Guidelines to Establish an Office of Student Accessibility Services in Higher Education Institutions

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to propose a set of guidelines to establish an office of Student Accessibility Services (SAS) in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). The proposed guidelines help to integrate disjointed knowledge to facilitate its interpretation and implementation during deployment of basic support services in favor of students with disability. These guidelines can help to mitigate complexity in providing SAS for the first time in HEIs. These guidelines cover both the design and implementation of an office of SAS and its management. Knowledge was found through a multivocal literature review (MLR), which allowed to capture not only academic approaches but also vantage points and experiences from practice. Key concepts and aspects were organized into eight components (five related to the design and implementation, and three associated with the management context). An expert appraisal method was used as a proof of concept, which complemented a previously performed preliminary implementation example. Obtained results demonstrated the pertinence of the conceptual proposal and confirmed guidelines capability for full implementation in a real-world scenario.