In Our Own Words: Disability in Ontario Postsecondary Education
Research from the Ontario Summit for Students with Disabilities (2025)
In Our Own Words: Disability in Ontario Postsecondary Education © 2025 by The Disabled CoLab is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
The Ontario Summit for Students with Disabilities
The Ontario Summit for Students with Disabilities was a one-day virtual event on Saturday, February 8, 2025. The event included a keynote presentation, panel discussions, and an open session for attendee-led conversation. The Summit drew 122 live attendees and 18 additional asynchronous web-form submissions, all eager to engage, learn, and share their stories.
The 2025 Summit is hosted by The Disabled CoLab and is sponsored by the University of Waterloo, McMaster University, Trent University, and Western University.
The 2025 Summit used community-based research methods to answer the following questions:
What supports do students with disabilities want and need from their postsecondary institutions?
How do these desired supports align with the support that students currently receive from their postsecondary institutions?
How can postsecondary students better support communications and community engagement with students with disabilities to ensure their needs are being met?
The Summit received formal ethics review and approval from the Community Research Ethics Board, and anonymized student quotes are utilized throughout the report with permission.
“Embracing my disability identity as part of who I am has been empowering as this has allowed me to recognize some of the really unique strengths and perspectives that this has given me, such as resilience and self-advocacy, which have been crucial in my post-secondary journey. I’m also able to be a lot more empathetic and understanding of others’ diverse needs, which allows me to connect deeper with people, and also do better research.”
Looking Ahead to the 2026 Summit
The next Ontario Summit for Students with Disabilities will take place on Saturday, February 7th, 2026. We encourage interested students with disabilities to register on our website to receive updates about future Summits and ongoing research projects. We are inspired and motivated by the overwhelming support of Summit participants, and hope to continue hosting this event annually. We are exploring other avenues of sponsorship and support, and we welcome anyone interested in collaborating with us to help ensure the continued advancement of accessibility and disability inclusion in Ontario postsecondary education to contact us at support@thedisabledcolab.com.
Report by:
Emma Collington, M.Sc.
emma@thedisabledcolab.com
Co-Executive Director, The Disabled CoLab
Co-Lead, Ontario Summit for Students with Disabilities
Ph.D. Candidate, University of Waterloo
Samantha Fowler, M.Sc.Com.
samantha@thedisabledcolab.com
Co-Executive Director, The Disabled CoLab
Co-Lead, Ontario Summit for Students with Disabilities
Ph.D. Student, University of Waterloo
Victoria Parlatore, M.A.
victoria.parlatore@utoronto.ca
Board of Directors, The Disabled CoLab
Ph.D. Candidate, University of Toronto
Ariadne Jevnikar, M.Ed.
ajevnika@lakeheadu.ca
Board of Directors, The Disabled CoLab
Ph.D. Candidate, Lakehead University
Soorena Azarhazin, M.Sc.
sazarhaz@lakeheadu.ca
Board of Directors, The Disabled CoLab
Ph.D. Candidate, Lakehead University
