Community Colleges: Addressing Access for All
Community colleges exist because higher education needed an open door. With nearly 9 million students, no other sector of higher education serves such a varied population. Community colleges cover students who are:
- Working parents fitting classes around a shift schedule
- First-generation students figuring out college as they go
- Returning adults rebuilding a career
- Recent high schoolers who can’t afford a four-year college
- Students managing a disability
And access, above all else, is why community colleges exist.
But access is not a perfect practice. Students with disabilities, who rely most on that open door, are also the students most likely to fall through the gap that happens between enrollment and graduation.
Mind the Gap
Within the community college student population, roughly one in five undergraduates report having a disability. However, self-reporting a disability and being formally registered are two different things. Only about 8% of students who self-reported a disability had actually registered with their institution’s disability services office. Most students who could benefit from accommodations simply aren’t in the system built to help them.
The gap is worse at community colleges than it is at four-year institutions. Recent research comparing two-year and four-year institutions found three consistent discrepancies:
- Disability disclosure rates of just 15% at two-year colleges, compared to 35% at four-year institutions
- Accommodation rates of 9% at two-year colleges, compared to 28% at four-year institutions
- Disability services staff at two-year colleges support roughly 200 students per staff member, compared to about 75 students per staff member at four-year institutions
None of these statistics mean community college students need less accommodations. Quite the opposite. It means the infrastructure meant to identify and support them is thinner exactly where the need is greatest.
The Day-to-Day Barrier
“Accessibility” can sound like an abstract term until you see the student on the other end of it…so let’s paint the picture.
A blind student opens a scanned PDF of a reading assignment and finds a flat image their screen reader can’t parse. A deaf student watches a required lecture video with no captions and has to guess what’s going on. A student with a motor disability opens a quiz that only accepts click-based navigation and therefore cannot submit.
None of these students are asking for easier material. They’re asking to access the same material as everyone else in the class. When they can’t, that’s the difference between doing the assignment independently, making time to get help, or not completing it at all. It’s the reality of accessibility, and it’s never been about compliance for those students. Accessibility is about whether a student can do the coursework they’ve chosen to invest in.
The Cost of Falling Through the Gap
Community college students who disclose a disability are twice as likely to land in developmental coursework than their peers at four-year institutions. Developmental courses add time and cost to a degree that was already going to take longer than a four-year path. For students navigating a disability, an extra semester or two of non-credit-bearing coursework can be the difference between finishing or not.
Students with disabilities complete bachelor’s degrees at roughly half the rate of their peers within eight years of high school graduation. It’s a gap that opens well before college and only widens once they’re there.
Accessibility Fills the Gap
While there is still so much room to grow, community colleges are already doing something right. Among adults who earned a bachelor’s degree, 56% were more likely to have attended a community college. Community colleges function as the on-ramp for a disproportionate number of students with disabilities who go on to finish a four-year degree. That’s evidence of what can happen when access works as intended.
Community colleges have proven their impact in the system, but the gap in registration, staffing, and accommodations is the difference between the on-ramp working for some students versus working for all students.
That’s where accessibility comes in.
There’s a reason accessibility advocates keep pointing back to the Universal Design for Learning (UDL). UDL shows that content built to work for a student with disabilities works better for everyone else too. Alt text on an image, captions on a video, descriptive headings and links, and color contrast is not complicated to build in from the beginning. And it could be the difference-maker in students with disabilities being able to use a piece of content.
Those same UDL features that accommodate students with disabilities come in handy for the rest of the population too. Descriptive headings can help a student skimming a reading between a work shift and class. Captions on a video allow a parent to watch silently while their child naps. Plain, well-structured writing helps ESL students with comprehension.
At a community college, where so much of the population is already navigating limited time, resources, and support, UDL removes the friction for just about everybody.
The Future of Accessibility
Federal deadlines are part of why this conversation is increasingly relevant. Public colleges and universities, including community colleges, are working toward the April 2027 ADA Title II accessibility deadline to bring their digital content into compliance.
The compliance date, however, is not the mission. The mission existed before the deadline and will remain true long after: community colleges—the open door to higher education—must be truly accessible to the population they serve. They must create content, platforms, materials, and resources that are accessible.
Community colleges must uphold the mission and do right by their students through full accessibility.
Sources:
Community College Facts at a Glance | U.S. Department of Education
DataPoints: Serving Students with Disabilities | Community College Daily
Students with Disabilities in Community Colleges | National Center for Learning Disabilities
Make Learning Accessible to All in Higher Education | Times Higher Education