MALAYSIANSKINI | After spending decades striving to achieve her academic goals, a disabled professor is now using her experience to ensure disabled students in Malaysia have the opportunity to succeed in higher education.

Now a professor of economics at the International Islamic University of Malaysia (UIA), Ruzita Mohd Amin, 57, said her struggles started from the day her parents tried to register her for primary school.

She lost the ability to walk after being infected with polio at the age of one.

Today, she is a wheelchair user, but when she enrolled in primary school, her mother had to physically assist with her movements at the time.

It was for this reason that some schools refused her registration.

"During that era (in the 1970s), schools did not want to accept (disabled students) because there were no facilities for them.

"My parents went around to look for a suitable school, and only one school accepted me.

“But it was with the condition that my...