Despite the vital knowledge disabled people contribute to fashion innovation, fashion education has been largely absent from research on disabled students in higher education. This article examines the barriers disabled students encounter, the counter-strategies they employ, and their recommendations for inclusion. Guided by curricular cripistemologies, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 35 students across ten U.S. fashion programs. Three themes emerged: barriers, counter-strategies, and recommendations. Students identified structural, pedagogical, and cultural barriers, including medicalized and inflexible accommodations, inaccessible studios, and industry norms of speed and perfection. They resisted exclusion by cultivating peer and faculty networks and reframing disability as a creative resource. Students also offered recommendations such as studio-specific accommodations, proactive faculty disability education, and disability-inclusive curricula. This study extends existing scholarship on disabled students by introducing fashion education as a context, advances curricular cripistemologies in studio-based disciplines, and offers guidance for educators and accrediting bodies to foster structural transformation.
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