Understanding Access and Accessibility: An Introduction to Environmental Barriers

Think about how you move through your day. You walk into a school building, take the stairs, read a notice pinned to the wall, sit down at a desk, and participate in a lesson-all without a second thought. For millions of people with disabilities around the world, however, that same journey is stopped not by their condition, but by the environment around them. A flight of stairs, a cluttered corridor, a lesson delivered only in lecture format-each of these is a barrier that the environment creates, not the person. This distinction is at the heart of understanding access and accessibility, and it is one of the most important shifts any educator can make in how they think about inclusive learning.

What do we mean by “access”? 🔗

Access, at its simplest, refers to the ability to reach, use, or benefit from something-a building, a service, information, or an educational opportunity. According to the Community Tool Box at the University of Kansas, people with disabilities need physical and social access to the same spaces, employment, goods, services, and community participation as everyone else. When that access is in place, a person’s disability does not have to limit their ability to participate fully in life.

In the context of education, access means that a child can enter the classroom, engage with the learning material, communicate with the teacher, and demonstrate what they know-without being blocked at any of those steps. Access is not just physical. It is informational, communicative, and social.

What is accessibility? 🔗

Accessible Campus describes accessibility as the degree to which a product, device, service, or environment can be used by all intended audiences. It is a broader concept than simply removing steps or adding a ramp. A school is truly accessible only when every learner-regardless of their physical, sensory, cognitive, or communication needs-can meaningfully participate in everything it offers.

The World Health Organization’s World Report on Disability frames accessibility as the ability to reach and approach something, but also what laws and standards require for compliance. Importantly, it notes that accessibility is achievable incrementally-beginning with removing the most fundamental environmental barriers and building a broader culture of access over time.

The environment creates the barrier – not the disability 🔗

This is perhaps the most important idea in this entire topic. The Australian Federation of Disability Organisations explains this through what is called the social model of disability: people are disabled not by their impairments, but by barriers in society. A person who cannot climb stairs is not disabled by their legs-they are disabled by the building that only offers stairs. Remove the barrier, add a ramp, and the disability becomes negligible in that context.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) echoes this, noting that disability is what occurs when a person’s functional needs are not addressed in their physical and social environment. By viewing disability as a social responsibility rather than a personal deficit, we make it easier to recognise and address challenges that can affect everyone.

This shift in thinking-from “what is wrong with this person?” to “what needs to change in this environment?”-is the foundation of inclusive education.

Types of environmental barriers in education 🔗

Environmental barriers are not limited to broken elevators or missing ramps. The CDC identifies several categories that interact and compound each other:

Physical barriers 🔗

Physical barriers are structural obstacles in natural or built environments that block movement or access. In schools, these include narrow doorways that cannot accommodate wheelchairs, desks that are too high for a child using a mobility device, poor lighting that disadvantages a learner with low vision, or simply the absence of a ramp at a building entrance. A peer-reviewed study published in Frontiers in Education found that for families of children with disabilities, narrow doors, broken elevators, inaccessible bathrooms, and steps without ramps were among the most consistently reported obstacles to getting children to school at all.

Communication and information barriers 🔗

Communication barriers arise when information is not presented in a format that a learner can access. A lesson delivered only through spoken lecture excludes a child with hearing impairment. A printed worksheet excludes a learner who cannot hold a pencil or who has a visual impairment. Accessible Campus notes that electronic documents not formatted for screen readers, poorly organised lectures, and unclear language are all communication barriers-and they apply equally in a classroom as they do in any other setting.

Attitudinal barriers 🔗

Attitudinal barriers are the most pervasive, and often the most damaging. These are the assumptions, perceptions, and behaviours of other people that discriminate against persons with disabilities-sometimes without any conscious intent. Assuming a child with a speech impairment cannot understand, or expecting less from a student because of a diagnosis, are attitudinal barriers. The WHO World Report on Disability is direct on this point: even after physical barriers have been removed, negative attitudes can produce barriers in all domains, and overcoming them requires sustained education and awareness-raising.

Organisational and policy barriers 🔗

Organisational barriers are policies, procedures, or institutional practices that unintentionally exclude. In a school context, these might include requiring all students to demonstrate learning in one fixed way-a written test only, for example-or having learning objectives that are unclear and inflexible. Accessible Campus identifies these as often arising from unintentional omission rather than deliberate exclusion, which is exactly why awareness matters.

Technological barriers 🔗

Technological barriers occur when tools or platforms are not designed for all users. Course materials available only as printed handouts, websites that do not meet accessibility standards, or learning software that cannot be used with assistive devices all create exclusion. As classrooms become increasingly digital, this category of barrier is growing in significance.

What is universal design? 🔗

Universal design refers to the design of products, environments, and systems that are usable by all people, regardless of age, ability, or background-without the need for special adaptation. As described in the accessibility literature, universal design provides a single general solution that accommodates people with disabilities as well as the broader population. The classic example is the curb cut-the ramp built into the edge of a pavement, originally designed for wheelchair users, but now routinely used by parents with prams, delivery workers with trolleys, and cyclists. Good design for access benefits everyone.

In education, universal design means building flexibility into the learning environment from the outset, rather than retrofitting adjustments for individual students after the fact.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL): designing inclusive classrooms 🔗

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) applies the principles of universal design directly to teaching and curriculum. Developed by CAST (the Centre for Applied Special Technology), UDL is a research-based framework that aims to improve and optimise teaching and learning for all students by anticipating barriers and designing flexibly around them. Its guiding idea, borrowed from the horticulturist Alexander den Heijer, is simple: when a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.

UDL is built on three core principles, each addressing a different dimension of learning:

Multiple means of representation 🔗

This principle recognises that learners access and process information differently. Cornell University’s Centre for Teaching Innovation explains it as providing flexible and multiple ways to present information-through text, audio, video, visual diagrams, or physical demonstration. A child who struggles to read a written instruction might fully grasp the same concept through a labelled diagram or a short demonstration.

Multiple means of action and expression 🔗

This principle addresses how learners demonstrate their understanding. Since learners vary in their ability to express knowledge-some through writing, others through speech, drawing, or building-UDL advocates for flexible assessment options that do not privilege one mode of expression over another. Providing students the choice to complete a task verbally or in writing, for instance, removes a barrier for many learners without reducing the learning standard.

Multiple means of engagement 🔗

This principle focuses on motivation and emotional engagement-the “why” of learning. CAST describes this as helping educators consider how to recruit interest, sustain effort, and support self-regulation in diverse learners. A child with an intellectual disability may need different prompts or contexts to stay engaged than a child without. UDL asks educators to build those options in, not add them later.

Importantly, the Southern Poverty Law Centre notes that UDL is not about lowering expectations-it is about eliminating unnecessary barriers so that all learners can meet meaningful learning goals in ways that work for them. Expecting all students to reach the same objectives through the same methods, in the same timeframe, is not realistic or equitable.

Why this matters for children with intellectual disabilities 🔗

Research published in Frontiers in Education confirms that children with disabilities, particularly in lower-resource settings, face compounding barriers-physical, social, communicational, and policy-related-that together make accessing education a daily struggle. The Education International reinforces that inclusion is not just about physical access; it requires challenging attitudes, updating policies, training educators, and designing systems that assume diversity rather than treat it as an exception.

For children with intellectual disabilities specifically, the environment must account for cognitive and communication needs alongside physical ones. A classroom that only accommodates a wheelchair user but delivers all content through rapid verbal instruction is still inaccessible for a child with a cognitive impairment. True accessibility is layered.

The goal is not to create separate or special arrangements for individual students, but to design learning environments that are flexible enough to work for the widest possible range of learners from the start. That is precisely what UDL makes possible.

What do you think? If you consider a classroom you have taught in or observed, which type of environmental barrier-physical, communicational, attitudinal, or organisational-do you think was the most commonly overlooked? And how might applying even one UDL principle have changed the experience for a learner who was being unintentionally excluded?

References

1. https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/implement/physical-social-environment/housing-accessibility-disabilities/main
2. https://accessiblecampus.ca/understanding-accessibility/what-are-the-barriers/
3. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK304070/
4. https://afdo.org.au/social-model-of-disability/
5. https://www.cdc.gov/disability-inclusion/barriers/index.html
6. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10824976/
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility
8. https://www.cast.org/what-we-do/universal-design-for-learning/
9. https://teaching.cornell.edu/teaching-resources/assessment-evaluation/inclusion-accessibility-accommodation/building-inclusive-5
10. https://www.splcenter.org/resources/stories/applying-universal-design-for-learning-udl-supports-inclusive-education/
11. https://www.ei-ie.org/en/item/29309:breaking-down-barriers-a-new-model-for-disability-inclusion-in-education