ABSTRACT
Tonette Rocco states that ‘there is no issue of diversity, privilege, or human rights in the field of adult education that has been given less attention than disability’ (Rocco 2011: 1). The same could be said of higher education. As late as 2001, Sarah Holloway was able to state that ‘little was known’ about disabled students' experiences of higher education (Holloway 2001: 597). Four years later, Sheila Riddell and colleagues reported that ‘we know little about the daily lives and experiences’ of students with disabilities (Riddell et al. 2005: 3) Although this may be changing (Preece 1995, 1996; Clark 2006; Rocco 2011), a review of article titles over the last decade in leading adult learning journals confirms a general paucity of serious research. Adult Education Quarterly published three articles between 2003 and 2012 dealing with disability, International Journal of Lifelong Learning published four, and Studies in the Education of Adults published none. Of the seven dealing with disability, two reported on teachers' perspectives and one on a disability social movement; only four discussed disabled learners.
