Reflecting on interviews with Ade Adepitan, Christine Sun Kim and Shay (Chay) Brown alongside Oliver’s social model of disability and Crenshaw’s lens of intersectionality, one message rings clear: disability never travels alone. It is braided through race, gender identity, class, nationality and more, and the barriers we encounter are built far less by our bodies or minds than by the environments and expectations that surround us.
Seeing from more than one vantage point
Paralympian and broadcaster Ade Adepitan embodies the overlap of Blackness and disability. He compares Jim-Crow-era bus segregation with the “discrimination-by-design” that still keeps wheelchair users off many trains today. That double vantage point lets him spot patterns others miss: language may have softened, but inaccessible architecture and biased attitudes still police who get to “shine.”
Deaf artist Christine Sun Kim illustrates a different braid: deafness, motherhood, migration, and art. Berlin’s publicly funded childcare and arts scene allow her to thrive. Still, she also names the risk of retreating into Deaf-only spaces: insulation from audit oppression can come at the cost of opportunity. Her monumental murals insist that “scale equals visibility,” forcing hearing passers-by to reckon with the Deaf presence in everyday life.
Shay Brown, a white trans gay man with anxiety and probable neurodivergence, reminds us that some disabilities hide in plain sight. He can “pass” until sensory overload strikes or a venue lacks step-free entry. Within LGBTQ+ circles that prize open-mindedness, he still decodes unspoken norms and worries about misreading intentions, illustrating how mental health and autism create barriers that physical ramps alone cannot solve.
Visibility, community, and the social model
All three stories circle back to visibility. As Sun Kim puts it, “If you don’t see us, we have no place to be.” Visibility is not mere representation; it is a precondition for redesigning systems. Yet it must be coupled with community. Brown argues that queer events must centre disabled trans people “or we’re missing people out.” Adepitan likewise calls afor nti-racist and anti-ableist coalitions to learn from one another. Intersectionality, then, is not academic jargon but a practical bridge.
Oliver’s social model sharpens the point: people are disabled not by impairment but by the barriers we build. Intersectionality adds that those barriers stack. A Deaf Black woman may meet racism in the art world and audism in transport; the combination amplifies exclusion.
Translating insights to teaching
In my own role as an Asian student facing technician with ADHD and dyslexia and English as a second language, these insights hit close to home.
Studios whose tables lock out wheelchair users echo Adepitan’s transit critique. Over-reliance on screens disadvantages visually impaired students; inconsistent captioning leaves Deaf students guessing; sensory bombardment overwhelms classmates with anxiety or autism. Even our learning analytics dashboards flatten differences: we track “disability” as one tick-box, masking how class or race widens awarding gaps.
Guided by the interviewees and scholars above, I am reframing practice around five commitments:
Design out barriers first. Ask, “Would this room, brief or schedule exclude someone—and why?”
Offer multimodal routes. Pair spoken explanations with captions, alt-text, diagrams and quiet-zone options.
Normalise disclosure without demand. Signal openness so students can share needs on their terms.
Collect richer data. Push for metrics that show how disability intersects with other identities.
Recruit for diversity, not retrofit it. Diversity representation in prospectuses, staff, and curricula must tell future students, “You belong here.”
Creating spaces where everybody and the mind can thrive is not a side quest; it is core pedagogy. As Adepitan reminds us, when you design for those at the margins, you also improve life for everyone in the centre.
References
Art21 (2023) Christine Sun Kim in “Friends & Strangers”
Paralympics GB (2020) Ade Adepitan gives amazing explanation of systemic racism.
ParaPride (2023) Intersectionality in Focus: Empowering Voices during UK Disability History Month 2023.
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