A department at the University of Oxford recently advertised for a Senior HR and Equality Officer. On paper, this was a role about fairness, inclusion, and creating a workplace where everyone could thrive. In practice, the recruitment process revealed just how little those words mean when access is treated as an afterthought.
On the application form, candidates were asked the standard questions: Do you consider yourself disabled? Do you require adjustments? I disclosed that I am a wheelchair user. HR saw it. The line manager saw it. Yet the interview was scheduled in an inaccessible venue only moved after I raised the issue.
This is not a small oversight. It is a failure at two levels: HR, the department tasked with equality, and the line manager responsible for shortlisting. They had the information and ignored it. They looked at the form but did not see the person.
And here is the question I cannot shake: if they failed to notice disability disclosure, what were they looking for?
Borrowed Access Isn’t Access
This was not my first time at Oxford. I have been to four interviews there. Each time, access was close to zero. Sometimes an office was “borrowed” for the day, as though accessibility could be loaned and returned when the disabled candidate left. But if access has to be borrowed for an interview, what happens if you get the job? Where will you work? How will you belong?
Accessibility cannot be occasional. It cannot depend on borrowed rooms, temporary fixes, or hurried rearrangements. For disabled candidates, these arrangements send a clear message: you are not part of the design. You are an afterthought.
Toilets That Fail
The same problem plays out with toilets across universities and colleges. Many are built with the sign of disability on the door but not the reality of access inside. At Abingdon & Witney College, I often had to force myself to stand up twisting painfully just to reach the toilet seat.
A so-called “disabled toilet” may have a wide door, a pull cord, and a handle on the wall, but if the room is too small to turn a standard wheelchair, then it is not accessible. If you cannot get from your chair to the seat safely, it is not accessible.
And when you point this out? Too often, you’re treated as a complainer, a whinger. The institution gets to tick the box “we have a disabled toilet” while disabled people bear the cost of the design failure.
When you are already working, already tired, being told to “just use your walking stick” or “make do” is not a solution. It is an erasure of the exhaustion and pain that extra effort brings. It is not equality. It is survival dressed up as inclusion.
When Equality Is Selective
I worked in HR. I know how inclusion gets discussed in departments. Race and gender dominate because there are charters and marks like Athena Swan or the Race Equality Charter that bring recognition and, in some cases, funding. Gender equality has weight because it is measurable and rewarded. Race is increasingly visible because institutions want to be seen to do the right thing.
But disability? Rarely on the agenda. It is spoken about the least, often ignored, and almost never prioritised.
The worst thing about being disabled is that you have no choice. If the lift doesn’t work, if the toilet is too small, if the interview room is upstairs, then you are excluded. Race and gender equality are urgent and vital struggles but they cannot be pursued while disability is sidelined, treated as optional, or too expensive to address. That is not equality. That is selective equality.
More Than Oxford
Oxford is bad. Westminster is bad. Oxford Brookes is not better either. At Westminster, I once went to a conference where the lifts weren’t working. I was escorted through service corridors by a group of facilities men frightening and humiliating. At Oxford Brookes, my own supervisor once told me I couldn’t pursue an academic career because of my disability.
These are not isolated experiences. They are the norm. Universities across the UK remain unready for disabled people. They build environments around the able-bodied norm, then scramble to improvise when disabled people appear. It is not that the structures are “too old” or “too historic.” They build new ones too and still fail to design them for access. That is not heritage. That is choice.
Exclusion by Design
Here is the truth: universities were never meant for disabled people. Their buildings, policies, and cultures were created for able-bodied men of privilege. And while institutions have learned to speak the language of equality about race, gender, sexuality disability remains the category they least want to deal with.
That silence matters. Because for wheelchair users, what is “optional” to the institution is life-defining for us. A working lift is not a convenience. A genuinely accessible toilet is not a luxury. An accessible interview room is not a favour. They are the basics of participation. Without them, we are excluded before the conversation even begins.
The Lesson for the Future
Oxford is bad. Westminster is bad. Higher education is bad when it comes to accessibility. This is not about one building, one office, or one conference. It is about a system that was never designed with disabled people in mind and has still not been rebuilt to include us.
For future generations, the lesson is clear: inclusion is meaningless if it depends on who demands it. Disability cannot be left as the last, the least, the optional part of equality agendas. It must be built in to the bricks, the rooms, the jobs, the everyday.
Until that happens, we do not have equality. We have selective equality and selective equality is no equality at all.
Yours truly,
The Chronicled Truth
No comments:
Post a Comment