AccessAbility Services is committed to inclusive excellence. We value diverse abilities as a source of strength and are committed to promoting a culture of excellence and inclusion. Our mission is to provide services and programs that empower students with disabilities to maximize their academic potential, ensure that all students with disabilities receive equitable access to all facets of University life, and increase awareness of inclusive values among all members of the University community.
Service Framework
- Combines disability models including the social justice, functional and interactionist model of disability. We recognize a social justice model in education is a strong foundation for the work we do.
- Promotes the removal of systemic barriers while also recognizing that individualized accommodations for persons with disabilities may still be required.
- Recognizes coalition forming between the fields of disability studies and disability services can disrupt systems and create positive social change.
Values and Philosophy
In doing the work of disability services:
- We value the voices of people with disabilities and their lived experience.
- Each student is a unique and whole person and must be treated as such. We provide student-centered service delivery, which is informed by the OHRC's three principles of accommodation: respect for dignity, individualization, as well as integration and full participation.
- We recognize the systems and environment in which we learn and work can be disabling, and we work to remove these barriers.
- We affirm and treat disability as an aspect of diversity.
- Student's lives involve multiple interrelated identities, and marginalization and exclusion may exist because of how these identities intersect. We recognize that the compounded disadvantage that arises from multiple identities has a direct impact on how the students we serve interact, experience, and view the world around them.
- We advocate and uphold an anti-racist and anti-oppression framework of practice.
- We benefit from, and value, collaboration with campus partners.
- We support and uphold the principles of academic integrity.
Inspiring Inclusive Excellence
UTSC's Strategic Vision for the University of Toronto Scarborough (2020-2025)
Land Acknowledgement
I (we) wish to acknowledge this land on which the University of Toronto operates. For thousands of years it has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and the Mississaugas of the Credit. Today, this meeting place is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work on this land. Statement of Acknowledgement of Traditional Land.
