted a systematic review using an integrated theoretical framework grounded in critical race theory (CRT), Black feminist thought, disability studies in education (DSE), and disability critical race theory (DisCrit). CRT offers a crucial analytical framework that portrays racism as an endemic, system-wide intervention in education, challenging the notions of neutrality and meritocracy (Delgado and Stefancic 2023). The Black feminist perspective sheds light on the ways that intersecting systems of oppression (e.g., racism, ableism, sexism, and classism) build on one another, highlighting the embodied knowledge and lived experiences of oppressed groups (Collins 2000). Meanwhile, DSE shifts the emphasis from individual deficits to structural ableism and critiques the design of educational settings by creating a normative “bodymind” (Dolmage 2017). Synthesizing this perspective, DisCrit conceptualizes the co-production of race and disability as it explores the mechanisms through which racism influences perceptions of disability and the application in educational spaces (Annamma et al. 2013). These frameworks offer analytical means to question the nature of power dynamics at the intersection of Blackness and disability within higher education.

• Objectives

The objective of this systematic literature review (SLR) is to:

(a)

Combine 40 years of empirical, theoretical, and policy research to conduct the most comprehensive, intersectional analysis of the experiences and academic trajectories of Black students with disabilities in higher education in Canada and the United States

(b)

Extend beyond fragmented perspectives by centering the convergence of racism and ableism as structuring forces

• Research Questions

Three overarching research questions guide this review: (1) What does the existing empirical and theoretical literature reveal about the experiences of Black students with disabilities in higher education? (2) How do racism and ableism intersect to influence the academic trajectories Black students with disabilities—from access to persistence and outcomes? (3) What institutional structures, policies, and practices contribute to or mitigate inequity for Black students with disabilities?

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Methodological Approach

This review comprehensively and rigorously synthesizes the fragmented and interdisciplinary literature on Black students with disabilities in higher education. It is grounded in the Preferred Reporting Items to Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) framework, specifically the SLR methodology. Although PRISMA standards have been traditionally designed for clinical and health sciences research, the principles of transparency, replicability, and structured reporting are widely used to improve methodological rigor in educational research and the social sciences (Page et al. 2021). The SLR methodology was considered necessary for this inquiry because the subject matter is situated at the intersection of frequently disconnected academic disciplines, such as disability studies, CRT, the sociology of education, and higher education administration.

Furthermore, Black students with disabilities are a severely understudied population; thus, systematicity will ensure a replicable audit of the current body of knowledge and reveal the scope of and gaps in the literature. Finally, given that the process of examining interconnected systems of oppression is politically and conceptually complex, using an overt methodology decreases the degree of bias by articulately recording all choices made in terms of source identification, selection, appraisal, and synthesis without relying on hierarchical evidence that would marginalize critical qualitative and conceptual scholarship. Therefore, this study’s procedures are based on the PRISMA guidelines, facilitating systematic synthesis of the results and enabling a sensitive survey of an emerging field, thereby providing a strong basis for identifying gaps in research and advancing evidence-based, intersectional policy changes in higher education.

2.2. Search Strategy

The study involved a detailed search in key academic databases: ERIC, RycINFO, Education Source, Sociological Abstracts, JSTOR, and Web of Science. These were supplemented with Google Scholar, which was used to survey gray literature. The search was limited to articles published between 1980 and 2025 for two reasons: (1) the emergence of disability rights legislation and accessibility frameworks during the 1980s, which altered the landscape of postsecondary disability inclusion and (2) the expansion of CRT, Black feminist thought, and DSE in the late 20th century. The study excluded literature that predated these frameworks except if the document was explicitly relevant to the historical context of the field. Clusters of key terms were joined together using Boolean operators (AND/OR) and truncation: (1) population (“Black student” OR “African American student” OR “Black Canadian student”), (2) disability (“disabled” OR “disabled student” OR “accommodation”), and (3) context (“higher education” OR “postsecondary”). Intersectional theory offered a fourth cluster (“secreted racialized ableism” OR “DisCrit”) of refined searches. Saturation also assessed through backward citation tracking of the included articles.

2.3. Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

For inclusion in this study, articles had to (1) target the intersectional attention of Black and/or students with disabilities in higher education; (2) be specific to the Canadian or US context or similar Western settings; (3) feature empirical, theoretical, or policy-based work; and (4) directly address racism, ableism, accessibility, or students. Emphasis was given to peer-reviewed publications, although institutional critiques were mentioned as important points of reference. This criterion excluded articles that presented discussions on the K-12 curriculum, disability but not race (unless they were central to the conceptualization of institutional ableism), race but not disability, strictly medical or clinical research, and non-analytical commentaries. Other forms of literature (e.g., dissertation proposals) were treated as contextual for explaining Canada-specific barriers and fostering conceptual understanding, rather than as main sources of empirical information.

2.4. Screening and Selection Process

The screening and selection process was based on the staged PRISMA flow chart (Appendix A). First, systematic database searching was conducted, which yielded 2102 records from ERIC (n = 520), PsycINFO (n = 380), Education Source (n = 310), Web of Science (n = 295), Sociological Abstracts (n = 260), JSTOR (n = 185), and Google Scholar (n = 152). Following the extraction of 438 duplicate articles conducted using a reference management software Zotero (7.0.30), 1640 distinct articles were retained for title and abstract screening. Reference lists, citation tracking, and expert recommended sources were consulted to support contextual framing but were not screened or included in the PRISMA study selection process. I conducted the initial screening step, and any mismatch was addressed through a second review, where a random portion of the sample (approximately 20%) was screened. At this point, 1404 articles were excluded, mainly due to the lack of higher education locations (e.g., only K-12 schools and workplaces), a lack of attention to race or disability, or the use of a purely medical/clinical approach to disability.

This step was followed by identification and evaluation of 236 full-text articles and reports. Following full-text assessment, 124 articles were excluded, including articles not focused on higher education (n = 48), analyses of disability without race (n = 37), racial analysis without disability (n = 29), and theoretical papers lacking immediate relevance to the experiences of Black students with disabilities (n = 10). A total of 112 articles were included in the synthesis, comprising 52 empirical qualitative studies, 19 quantitative or mixed-method studies, 23 conceptual or theoretical articles, 10 institutional or governmental reports, and 8 studies with explicit Canadian data or scope with insights synthesized using contextual uploads.

Figure 1 shows the PRISMA flow chart illustrating the study selection process.

2.5. Quality Appraisal

The quality of the articles was evaluated using modified tools to determine methodological and conceptual rigor. Empirical studies were assessed using the revised Critical Appraisal Skills Programme checklist and Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool, focusing on methodological clarity, design suitability, and analytical rigor, including a consideration of structural inequities (Hong et al. 2018). Meanwhile, theoretical works were evaluated based on their conceptual coherence, originality, and compatibility with intersectional paradigms. The goal of quality appraisal was not hierarchically weighting or excluding studies based on methodological strength, given the limited number of studies and interdisciplinary nature of the field. Instead, it assessed each study’s fit relative to the review’s critical and interpretive aims. The appraisal informed analytical caution and interpretive confidence during synthesis, including a focus on how methodological choices and epistemological assumptions shaped findings. This process supported a critical examination of how certain research designs or framings can reproduce deficit-oriented assumptions while retaining historically, theoretically, and politically significant contributions central to understanding racialized ableism in higher education.

2.6. Data Extraction and Synthesis

The 112 selected articles were analyzed and synthesized. Data underwent qualitative thematic synthesis, which effectively yields findings from various methodological and conceptual studies. This step followed three recursive and overlapping stages via NVivo (15) qualitative data analysis software. Phase 1 includes descriptive coding: fundamental data from each article were synthesized into a uniform template comprising author(s), year, country, research objectives, research design, theoretical framework, population attributes, and primary conclusions or arguments. This yielded a map of the corpus and aided in preliminary familiarization with the data.

Phase 2 included analytical coding to organize the literature regarding the mechanisms of oppression and student responses. Based on the descriptive codes, a second, interpretive layer of coding was performed to define ideas in terms of power, inequity, and experience structures. The codes formulated during this phase included racialized streaming, gatekeeping accommodations, faculty microaggression, hypersurveillance, financial precarity, mental health stigma, identity disclosure dilemmas, and resistance/resilience. Phase 3 involved thematic synthesis (selective coding). In this final phase, the analytical codes were reviewed, compared, and then clustered into broad, overarching thematic categories to capture core narratives across the literature.

3. Results

The integration of the descriptive and analytic codes led to the construction of five major themes (

Table 1. Outcome of thematic synthesis.

Main Theme	Constituent Themes	# of Sources
Structural racism	Underrepresentation Curriculum exclusion Meritocracy myth Racialized surveillance	36
Ableism	Normative bodymind expectations Accommodation gaps Faculty resistance	21
Intersectional harm	Identity misrecognition Gendered disability stereotypes Disbelief of Black disabled women	15
Campus climate	Microaggressions Peer exclusion Lack of mentorship	19
Structural exclusion	Financial precarity Mental health disparities Lack of representation in decision-making	21

; Appendix A). Each of these themes are discussed in detail below.

Table 1 themes are discussed under the subsequent subheadings.

3.1. Structural Racism and the Racialization of Higher Education

The literature review revealed that structural racism is embedded in the logic of higher education in Canada and the United States, generating active racialized academic spaces and establishing a specific and hostile atmosphere for Black students. A dominant theme (n = 31) was the systematic deconstruction of meritocracy. CRT scholars (e.g., Ladson-Billings and Tate 1995) have held that the myth of meritocracy conceals how ideas about property rights in Whiteness have historically facilitated the perpetuation of racial hierarchy in educational institutions. Empirical data indicate that this ideology influences stratified access to high-achieving coursework, biased advising, unfair funding, and culturally biased assessment practices. This myth poses problematic implications for Black students with disabilities, leading to a denial that the problems they experience in academia may stem from the system and cultural judgments that have failed them. Instead, these challenges are considered to stem from personal failure or a lack of effort (Ladson-Billings and Tate 1995; Harper 2012; Kromydas 2017; Acha and Mireles 2025; Cameron and Jefferies 2021; Codjoe 2001; Smith 1980).

The overwhelming Eurocentrism of higher education curriculum—a process of epistemic exclusion that 15 papers among those reviewed reported is central to racialization—is directly related to the meritocracy ideology. The literature indicates that various disciplines exhibit excessive reliance on canonical knowledge, theoretical approaches, and historical accounts that mainly focus on White, Western, and able-bodied voices that marginalize Black intellectual traditions and histories. This erasure legitimizes Whiteness as the standard of scholarly rigor and intellectual quality. It is especially alienating to Black students with disabilities, because it deprives them of perceiving recognition and support of their lived experiences, constructed through a combination of racism and ableism, as objects of research (Henry et al. 2017; Basu 2021; Sandhu et al. 2022; Heilig et al. 2019; Sangmen et al. 2024; Wilder et al. 2015; Henry et al. 2012; Edmonds 2022). This perspective is supported by Canada-specific literature and institutional analyses, reflecting the lack of a meaningful and intersectional integration of Black and disability studies. As a result, curriculum implicitly inform Black students with disabilities that they are not important (Dei 1996; Borck 2020; Henry et al. 2017; Cranston and Bennett 2024; Goduka 1996; Mireles 2022; Denis and Schick 2003).

The results also indicate patterns of racialized surveillance and disciplinary scrutiny of Black students across academic contexts (n = 7). Black students, especially those whose representation or performance fails to meet the expectations of the White middle class, are highly monitored by faculty, staff, and peers. They are viewed through a prism of anti-Black stereotypes, and their classroom performance, communication behaviors, assertiveness, and presence in specific academic majors are frequently perceived as being aggressive, lacking interest, or incompetent. This hypervisibility, alongside structural invisibility, in which their efforts are disregarded, can be relatively dangerous, especially for Black students with disabilities who must navigate ableist assumptions. Behaviors associated with disabilities—including the need to take breaks between movements, use of assistive technologies, inability to process information quickly, and signs of chronic or mental illnesses—are typically interpreted through racialized stereotypes (Smith et al. 2007; Sato et al. 2017; Nguyen et al. 2019; Larson et al. 2019; Baker-Bell 2020; Fisher et al. 2021; Bottiani et al. 2023; Wang et al. 2023; Welsh et al. 2025).

The effects of structures that perpetuate racial and disability-related discrimination are evident in a racially hostile and psychologically stressful education, the myth of meritocracy, epistemic exclusiveness, and environments enabling punitive surveillance, all of which amplify each other’s impacts. The literature indicates that interpersonal events cannot stand alone; instead, they exist within institutional cultures, pedagogies, and architectures. They constitute a sequence of disengagement beginning from K-12 as racialized streaming and placement in special education (as exemplified by James and Parekh 2021) to postsecondary life, defining all aspects of Black students’ experiences.

3.2. Ableism and Institutional Exclusion

The literature indicates that besides being an individual type of prejudice, ableism is an institutional logic in higher education that systematically excludes students with disabilities. The DSE scholarship strongly criticizes the ableist infrastructure of universities, with six studies supporting this idea. This infrastructure encompasses the physical configuration of campuses, the time-based organization of semesters and exams, modes of pedagogy based on passive lectures, and models of assessment that equate academic rigor with pace, stamina, and normative forms of output. Universities are constructed on a perceived normative bodymind, requiring students to sit still, read and study thick texts in a specific amount of time, communicate in conventional forms, and act according to certain standards regardless of extreme circumstances. Dolmage (2017) calls this design academic ableism, which represents disability as an issue to be fixed instead of a dimension of human diversity that needs to be considered in terms of design (Hutcheon and Wolbring 2012; Dolmage 2017; Anderson 2023; Hwang 2023; Rodgers et al. 2023; Wolbring and Nasir 2024).

At the center of this ableist system lies the accommodations model, which the literature (n = 10) frequently describes as a bureaucratic and alienating form of gatekeeping. Instead of proactively making learning more accessible through the universal design and learning (UDL) framework, schools require students with disabilities to share personal medical data, obtain a formal diagnosis (which can be expensive), and undergo an elaborate administrative process before providing personal accommodations. This is a highly affective and mentally demanding task that positions disability as a personal health failure that needs to be addressed. This model is often accompanied by other racialized obstacles for Black students with disabilities. Historical and contemporary medical racism can lead to mistrust in processes that require medical records, and students may be wary of being viewed as seeking special treatment or fear being subjected to racialized suspicion regarding the validity of their disability (Hill 1996; Donato 2008; Marshak et al. 2010; Erevelles 2011; Leake and Stodden 2014; Timmerman and Mulvihill 2015; Lyman et al. 2016; Krebs 2019; Toutain 2019; Mamboleo et al. 2020).

The strategic resistance of faculty is another recurring theme across the qualitative studies (n = 22), because it is a direct obstacle to inclusion (Nelson et al. 1990; Smith 2007; McCarron 2020; Fornauf and Erickson 2020; Lannan et al. 2021; Rao et al. 2023). Instructors are frequently gatekeepers to access. The literature mentions numerous cases of faculty members being skeptical of accommodation letters, refusing to institute approved changes (e.g., increased time, different formats), expressing dissatisfaction about students’ disabilities, and imposing penalties due to disability-related absences or pacing challenges.

3.3. Intersectional Harms and Racialized Ableism

The literature has established that the experiences of Black students with disabilities cannot be viewed through an additive approach toward racism and ableism. Instead, these systems are inseparable and thus generate varied and compounded forms of harm, or racialized ableism. One of the central findings of the DisCrit scholarship (n = 8) is that race and disability are simultaneously constitutive, suggesting that disability labels and special education paths are imposed in a racially patterned manner. As a result, Black students are objectively and subjectively over-identified with subjective and behavioral disabilities (e.g., emotional disturbance) but under-identified with actual forms of learning support that could foster academic progress (Annamma et al. 2013; Annamma 2018; Connor et al. 2019; Iqtadar et al. 2020; Thompson 2022; Mireles 2022; Collins 2024; Stephens-Peace 2025). This history of misrecognition has penetrated higher education institutions, systematically invalidating the needs of Black students with disabilities.

The gendered aspects of racialized ableism are particularly harsh according to Black feminist scholarship (n = 10). Black women and gender-diverse individuals with disabilities must navigate stereotypes that overshadow and suppress them, including the “strong Black woman” narrative, which imposes expectations of endurance, emotional restraint, and self-sacrifice (Collins 2000, 2021; Mayes and Moore 2016; Schalk 2018; Kelly and Barrio 2021; Best 2025; Stephens-Peace 2025). In the academic context, faculty and advisors may mitigate the disability-related challenges of this population, but students’ accommodation requests are frequently perceived as weakness or manipulation due to the influence of these stereotypes (Piepzna-Samarasinha 2018; Kanani 2011; Reid 2016).

3.4. Campus Climate and Academic Belonging

The accessibility of Black students with disabilities to university life is significantly influenced by the presence of a complex climate of interpersonal othering and structural mistreatment on campus. A common thread across the literature (n = 9) is the unremitting process of racialized and ableist microaggressions, which are unobtrusive, frequently unintentional slights that convey aggression or invalidation. Examples of such remarks include “You do not look handicapped,” “Are you sure you need all that extra time?,” and racially coded comments on speech patterns, presumed academic backgrounds, or surprise at enrollment in demanding majors. This cumulative exposure leads to what scholars call racial battle fatigue and its ableist variant, culminating in recurrent stress, anxiety, hypervigilance, and physical depletion and directly hindering academic achievement through the loss of cognitive resources (Smith et al. 2007; Sue et al. 2007; Franklin 2016; Clark-Louque and Latunde 2019; Franklin 2019; Lett et al. 2020; Brown-Smith 2023; Ramsey et al. 2024; Coomer et al. 2025).

Adding to this unwelcoming environment is social and academic seclusion by peers. The literature (n = 5: Jones and William 2006; Greaves et al. 2021; Leath et al. 2022; Jackson Preston et al. 2023; Opini and Henry 2023) demonstrated that Black students with disabilities are typically isolated and excluded in group learning settings. Peers may refuse to work with them due to assumptions about their abilities or only associate with those who are well known but perceived as token students. The latter’s participation is accepted but not taken seriously. This intersection of stereotypes leads to isolation. Fellow students might make ableist assumptions (e.g., disabled students will slow down social work or need more academic attention) and racist ones (e.g., Black students are less academically capable). In addition, the social expenditures of coping with disability, such as the need to take naps during socialization or the time taken to find accessible spaces, can restrict opportunities for casual peer bonding and networking.

A structural issue that has worsened this climate is the notable absence of mentors and role models. The literature frequently underscores the extreme lack of Black scholars with disabilities in faculty, administration, and even staff in offices that provide services for people with disabilities. Black students with disabilities confirm that it is extremely difficult to find mentors who can genuinely relate or understand their intersectional realities, provide culturally and disability-competent care, and represent their interests in institutional settings (Acha and Mireles 2025; Opini and Henry 2023). The absence of representation compromises their academic potential and sense of belonging (n = 6). Without mentors who can provide meaningful guidance, students must navigate complex bureaucracies, confront discrimination, and address their problems on their own (Opini and Henry 2023; Jordan 2023; Johnston et al. 2022; Scheef et al. 2020; Baker 2019; Hampton 2016).

3.5. Structural Exclusion Beyond the Classroom

The obstacles faced by Black students with disabilities extend beyond lecture halls and libraries and involve the structural inequities of vocation, which govern the scope of their material ability to engage in advanced studies. The first theme that emerged in this category is compounded financial precarity, which is supported by the sociological and policy literature (n = 6). The intersection of wealth disparities and racial discrimination in the past and present, including the added expenses of disability (e.g., healthcare, assistive technology, home access, specialized transportation, personal accommodations) situates Black students with disabilities in a precarious position. Typical financial aid packages are notoriously ill-equipped to meet this twofold load, with only some funding that considers expenses related to disability. Most Black students have to work to support their families and alleviate their financial situation (Townsend 1994; Scott 2017; Tabron and Ramlackhan 2019; James and Parekh 2021; Bullington et al. 2022; Nolan 2022). This precarity forces students to make trade-offs between health, academic participation, and financial sustainability, resulting in increased food and housing insecurity, excess work during schooling, and a failure to finish degree programs.

Inequalities in mental health provision coexist with these economic barriers. Several studies (Brown et al. 2000; Williams et al. 2019; Arday 2022; Stoll et al. 2022; Dorsey Holliman et al. 2023; Friedman 2023) have identified that campus counseling centers exhibit an overwhelming lack of preparedness to address the intersectional trauma of racialized ableism. Common criticisms of these services include the prevalence of Eurocentric therapeutic frameworks that pathologize individual coping over systemic oppression, a deficit in the number of clinicians of color, and physical or programmatic inaccessibility to most students with disabilities. Moreover, Black students with disabilities face two types of stigmas: mental health among certain groups of the Black population and disability among the general population (Mireles 2022; Arday 2022; Dorsey Holliman et al. 2023). Combined with the rational fear that revealing one’s challenges in mental health could result in paternalistic treatment or disrupt academic treatment, this aspect fosters a significant obstacle for seeking assistance (n = 2: Nepton et al. 2025; Coomer et al. 2025).

These types of exclusion are rooted in the institutional and systematic erasure of representation and decision-making for Black students with disabilities. These students and their issues are virtually invisible for faculty, high-level administrative leadership, university governing boards, and committees responsible for policy-making on equity, accessibility, and student life. This separation is a symptom and cause of institutional failure, and the design of diversity initiatives, application of accessibility frameworks, and distribution of resources overlook these students’ experiences and perspectives. Equity analyses reveal that race and disability are typically considered in isolation during policy-making, and efforts to support students, which typically operate through a color-neutral lens, seldom integrate accessibility measures and disability-related initiatives. This fragmentation ensures that the specific, multifaceted needs of Black students with disabilities are not considered in institutional planning (Wilder et al. 2015; Henry et al. 2017; Piepzna-Samarasinha 2018; Heilig et al. 2019; Kezar and Posselt 2020; Basu 2021; Sangmen et al. 2024).

4. Discussion

This study conducts a structural synthesis of over 40 years of research and builds on a coherent result: the life courses of Black students with disabilities in higher education are inherently organized around the interaction dynamics between racism and ableism. The results extend beyond listing specific cases of discrimination and expose the embeddedness of these systems within historical contexts, architectural patterns, pedagogical conventions, and institutional bureaucracies. The myth of meritocracy, Eurocentric curriculum, and surveillance racialize academic spaces, and ableist infrastructures, accommodation gatekeeping, and resistance to change heavily institutionalize exclusion. At the intersection of these systems, compounded harms emerge in the form of racialized ableism, which is further stratified by gender. This discussion synthesizes research from the fields of CRT, Black feminist thought, and DisCrit, contending that effective equity can only be achieved using a radical approach that upholds justice across all facets of higher learning institutions.

4.1. Interconnected Systems

The value of this synthesis lies in its assertion that racism and ableism are mutually constitutive forms of oppression that do not operate in parallel or cumulatively. Instead, they create the conditions that exclude Black students with disabilities. This analysis can only be accomplished through the foundational theory of DisCrit, which proposes that notions of ability and disability are racialized while racial categories are created through ableist ideas of normativity and deviance (Annamma et al. 2013). The selected articles reinforce this view: K-12 institutions disproportionately impose behavioral diagnoses on Black students, which affects their academic identities and restricts their achievement of university-preparatory tracks (James and Parekh 2021). This historical misclassification extends into secondary education, where disability-related needs are perceived through the long-standing lens of anti-Black stereotypes.

Sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois noted that this mutually reinforcing relationship between racism and ableism can be understood as a “feedback loop” (Morgan 2023, p. 674). The process of bureaucratic accommodation creates an inherently ableist system that places a major burden on students—particularly Black students—who may wish to avoid disclosing their disability due prevailing stereotypes of Black students being lazy or seeking unfair advantage. The pursuit of support increases skepticism among faculty and staff, and fear of this results in the underutilization of accommodations (Delgado and Stefancic 2023). This scenario, in turn, negatively affects academic performance, which should be attributed to the failure of institutions rather than the individual. However, it often strengthens the original racist and ableist stereotypes embedded within institutions.

Black feminist thought extends this examination by highlighting the interconnected levels of executed oppression. The politics of respectability underlining the “strong Black woman stereotype” (Collins 2000) reflects their suppressed needs and vulnerability. In the case of Black female students with disabilities, this concept manifests as the emotional labor of living with a disability under expectations of being strong and unaffected while avoiding perceptions of anger, weakness, or manipulation. Their fatigue and pain are often dismissed (Schalk 2018) because they do not follow racial scripts on gender. The damage they incur results from a particular intersectional oppression, in which these systems combine to yield a certain type of marginalization. Analyzing this intersection requires a unique analytical and interventionist frame. The relative scarcity of empirically rich accounts of resistance and resilience reflects a gap in the literature rather than the lack of agency, highlighting the need for research that centers collective and structural forms of resistance.

4.2. Institutional Culture and Faculty as Gatekeepers

The results highlight that institutional culture, which is mainly reinforced by faculty attitudes and behaviors, serves as a major driving force that transforms structural inequity into day-to-day lived experiences. The culture of higher education in the United States and Canada is characterized by the prioritization of Whiteness and able-bodiedness as normative notions of scholarly identity and behavior (Dolmage 2017; Henry et al. 2017). This emphasis is evident in classrooms that value Eurocentric knowledge, politicize communication styles, and standardize the rate of learning. Black students with disabilities are forced to negotiate within this culture while overcoming the hypervisibility imposed by their race, including the hyper-invisibility or pathological visibility of disabilities. This creates a two-sided consciousness that drains the cognitive resources needed for learning.

Faculty members function as critical gatekeepers within this institutional culture. They can grant access to knowledge and establish classroom environments and exercise discretion in allocating accommodations and pedagogic flexibility. The extensive evidence of faculty resistance, manifested as skepticism toward asymmetries in rank and an uncompromising assertion of traditional, ableist pedagogical norms, reflects a pronounced lack of professional readiness and a rigid insistence on ability-based pedagogy (Kezar and Posselt 2020). This resistance is more than a symptom of poor knowledge and can frequently be observed in worldviews that assume academic rigor requires conformity and treat disability accommodation as a challenge to equilibrium or diminished standards. At the personal level, this gatekeeping is mediated by race for Black students with disabilities. The unconscious biases held by faculty members can lead to their interpretation of Black students’ requests for deadline flexibility as a personality defect and not a legitimate need, which is less likely to happen to White, non-disabled students.

4.3. Gap Between Theory and Reality

One of the critical issues identified in this review is the significant gap between DEI initiatives and the reality of implementing policies that foster accessibility to positively enhance the experiences of Black students with disabilities. Numerous organizations are isolated and focus on compliance with these requirements. Diversity services offices do not always incorporate disability and tend to use a colorblind, medical model approach, addressing all students with disabilities as a population with homogenous needs (Dunn et al. 2008). This fragmentation reflects the predominance of single-axis approaches in research and advocacy, thus leaving Black students with disabilities caught between programs that fail to address their needs.

This policy gap is consistent with concepts defined as interest convergence and the criticism of liberalism in CRT scholarship. The critique of liberalism highlights how “colorblind”, incremental, and compliance-oriented reforms create the illusion of progress without actually shifting resources or institutional power (Delgado and Stefancic 2023). Progress among marginalized groups can only be achieved under these circumstances, when they coincide with the interests of the dominant majority. These interests include an avoidance of legal liability, the improvement of the university’s public image, or the identification of sources of income via tuition without expensive organizational changes (Delgado and Stefancic 2023). Therefore, higher education institutions must develop strategic plans that incorporate DEI and accessibility frameworks. However, these policies tend to lack influence on central budgetary decisions, faculty tenure, curriculum committees, and architecture design. As a result, they serve as token gestures in what Hooks (1994) describes as surface-level reforms that do not lead to lasting impacts on institutions rooted in an imperialist, White-supremacist, and capitalist patriarchy.

Consequently, while universities may boast of upholding disability and diversity laws, Black students with disabilities continue to deal with inaccessible structures, culturally incompetent counseling, financial restraints, and a lack of representation in the classroom. Although policies may exist on paper, institutions frequently lack the commitment to implement them in a comprehensive and transformative manner. This aspect necessitates a change in policy-making. Instead of aiming to satisfy the legal minimum, institutions must ask what is required to ensure that Black students with disabilities thrive. Doing so requires explicitly intersectional policies formulated in collaboration with Black students and scholars with disabilities, along with substantial accountability efforts and resource distribution.

4.4. Policy, Practice, and Research Implications

Although the reviewed literature details institutional failure more frequently than reform, it also identifies illustrative justice-oriented practices in higher education. These practices include efforts to align accessibility services with equity and anti-racism mandates; culturally responsive advising related to disability identification and accommodation; and collective, course-embedded, or anticipatory accommodations that do not rely on individual disclosure. Although these initiatives have not been systematically evaluated, they present plausible pathways for institutions seeking to address racialized ableism in policy and practice.

Therefore, institutional policies should be shifted to a fundamentally different position to address racialized ableism. First, accessibility and DEI policies should be combined. Information contained in individual documents reinforces silos. Institutional planning—whether it surrounds hiring and curriculum building or campus design and student services—must be visibly guided by an intersectional equity framework (Fornauf and Erickson 2020; Rao et al. 2023). This framework should be based on DisCrit and Black feminist thought. Audits of the racial equity of disability services and disability inclusion in DEI initiatives should be conducted.

Second, financial aid and scholarship systems and mechanisms require a paradigm shift. Existing packages overlook the compounded precarity of Black students with disabilities (Black et al. 2015). To implement the recommendations drawn from analyses on student poverty, institutions should establish special funding sources to meet disability-related expenses (e.g., assistive technology, personal care, and healthcare costs) and amend calculations of needs in a manner that acknowledges disparity in racial wealth and family financial burdens (Bullington et al. 2022).

Third, an overhaul of mental health policy is required. Institutions should mandate counseling centers to hire clinicians with sufficient training and experience in racial trauma and the provision of culturally sensitive and accessible therapies. They should also decouple mental health records with academic processes related to accommodation to mitigate stigma and fear (Williams et al. 2019).

The transformative practices outlined above should focus on the loci in which exclusion is practiced on a daily basis. Faculty development should be maximized, and training should not be limited to workshop approaches held once per year. This aspect should be based on ongoing, compulsory anti-racism-pedagogy, UDL, and legal/ethical case-of-accommodation training. Institutional standards should not foster retroactive accommodations because this stigmatizes disability and decreases the effectiveness of disability-oriented practices. Instead, institutions should strive to create courses whose designs incorporate the needs of diverse students (Comeaux et al. 2021). Disability resource offices should be restructured to become agents of Black students with disabilities instead of gatekeepers of medical models. This involves recruiting employees with intersectional competency, addressing anti-racist concepts, and collaborating with professionals specializing in cultural and identity-based student care. In addition, higher education institutes should purposefully develop community and mentoring practices (Connor et al. 2019), including financial aid and staffing of affinity groups. Formal mentorship should link Black students with disabilities to Black faculty/staff/alumni with disabilities (though their rarity is another systemic problem). Finally, physical and virtual environments must be designed to connect these students with one another, thereby minimizing isolation.

This review observes notable gaps warranting further research. Notably, few empirical studies dedicated specifically to Black students with disabilities in higher education have been conducted in Canada. Meanwhile, in the United States, studies have failed to explore the particularities of legal, policy, and racialized disabled disparities in higher education. Therefore, intersectional, longitudinal research on Black students across educational stages from K-12 to postsecondary completion should be prioritized, because they can help capture the cumulative effects of racialized ableism. Participatory and community-based research guided by or conducted in alliance with Black academics and students with disabilities is methodologically necessary to address epistemic injustice and elicit applicable results.

5. Conclusions

This systemic literature review consolidates an extensive body of literature that supports the argument that the deeply entrenched inequities experienced by Black students with disabilities in higher education are neither incidental nor accidental. Instead, they are the consequences of systems rooted in interlocking racism and ableism. The myth of meritocracy, universities’ colonial origins, and the ableist tools of colleges and universities—such as the gatekeeping of accommodations and their racialized construction—constitute a continuum of exclusion in higher education. An intersectional lens based on CRT, Black feminism, and DisCrit is indispensable because it can identify these compounded realities; by contrast, single-axis approaches tend to impose invisibility on this population and leave their needs unaddressed. Thus, equity demands restructuring, not mere adjustment. It requires universities to shift from formal proclamations of diversity and accessibility policies that merely comply with legislative mandates to revised approaches that explicitly target the nurturing of people at the marginalized, intersected fringes. Ensuring that Black students with disabilities are visible in institutions and empowered to succeed and lead is the ultimate challenge to the commitment of institutions to ensuring equity. It is central to projects for the development of higher education systems that are capable of serving a pluralistic, just society.

6. Limitations

This research combines data from various studies which include qualitative and quantitative/mixed-method and conceptual/theoretical and institutional/governmental reports. The different study populations made it difficult to compare results directly between studies which prevented performing a statistical combination of findings. The included studies used different methods to define and measure disability and race which resulted in inconsistent operationalization of these variables and many studies used institutional and diagnostic methods that could maintain deficit-oriented beliefs which made it difficult to match essential study elements. The current research findings show uneven results because studies fail to present uniform data about their participants and their diagnostic conditions and their diverse population characteristics. The ability to combine research findings and apply study results to different populations becomes difficult because of this lack of detailed information. The evaluation of racialized ableism through time requires thorough assessment because most existing research data stems from studies which employed cross-sectional methods and retrospective approaches and self-reported data collection.