Presentation: Inclusion in Higher Education

Abstract

Although there are university graduates with disabilities who have completed their studies with great personal effort, the consecration of their rights, especially their right to education, has led to an increasing number of people with disabilities entering higher education institutions. A multitude of problems have thus arisen within the institutions, some of them already known and others that raise questions about real access to education at this level. As a result, organisational arrangements and strategies to break down existing barriers have been transformed. This challenge includes not only the work related to people with disabilities (whether students, teachers or non-teaching staff) but also the interventions that an accessible university implies: addressing the academic, management, communication and urban planning aspects. Likewise, the mainstreaming of the subject in areas of the university community and its incorporation into the curriculum. This is reflected in the variety of articles presented in this issue, which offers a comprehensive, but necessarily limited and incomplete, perspective on the concerns, interests and actions to achieve full respect for the rights of persons with disabilities in the context of higher education in Latin America. We could say, then, that this issue provides just a few points of reference that allow us to appreciate the tide that slowly, through an intense ideological struggle and arduous management work, is permeating our higher education institutions, installing new conceptions about persons with disabilities, their possibilities and rights.