How are modern universities responding to calls to create new cultures of accessibility and inclusion for disabled students?
[photo of a handicap access sign in front of a college building at MSU; taken by myself]
What does it mean for a college or university to be accessible? Most people’s minds jump to ramps and elevators for people in wheelchairs. But what about other disabilities? There’s a huge variety of disabilities that we don’t hear about as often. Physical accessibility and creating access for deaf and blind students may just be the beginning in the process of making learning environments open to all types of students. A growing number of schools are taking next steps and learning how to expand accessibility on campus to be inclusive to different learning disabilities, chronic illnesses, and mental illnesses. They’re also strategizing to build in accessibility whenever working on new projects from the beginning, rather than as an afterthought.
To show some of the different access issues small colleges vs. larger public universities may be facing, I’ll use two universities in Missouri as examples.
Annette McDuff, an admissions specialist in the College of Graduate and Extended Studies (CGES) at Central Methodist University, spoke with me about the state of accessibility at her school. Central Methodist is a small private school in Fayette, Missouri, that was first founded in 1854, so the school wasn’t built to be accessible.
Many older buildings have access issues, but in recent years the school has begun making changes such as adding elevators, electric doors, ramps, and parking spaces, opening the school up to more disabled individuals. While there’s still only a small number of disabled students and faculty, McDuff said she’s seen a lot of effort from faculty and school leadership to do what they can.
Maryann Rustemeyer, director of the Center for Learning and Teaching (CLT), is a big part of this effort. The CLT handles disability accommodations for students with physical, mental, or learning disabilities. They offer things like tutoring, accessible textbooks and software and help with study skills.
McDuff, who has worked at CMU for two and a half years, broke her foot last winter and she told me that her experience in a boot and crutches, struggling to heal for six months, helped her see the physical access issues on campus. But she also experienced a very compassionate and helpful response from HR, her bosses, and other faculty who all seem to want to make things better there.
While Missouri State University, a much bigger, public university, still faces the problems of old buildings and traditions, it also has different problems and different resources than CMU does.
I asked some other MSU students about their experiences with accessibility to get some examples outside of my own experiences here.
Hailey Hance is a senior and has type one diabetes and ADHD, among other things. Finding the Disability Resource Center (DRC) and getting the right accommodations to help her manage those things while still having a normal school experience was essential, and went very well for her. Another senior, Rachel Reed, had a very similar experience. She said professors usually understand, but even if they don’t, they still have to follow the accommodations she’s been given which helps.
The DRC works to ensure that all students, regardless of abilities, are able to participate in all the normal school activities and experiences. Hance expressed feeling that the DRC workers have done a good job of representing and advocating for her.
For Hance, the most important thing has been having excused absences on days her illness acts up, and understanding teachers who are willing to help and allow her to make up for missed tests or classes missed. But she’s still had less understanding professors.
Hance, myself, and others have had issues this semester with some online classes. Many teachers do a great job of engaging students and making their online content accessible. But in other classes, it can feel like they’re doing the bare minimum.
Hance gave an example of one teacher who she says hasn't updated the syllabus when needed, and puts very little of their notes, grading rubrics, or class content online for students. When Hance emailed this teacher earlier in the semester to ask about her accommodations and making the class accessible, she was completely ignored. She said it can be hard to know when teachers are going to be willing to work with her, an uncertainty I’ve also experienced.
In her words, “While I love my school and department, there is a feeling that teachers are understanding of disabilities to only a certain extent and you need to fit within that, or that they’ll pass you but just begrudgingly.”
While my professors and campus leaders have been very helpful so far, there have still been things on campus that haven’t been fully accessible for me. Trying to keep safe during this pandemic as an immune-compromised individual has been my biggest struggle- not everyone realizes that can be an access issue too. Many disabled people don’t feel safe to go to dining halls, class or work when safety rules aren’t always being enforced.
One positive change that Reed noticed this year was that the student activities council chose to include subtitles on all of the movies they show. The school has been making many efforts to become more accessible, it’s just not always executed uniformly.
So, what have other schools been doing to address histories of exclusion and create new cultures of accessibility?
Most schools start with training of school employees and instructors to better understand diversity and inclusion.
Modern schooling is changing as technology advances, and technology can also be used in many ways to bridge access gaps for the disabled community. As schools adapt this new technology into their programs, they can plan ahead for ways to expand access through it.
University of Tennessee Knoxville shows an example of this with their interactive online map program, through which you can locate anything from study spaces to dining to restrooms. Its accessibility section can help to find accessible parking, curb cuts, building entrances, elevators, and video phones (for the hard of hearing). While a map may sound small, this type of innovation could have a huge impact for those students with disabilities who have to spend so much of their time just finding routes they can take or buildings that have the services they need.
Another part of accessibility culture seems to be bridging the gap between disabled and non-disabled students through educational events/programs; student-led groups; celebrations of the diversity of students and how they can learn from each other; supporting involvement for disabled students in campus activities and encouraging campus groups and spaces to move from the bare minimum of accessibility to an inclusive mindset.
As physical and academic access are becoming more common, schools with programs like Villanova University’s student-led group LEVEL, or Syracuse University’s student-affairs-led Disability Cultural Center (the first of its kind) are showing that a school’s accessibility may be more successful when it comes as a result of a true shift in its relationships and culture.