Williams (200113. Williams, G. 2001. “Theorizing disability”. In Handbook of disability studies , Edited by: Albrecht, G. L., Seelman, K. D. and Bury, M. London: Sage. View all references) argued that neither personal nor collective experiences of disability can be understood without recognition of both ‘relational’ definitions (which encompass both the perceived social oppression of people with disabilities and a focus on the cultural and ideological construction of impaired bodies), and the ‘property’ definitions found in welfare and medical categorizations. He emphasized the complex ‘negotiated’ aspects of everyday life, whilst in relation to higher education (HE) the case study data of Riddell et al. (200510. Riddell, S., Tinklin, T. and Wilson, A. 2005. Disabled students in higher education: perspectives on widening access and changing policy , London: Routledge. View all references) revealed a range of identities being ‘performed’ by students with disabilities. They found that students' constructions of self were temporal, contingent and negotiated, although they also stressed that some groups of disabled people are subject to greater externally‐imposed constraints on the parameters for negotiation than others.