Disability Disclosure in the Sustainability Reports of Universities: An Exploratory Study in Italy

The chapter aims to analyze the current state of universities’ sustainability reporting on disability through an exploratory analysis of the reports published by the Italian universities belonging to the Network of Universities for Sustainable Development. Through a content analysis, the research has investigated the presence and the types of information on disability published in the sustainability reports, identifying the gaps in the universities’ accountability processes. The findings show that some sustainability reports mentioned disability-related actions, while others completely neglected this aspect. In many cases, universities limit themselves to describing actions mandatory by law or reporting data related, for instance, to the number of hours of tutoring provided for disabled students. Rarer are the cases in which sustainability reports describe disability-related actions from a comprehensive point of view, focusing on all three institutional purposes of universities (i.e., teaching, research, and third mission). The measurement of the results achieved and of the resources spent seems to be also less developed. Hence, this research contributes to the still underdeveloped academic debate on disability disclosure, in the higher education field. A further element of originality is the creation of frameworks for categorizing sustainability reporting with a specific focus on disability disclosure.