11 Practices by individual student accessibility services advisors
In interviews with access professionals, we learned about the different kinds of work leaders in the DSO are doing to move beyond individual accommodations and implement systemic responses to systemic problems like ableism. Interviewees emphasized the importance of working with faculty to promote accessible teaching practices. By embedding a base level of access in course design, student accessibility services advisors are working to reduce the burden placed on students to piece together their own access in racist and ableist post-secondary education settings (Johnson et al., forthcoming). In other words, it can be less of a battle for students to get access when accessible practices are already embedded in the course/classroom.
Interviewees made it clear that the focus can’t only be on individual accommodations. Amanda Kraus, Assistant Vice President and Executive Director of the Disability Resource Center at the University of Arizona, put it best: “[I]f that’s all we do, that’s all we’ll ever do. So we have to bring other people on board…with the campus philosophy, the campus commitment to make sure that they’re purchasing things that are accessible, that they’re renovating things with a higher level of access.”
Our web search also identified two digital resources aimed at supporting access professionals in shifting their focus from individual accommodations to systemic solutions in universities (Refocus 2.0; National Deaf Center on Postsecondary Outcomes, 2020). These point to another possibility (or another DSO) where the focus is on system-level solutions. However, DSOs are already operating at and beyond full capacity, which limits their ability to address systemic issues (Dolmage, 2017).
Adequate institutional resources and support are essential to focus on structural change. Moreover, additional resources and supports must aim to eliminate the need for individual accommodations by making our campuses accessible and increasing capacity for accessible teaching, research and other forms of campus work/life – this way students don’t have to take on the work of hacking together their own access (see Johnson et all., forthcoming). Simply put, individual accommodations cannot be the only thing the institution is doing.