Institutional Barriers

Obstacles to accessibility, technology adoption, or inclusion that arise from organizational policies, practices, norms, and cultures rather than from individual limitations or technology design. In schools for the blind, institutional barriers include management resistance to classroom technology use, policies that frame technology as a distraction rather than a teaching tool, lack of infrastructure investment, and administrative processes that delay access to teaching materials. Research shows that institutional barriers can be more significant than individual digital literacy gaps in preventing technology adoption by teachers with vision impairments.