Indy News Canada

To wit, some non-disabled people consider disability accommodation akin to a favour, an unfair advantage. The rationale for legal protections of disability accommodation disproves that: society is designed for non-disabled people—which inherently disadvantages disabled people. That’s why it is illegal for employers and service providers to deny reasonable, necessary disability accommodation under human rights law. In academia, however, a cynical skepticism abounds: Are too many people receiving disability accommodation? Do those receiving accommodation actually need it? Does disability accommodation decrease a university education’s quality? Are people faking disability to get an easier ride?

In December 2025, for example, The Atlantic published a piece arguing that rich kids, especially at elite US colleges and universities, were “taking advantage of an easily gamed system” by racking up diagnoses for disabilities they didn’t actually have so as to “gain an unfair edge.”

In 2024, in a Chronicle of Higher Education article originally entitled “Do Colleges Provide Too Many Disability Accommodations?” US religion professor Alan Levinovitz wrote, “Students and instructors are rightfully concerned about fairness and compromised rigor,” and said “students who don’t need them” were skating by with accommodations. This set off the Twittersphere; Levinovitz lashed out at disabled leaders who criticized his piece, and then defended himself with an offensive descriptor, asking whether one critic knew if his parents “suffered from” disabilities. (The article title was changed following the protests.)