How Can Post-Secondary Learning Be Made More Accessible? Instructor-Disability Counselor Collaboration

Forty years after Canada’s first Children’s Special Education Act was enacted, universities have made great strides in providing accessible education for adult students with disabilities.

But positive change is not coming fast enough. Also, accessibility issues aren’t just about some minority of students. Her 22% of Canadians over the age of 15 have at least one of her disabilities. This proportion is largely reflected in higher education.

Many important practical approaches to activating inclusion policies in postsecondary institutions are carried out by disability counselors (sometimes called accessibility consultants) affiliated with the Student Health Unit.

Pandemic Exposed Issues

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

As Tina Doyle, director of AccessAbility Services at the University of Toronto, told me in an interview, the pandemic leaves much to be done to make education accessible and welcoming to people with disabilities. made it clear. Researchers documenting the experiences of students with disabilities during the pandemic have made similar observations.

Support for students with disabilities

Since 1986, the National Educational Association of Disabled Students (NEADS) has a mandate to support the education and employment of disabled post-secondary students and graduates.

NEADS launches projects, resources, research, publications, partnerships and creates scholarships.

Nonetheless, many readers, including students with disabilities and their parents or caregivers, may be unfamiliar with how colleges and colleges currently support students with disabilities.

employee training

Most agency managers have put in place significant policies and requirements regarding employee training. They have new practices in a range of student support services integrated into campus life.

These often include audits and reports by human rights departments, and regular facility reviews as historic campus buildings undergo renovations to ensure compliance with accessibility standards.

Similarly, staff at innovative teaching and learning centers typically promote a hands-on approach among faculty, while librarians and others focus on accessibility and assistive technology of critical learning resources. I guess.

Assign a counselor to the student

A drawback of the traditional approach to addressing disability is that it relied heavily solely on the medical diagnosis of the perceived disability.

Many students with disabilities today turn up to the Disability Services Department for assistance.

Some disability rights researchers or advocates warn that some students are denied accommodations because they lack a formal diagnosis, but some disability advocates with whom we have spoken Doctors and researchers say they tend to work with students even before they receive a diagnosis.

counselor as advocate

Counselors are also often tasked with advocating for faculty to ensure that various accommodations are practiced with or for students.

Most commonly, this includes extension of due dates for student-approved assignments, extra time to complete tests, use of computers or test centers to write tests, or course assignments in an accessible format. This includes subjecting faculty and staff to the approved needs of students, such as access to resources.

If a student requires expensive accommodation (computers, software, ergonomic modifications, staffing support, etc.), the institution requires an up-to-date medical diagnosis on behalf of government administrators. often do.

Professors select and order books or upload course materials to a digital learning management system long before they know that students enrolled in their classes have unexpected needs. There may be

part-time staff

A key challenge in this area is how to train faculty on many specific practical approaches when universities employ a very high proportion of adjunct faculty on short-term contracts.

Disability counselors expend considerable energy communicating with faculty about using what should be viewed as simple overarching strategies that students have a right to, or convincing students of the need. I am reporting something.

Promotion of universal design

What more could you do?

A clear way to measure commitment to promoting disability inclusion is through policies that support equity, diversity, and inclusion, and policies that commit institutions to promote the universal design of learning approaches by faculty and staff. can be found in In recent years, NEADS has emerged as a strong proponent of this approach.

Universal Design for Learning aims to address accommodation needs. It has also been shown to support learners with disabilities, along with international students, first-generation students, and many other needs.

Several centers for innovative learning in postsecondary institutions in the United States are fostering partnerships between educational faculty and disability services staff, such as disability counselors.

Study at Humber College

In a recent Canadian project conducted by a team at Humber College and studied by the first author of this article, connecting faculty with learning professionals and disability counselors is key to supporting the greater implementation of universal design. It turns out there is. This mirrors findings in other contexts.

The Humber Project connected faculty and staff with experts in an innovative learning center. They were also able to tap into the considerable knowledge and commitment of the agency’s disability counselors.

A key component of the ability to design accessible courses with ancillary expertise is allowing employers to formally allocate time to this type of work.

Support student success

During the 14-week redesign project studied, disability counselors were able to make substantial contributions within approximately 90 minutes per week. The peer support reported by all participants eliminated some of the isolation experienced by faculty when redesigning courses.

Trust was also built as participants, whether teachers or disability counselors, learned to better understand the challenges of each other’s complex roles in helping students succeed.

Adopting the disability counselor’s considerable knowledge and experience in novel ways can provide substantial guidance in several areas where agencies can improve their support efforts.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Please read the original article.