How to make post-secondary study more accessible? Collaboration between instructors and disability counsellors

Forty years after the enact­ment of Canada’s first children’s spe­cial edu­ca­tion laws, uni­ver­si­ties and col­leges have made sig­nif­i­cant strides in acces­si­ble edu­ca­tion for adult stu­dents with dis­abil­i­ties.

But pos­i­tive change is not com­ing fast enough. And acces­si­bil­i­ty issues are not about some small minor­i­ty of stu­dents. Twen­ty-two per cent of Cana­di­ans aged 15 years or old­er have at least one dis­abil­i­ty. This per­cent­age is rough­ly echoed in high­er edu­ca­tion.

Many impor­tant prac­ti­cal approach­es that gal­va­nize post-sec­ondary insti­tu­tions’ pro-inclu­sion poli­cies are car­ried out by dis­abil­i­ty coun­sel­lors (some­times referred to as acces­si­bil­i­ty con­sul­tants) attached to stu­dent well­ness units.

Pandemic exposed issues

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic made exist­ing bar­ri­ers for peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties more appar­ent.

As Tina Doyle, Direc­tor of Access­Abil­i­ty Ser­vices at Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, shared with me in an inter­view, the pan­dem­ic revealed there is still much work to be done to make edu­ca­tion acces­si­ble and wel­com­ing to per­sons with a dis­abil­i­ty. Researchers who have doc­u­ment­ed expe­ri­ences of stu­dents with dis­abil­i­ties in the pan­dem­ic have made sim­i­lar obser­va­tions.

Support for students with disabilities

Since 1986, the Nation­al Edu­ca­tion­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Dis­abled Stu­dents (NEADS) has been man­dat­ed to sup­port edu­ca­tion and employ­ment for post-sec­ondary stu­dents and grad­u­ates with dis­abil­i­ties.

NEADS has launched projects, resources, research, pub­li­ca­tions and part­ner­ships and cre­at­ed schol­ar­ships.

Nev­er­the­less, many read­ers includ­ing stu­dents with dis­abil­i­ties and par­ents or sup­port­ers may be unfa­mil­iar with how uni­ver­si­ties and col­leges are cur­rent­ly sup­port­ing their stu­dents with dis­abil­i­ties.

Employee training

Admin­is­tra­tors at most insti­tu­tions have intro­duced sig­nif­i­cant poli­cies and require­ments for employ­ee train­ing. They have under­tak­en new prac­tices in a range of stu­dent sup­port ser­vices embed­ded in cam­pus life.

These include audits and reports often by human rights units, and reg­u­lar facil­i­ties reviews as his­toric cam­pus build­ings are increas­ing­ly being retro­fit­ted to con­form to acces­si­bil­i­ty stan­dards.

Sim­i­lar­ly, inno­v­a­tive teach­ing and learn­ing cen­tre staff typ­i­cal­ly pro­mote prac­ti­cal approach­es among the teach­ing fac­ul­ty, while librar­i­ans and oth­ers focus on impor­tant learn­ing resource acces­si­bil­i­ty and sup­port­ive tech­nolo­gies.

Students assigned counsellors

A draw­back of tra­di­tion­al approach­es to accom­mo­dat­ing dis­abil­i­ty has been a heavy reliance on only rec­og­nized med­ical diag­noses of dis­abil­i­ty.

Today many stu­dents with a dis­abil­i­ty present them­selves to dis­abil­i­ties ser­vices units requir­ing assis­tance.

While some dis­abil­i­ty rights researchers or advo­cates flag that some stu­dents are inhib­it­ed from receiv­ing accom­mo­da­tions due to a lack of a for­mal diag­no­sis, some dis­abil­i­ty advo­cates and researchers we have spo­ken with say there is a trend towards work­ing with stu­dents even before they have a diag­no­sis.

Counsellors as advocates

Coun­sel­lors also often find them­selves tasked with advo­cat­ing, along­side or for stu­dents, with fac­ul­ty to ensure an array of accom­mo­da­tions are put into prac­tice.

Most com­mon­ly this may include hav­ing fac­ul­ty fol­low the student’s approved need for occa­sion­al exten­sions on assign­ment due dates, extra time for test com­ple­tion, use of a com­put­er or a test cen­tre for writ­ing tests or per­haps access to assigned course resources in an acces­si­ble for­mat.

Where expen­sive accom­mo­da­tions are need­ed by the stu­dent (such as com­put­ers, soft­ware, ergonom­ic mod­i­fi­ca­tions or staffing sup­ports) then insti­tu­tions, on behalf of gov­ern­ment admin­is­tra­tors, often require cur­rent diag­noses to be pre­sent­ed in advance.

Pro­fes­sors may have already select­ed and ordered books or uploaded their course mate­ri­als to the dig­i­tal learn­ing man­age­ment sys­tem long before learn­ing that a stu­dent reg­is­tered to their class has some needs they hadn’t antic­i­pat­ed.

Part-time staff

A sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge for the sec­tor is how to train teach­ing fac­ul­ty on the many spe­cif­ic prac­ti­cal approach­es when uni­ver­si­ties and col­leges employ a very high ratio of part-time instruc­tors on short-term con­tracts.

Dis­abil­i­ty coun­sel­lors report some­times expend­ing sig­nif­i­cant ener­gy com­mu­ni­cat­ing with teach­ing fac­ul­ty about using what should be seen as sim­ple inclu­sive strate­gies that stu­dents have a right to, or con­vinc­ing them of the neces­si­ty.

Promoting universal design

What more can be done?

A clear way to mea­sure the com­mit­ment to pro­mot­ing inclu­sion of those with dis­abil­i­ties can be found in poli­cies sup­port­ing equi­ty, diver­si­ty and inclu­sion and those that com­mit the insti­tu­tion to pro­mot­ing uni­ver­sal design for learn­ing approach­es by their teach­ing fac­ul­ty and staff. In recent years NEADS has come out as a strong pro­po­nent of the approach.

Uni­ver­sal design for learn­ing is aimed, in part, at address­ing accom­mo­da­tion needs. It has been also shown to sup­port learn­ers with dis­abil­i­ties along with needs of inter­na­tion­al stu­dents, first-gen­er­a­tion stu­dents and many oth­ers.

Some cen­tres for inno­v­a­tive learn­ing in post-sec­ondary insti­tu­tions in the Unit­ed States, and less so in Cana­da, have pro­mot­ed part­ner­ships between teach­ing fac­ul­ty and dis­abil­i­ty ser­vice staff such as dis­abil­i­ty coun­sel­lors.

Humber College study

A recent Cana­di­an project under­tak­en by a team at Hum­ber Col­lege, and stud­ied by this story’s first author, found that con­nect­ing teach­ing fac­ul­ty with a learn­ing spe­cial­ist and dis­abil­i­ty coun­sel­lors was key to sup­port­ing greater imple­men­ta­tion of uni­ver­sal design. This echoed find­ings in oth­er con­texts.

In the Hum­ber project, teach­ing fac­ul­ty were con­nect­ed with an inno­v­a­tive learn­ing cen­tre spe­cial­ist. They were also able to lever­age con­sid­er­able knowl­edge and com­mit­ment of the institution’s dis­abil­i­ty coun­sel­lors.

An impor­tant fac­tor in their abil­i­ty to design acces­si­ble cours­es with sup­port­ive exper­tise was their employ­er allowed them to for­mal­ly allo­cate time to this kind of work.

Supporting student success

Over the 14-week redesign project peri­od stud­ied, dis­abil­i­ty coun­sel­lors were able to make sub­stan­tial con­tri­bu­tions with­in about 90 min­utes per week. The col­le­gial sup­port that all par­tic­i­pants report­ed broke down some of the iso­la­tion that fac­ul­ty some­times expe­ri­enced while redesign­ing cours­es.

It also built up trust as par­tic­i­pants, whether teach­ers or dis­abil­i­ty coun­sel­lors, learned to bet­ter appre­ci­ate the chal­lenges of each other’s com­plex roles in sup­port­ing stu­dent suc­cess.

Employ­ing the con­sid­er­able knowl­edge and expe­ri­ences of dis­abil­i­ty coun­sel­lors in nov­el ways may pro­vide sub­stan­tial guid­ance to some areas where insti­tu­tions can improve their sup­port efforts.

Mag­gie Lyons-Mac­Far­lane, out­go­ing chair­per­son of the board of direc­tors of the Nation­al Edu­ca­tion­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Dis­abled Stu­dents, and New Brunswick direc­tor of the orga­ni­za­tion, co-authored this sto­ry.

Publié le 09 janvier 2023