Disability is Diversity: A Multiculturalism Perspectives on Disability Inclusion in Higher Education

Debatable benefit of the emergent hegemonies view of disability as part of cultural diversity has increasingly discussed. This view has positively replaced the old schools (medical model, charity model and so forth) from seeing disability as impairment and oppression to seeing disability as one of cultural range (which is technically termed as cultural sub-variant or micro-cultural group). Of this premise, this paper seeks the potential of disability inclusion in higher education from cultural perspective. The objective of this research is to measure the index of inclusion in Indonesia higher education that focus on cultural dimension. Adopting index for inclusion by Tony Booth, this research invited 219 respondents consist of lecturers, staffs, students with and without disability from 12 universities in Indonesia to share their perspective in responding the disability inclusion in higher education. Descriptive statistics was applied to elicit the pattern of the data, the findings were elaborated through the multiculturalism perspectives. Issues, challenges and opportunity was expounded to address the cultural perspectives of university community in welcoming disability as part of cultural diversity.