My Liminal Disability and Why Academia has an Accessibility Problem

By Ruth-Anne Walbank

As a Gothic scholar, my work often pries open liminal spaces and searches for the uncanny in literature. Liminality means to be on the threshold, to resist classification. ‘These persons elude or slip through the network of classification […] They are betwixt and between,’ Victor Turner describes in The Ritual Process. ‘Thus, liminality is frequently likened to death… to invisibility, to darkness.’ Gothic literature and media cling to these spaces, relishing in their transgression and characterising their occupiers as monstrous. 

It’s almost ironic, then, that I found myself in a new state of liminal disability at a Gothic conference.

With a badly sprained ankle, I am currently on crutches. Though, as my colleagues frequently reminded me, I was not really disabled – my injury would heal. Yet, I do have permanent hidden disabilities: I’m autistic, dyslexic, and have a few chronic health problems. I was disabled because I was on crutches but able-bodied because my physical disability was temporary. I was disabled because my neurodivergence meant I think differently. Yet I was, and am, perceived as neurotypical.

Instead of, ‘but you don’t seem to be struggling, you do so well for someone who’s…’, I received sideways glances. The glaring looks of ‘what’s that noise interrupting my coffee break?’ as my crutches click-clacked across the tiled floor and my colleague’s side-stepped to stay firmly out of my path. Defying classification, painfully visible and invisible, I found this liminal disability pushed me further to the edges of what should be a collaborative space.

As I write this, I have bruises on my forearms from my crutches, a bag of frozen peas on my ankle to reduce the swelling and a sense of mental exhaustion. Nothing about this picture should reflect my attendance at a conference. Between broken lifts, hobbling downstairs on one leg, and using my half-hour break to find the nearest accessible toilet, I’m outraged. I am not only fatigued from navigating a space not built for people like me, but I’m angry that these experiences keep happening, that we’re still having these conversations.

What saddens me most is that my experiences were only a ‘problem’ for this conference because I was physically there. I fully acknowledge my privilege as someone with hidden disabilities who can usually choose whether to voice my struggle or stay silent. But what about my colleagues with disabilities that prevented them from travelling to the event? What about my colleagues who couldn’t afford the eye-watering £300 conference fee? It felt as though my presence offered a haunting reminder of the disabled community’s continued exclusion and absence. 

As I return home, that near-invisible threshold state becomes a horrible memory recalled from the comfort of my bed. I reflect on liminality in the Gothic. We talk about writers and artists using the liminal to create monsters, but do we ever stop to reflect on the monsters our discipline, our academic culture, is making? It’s almost cliché to say that the monster’s creator is often the truly monstrous one. Victor Frankenstein’s unethical experiments and abandonment of his creation become the actual source of horror, not the creature himself. Similarly, when Dr Jekyll attempts to separate himself from his dark impulses, he creates Mr Hyde. So, what does academia’s ableism say about research culture and its monstrous underbelly of exclusion? 

These problems are systemic; they extend through the body of higher education. Yet, conferences are at the centre of the problem. These gatherings are the beating heart of academic life. They connect us to colleagues and communities outside our university walls, allowing for those creative exchanges that are vital to research. Conferences are the locus point for widespread changes. They hold the potential for a radical accessibility that’s genuinely open to all.

‘The liminal is an arena of possibility,’ Susan Merrill Squier says in her book Liminal Lives (2004). ‘Liminality challenges us to negotiate meaning right here and now.’ So, what challenge does my liminal disability pose to the academic community? 

The past few weeks have offered a steep learning curve – a first-hand experience of accessibility barriers that are new to me. It’s profoundly altered my relationship with university spaces, their alienating architecture and ableist attitudes. While I love to study the Gothic, I don’t think anyone should have to live in a suspended sense of Gothic liminality to call themselves an expert.

In the past, I would have considered my academic events inclusive and accessible. Now, I wonder who sat at the edges, much like I had to. This reflection is essential, and I encourage my fellow researchers and conference managers to re-evaluate the importance of event organising ethics. Acknowledge the people sitting at our doorsteps and welcome them in to create new possibilities within our community and space. 

Academia has an accessibility problem. A problem that demands radical solutions to make conference spaces wonderfully open and inclusive. Listen to your colleagues with disabilities. Make spaces wheelchair accessible and create quiet rooms that are available throughout your event. Reduce your entry fees and normalise hybrid online/in-person formats. These are just for starters. 

Inclusive organisers have already shown us it’s possible; there’s a growing demand. Open-access projects like Romancing the Gothic offer welcoming academic spaces for global scholars to share their research publicly. Meanwhile, the recent launch of the Inklusion Guide for best practices in literary event organisation has met with widespread acclaim, offering a freely available and comprehensive guide. 

My liminal disability, in its resistance of classification, has shown me the inaccessibility of our current conference model. Such liminality, such darkness and invisibility, could become monstrous. Instead, I like to imagine the community we could become, and I have immense hope for the new thinking that so many liminal voices could pioneer.