By Maggie Huggins, University of Texas at Austin
Disability doesn’t take a break. It’s not something you can have someone watch while you’re gone, store on a shelf, or squeeze into checked luggage that you can temporarily forget about for your 18-hour travel day. My identity as a disabled researcher is not a hurdle or win; it is my reality, and my reality exists regardless of whether I’m at home in Texas, on a train through Germany, or at the airport in Denmark. I did not go to Europe just to research other people’s experiences with institutional access, but also to experience it myself.
My original plan was to conduct eight in-person interviews during my time in Europe, including two undergraduate students, three graduate students, two professors, and a research faculty member, across four countries. The plan was intentionally focused on interviews, with the goal of learning from the experiences of autistic students, researchers, and faculty members navigating educational institutions. This changed significantly after I became very ill and needed hospitalization, forcing me to leave Europe early without having conducted any interviews. I am now conducting all of my interviews remotely from Texas. Fortunately, the population I am researching has been incredibly understanding and accommodating, and moving the interviews online may ultimately allow me to conduct additional interviews beyond my original in-person count, because I have received additional interest now that I’ve shifted to an online format.
My data collection method has shifted; my research question has not. I remain committed to understanding how institutional structures affect participation and access for autistic people in higher education. What did change was the way I experienced the larger question myself.
I primarily used trains for my travel throughout Europe during the time I was there, and this gave me an unexpected opportunity to see how access exists on paper while still falling short in practice. Many trains and local transportation systems did not have digital signs that displayed upcoming stops. Because I cannot reliably hear announcements, I missed several stops and had to constantly monitor my location on my maps app. Compared to trains and systems that did provide alternatives to verbal announcements, I lost a lot of valuable productivity time. Transfers that might normally be routine became something I had to carefully plan around, sometimes leaving more than an hour between trains so that a missed connection would not derail the entire trip.
Train stations presented another layer. Many had accessibility equipment, including portable ramps, but using that equipment often required advance notice and a phone call. I cannot make phone calls, and unexpected changes—such as a canceled train or broken connection—made that advance planning much less useful. Accessibility existed, but accessing the accessibility itself could require navigating added barriers.
I also encountered places that described themselves as accessible but were not meaningfully accessible to me. Transportation between stations and accommodations could require additional costs when taxis would not take short trips, while walking those distances was not always possible. Getting on and off trains could be physically difficult. Even something as simple as a hostel bunk could become an access issue.
An encouraging part of the experience was how willing individual people were to adapt. I never encountered someone who refused to communicate with me because I am nonspeaking. People frequently figured out another way to communicate, and strangers sometimes noticed
that I was struggling and offered help without being asked. People helped with luggage, communication, transfers, and even changing hostel beds when I had been assigned a top bunk. I quickly became comfortable asking people for assistance because I rarely felt that doing so made me or my existence a burden.
That contrast has become one of the most important things I am taking from this experience: access is layered.
A ramp to a building does not solve accessibility if there is no accessible way to get there. An accessible train does not create equal access if a person has to call days in advance to use the ramp. A university can have accessibility services, but students still have to be able to communicate with those services, travel to campus, navigate the buildings, and participate once they arrive.
This has strengthened my interest in interdisciplinary research. Institutional access cannot be understood through one department or one lens. Transportation, education, communication, disability studies, sociology, public health, and policy all intersect. If a campus is accessible but the transportation system that connects students to it is not, then campus accessibility alone is not enough.
My biggest research barrier so far has been adapting to communication systems that were not designed with nonspeaking people in mind. I encountered organizations that only provided phone numbers, websites that had outdated contact information, and situations where phone calls were treated as the only way to solve a problem. My biggest growths so far have been developing greater confidence in adapting my research plans when circumstances change and in recognizing institutional patterns across very different settings.
I still have much of the research ahead of me as I recover stateside. I need to complete the interviews, analyze the data, and determine what patterns emerge from the participants’ experiences. But I am approaching that next stage with a broader understanding of what I am asking. Access is not something that can be completely understood from the outside, and it is not something that can be completely fixed from the outside. Disabled voices are necessary not only because disabled people experience barriers, but because we can identify the layers of access that are easy for institutions to overlook.
A ramp is only one part of the path.
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