Accessibility and Post-Secondary Education
“If you recruit disabled students, are they going to feel like their disability is a burden that the school is complying with as it’s the law…or are they going to feel like they are valued for their perspective?” (Harry Paul as cited in Burke, 2020).
A 2017 report by the Canadian Human Rights Commission found that barriers in education cause close to 10 percent of individuals with disabilities to quit pursuing their educational goals before achieving them (CHRC, 2017). The Ontario Human Rights Commission outlines the main barriers to education for students with disabilities — including postsecondary students — as inadequate funding, physical accessibility, the accommodation process, lack of individualization, ineffective dispute resolution mechanisms, and negative attitudes and stereotypes.
These barriers and more are prevalent for students in the postsecondary sector. Prioritizing efforts to achieve barrier-free access for disabled students beyond just individualized academic accommodations is critical. First, accommodations do not equal true access for disabled students. Accommodations are retrofits to an inaccessible environment that do not empower us to make changes. As Dolmage (2017) notes, “The nature of the retrofitted accommodation requires that we make no lasting changes to our pedagogy or to the culture.”
Second, academic accommodations do not equitably serve disabled students within teaching and learning institutions. Many students that need academic accommodations either do not receive them or do not seek them. Some have estimated that at least 100,000 postsecondary students in Canada — if not close to 200,000 students — need accommodations but never seek them (Dolmage, 2017). Olson (2015) cites a variety of reasons that prevent students from accessing the required medical documentation to access academic accommodations including lack of access to medical care, lack of financial means, barriers to adequate healthcare and documentation, and more.
Moving past a compliance framework to approach accessibility is one way to ensure equity for disabled students.
With this understanding, let’s look at ways to make the components of your course accessible. Continue to the next section to learn how to start designing accessible courses.
Interesting in Learning More?
For an in-depth perspective of academic ableism and how it operates within teaching and learning contexts, we strongly recommend reading Jay Timothy Dolmage’s Academic Ableism Disability and Higher Education which is available in open access.
References
Burke, L. (2020, November 12). Disability as diversity. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/11/12/could-disability-be-further-included-diversity-efforts
Canadian Human Rights Commission. (2017). Left out: Challenges faced by persons with disabilities in Canada’s schools.
Dolmage, J. (2017). Academic ableism: Disability & Higher Education. Michigan: University of Michigan Press.
Olson, S. (2015, July 27). Every student uses your access statement. Retrieved from https://tenureshewrote.wordpress.com/2015/07/27/guest-post-every-student-uses-your-access-statement/
Ontario Human Rights Commission. (n.d.). Main barriers to education for students with disabilities (fact sheet). Retrieved from http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/main-barriers-education-students-disabilities-fact-sheet