Academic Libraries and Disabled Students: An Accessible Story?

Abstract

Approximately 14 percent of the Canadian population has a disability (Human Resources and Skills Development Canada 2011), with this number expected to rise as the population ages (Prince 2004). Disabled individuals are more likely to live in poverty, be unemployed and achieve lower education levels than their non-disabled counterparts (Prince 2004), and the inability of the disabled population to access higher education has the effect of further entrenching these and other societal disadvantages (Liasidou 2014).