Beyond Provision: Rethinking Accessibility in Academic Libraries for Meaningful Access

Abstract

In academic libraries, accessibility is often approached through infrastructure, digital systems, and institutional support, where the presence of facilities and technologies is treated as evidence of inclusion. This orientation leaves a conceptual gap in explaining how access is actually realised for disabled users during service encounters and everyday academic engagement. This paper reconceptualises accessibility as an enacted institutional practice shaped through the relationship among institutional conditions, service practices, and user experience. The study adopts a conceptual approach based on critical literature synthesis to examine how accessibility is produced in academic library environments. From this analysis, the paper develops the Enacted Accessibility Framework, which explains meaningful access as an outcome of alignment among institutional conditions, service practices, and user experience. The framework clarifies that institutional conditions establish the enabling environment, service practices translate accessibility into action, and user experience reflects how access is realised in use. It further shows that accessibility breakdown emerges when these domains lose alignment, even in settings where infrastructure, technologies, and policy frameworks are present. The paper contributes a process-based explanation of accessibility that moves beyond provision-centred interpretations and offers a stronger analytical basis for examining how meaningful access is produced in academic library contexts.