Accessibility and Accommodations in Higher Education
This episode will focus on the difference between accessibility and accommodation, and how faculty can be proactive with their course design.
If you have any questions you would like to have asked, or if you would like to be a part of the podcast in a later episode, please email andrew.coletti@temple.edu.
- JAN - Job Accommodation Network
- Students, apply for DRS at Temple
- Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Educational Accommodation
- WCAG Color Contrast Checker
- 4 Principles of a Universal Design for Learning Approach(opens in a new tab)
Show Transcript
Audio Transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING]
AnnouncerHello, and welcome to this episode
of The T in Teaching.
This Episode Is Focused On Adacompliance and accessibility.
In This Episode,our host Layah Bogen
Interviewed Carrie Snyder, Thedirector of Disability Resource
Services.
Carrie Snyder JoinsThe T in Teaching again
As Our First Repeat Guestto give more clarity
And Background On Accessibilityand accommodations
in higher education.
To Refresh, She ServesTemple University
As The Director Of DisabilityResources and Services
After Previously Workingat the University of Albany
in New York.
Thank You For Listeningand please enjoy.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Layah BogenCarrie, welcome back to The T
in Teaching podcast.
It's great to see you again.
Carrie SnyderIt's great to be here again.
Thank you so much.
Layah BogenYeah, so today we'll
Be Talking About Ada Complianceand accessibility, which
Is Pretty Relevant Especiallyas the semester comes to a close
And Faculty Are Setting Up Theirexams and giving their exams.
So I Just Want To Go Throughsome background information
First On What The Americanswith Disability Act stands for,
Especially When It Comesto online education.
Carrie SnyderSure.
So Just A Little Bitof background for that,
The Americans With DisabilitiesAct was put into place in 1990.
And Part Of Thereasoning behind that
Is To Ensure That People Withdisabilities had civil rights.
And For Education Andeven online education,
It Ensures That Studentscan access their education.
So The Americanswith Disabilities Act
defines what disability is.
And It Talks Aboutanything that substantially
limits a major life function.
And When We're Talkingabout education,
Major Life Functions Arethings like thinking,
Learning, Concentrating,reading, seeing, hearing.
So Those Are Actuallydefined in the ADA.
There's A Wholelist, but those are
The Things That We're Reallythinking about when we're
Looking At Educationand the things
That Will Impact A Studentwhen they're in the classroom.
Layah BogenRight.
No, Thank You So Muchbecause a lot of times,
We Do See The AcronymADA and may not really
know the background.
And Especiallythat you said 1990,
I Also Find Thatthat's interesting.
That Wasn't Thatlong ago either.
Also, Coming At A Goodtime for online education,
And I'm Sure Thatthere will continue
to be improvements with that.
So Thank You For Walking Usthrough the background a bit.
And We Talk About Accessibilityand accommodation a lot.
But Could You Giveus the definition
And The Difference Betweenwhat those two words mean?
Carrie SnyderSo accessibility is the way in which someone
Can Get To Whatthey need, so how
They Can Get Totheir education, how
They Can Get Into A Building,whereas accommodations
Are What We Do To Makesomething accessible.
So I Think The Bestway to describe
It Is Taking It Out Ofthe classroom for a minute
And Talking Aboutgetting into a building.
A Building That Is Accessible Isone that everyone can get into.
If A Building Has Stairs, It'snot necessarily accessible,
But We Can Make It Accessiblewith the accommodation
of a ramp.
Layah BogenRight.
Oh, interesting.
Thank You For Thatbecause, once again, even
Just Seeing Thewritten words, if you
Don't Have Thatbackground, you're like,
oh, it means the same thing.
But All These Minutedifferences matter.
And I Do Just Wantto say, even when
I Was Coming Intothis office today,
I Was Holding Acouple of things.
And I Tend To Hold Thedoor open for myself.
But This Time Iwas like, OK, I'm
Going To Press Thebutton to open the doors.
And I Was Like, Oh, I'mreally glad this is here.
And That's A Small Differencethat it made for me,
But It Makes A Huge Differencefor others and something
That I Also Don't Eventhink about when it
comes to accessing a building.
Carrie SnyderAnd that actually leads into universal design.
Ramps, The Buttonsthat open doors,
Even Though They're Designedfor people with disabilities,
they're useful for everybody.
So Someone Who Hasthings in their hands--
Ramps Can Be Used By Notjust people with disabilities
But Someone Who Is Pushinga stroller, someone
Who Is Deliveringsomething to a building.
So Universal Design Takes Intoaccount not just somebody who
has a disability but everyone.
Layah BogenAnd I'm so glad you're bringing up
Universal Designbecause that is actually
Something I Did Want To Talkto you about is Universal
Design for Learning principles.
Carrie SnyderAbsolutely.
Layah BogenAnd I know I'm asking
You To Give A Lotof definitions,
But You're An Expert In Thisfield, so if you could also,
When It Comes Toonline education,
talk to us about what UDL is.
Carrie SnyderUDL is a way that students
Can Access Their Educationbut in a in a way
That It Is Designedby professors
So That It'saccessible to everyone.
So For Example, Weknow that people have
different ways of learning.
Some People Learnbetter visually.
Some People Learnbetter auditorily.
Some People Learn Bettertactically or by doing things.
So One Of The Principles OfUniversal Design for Learning
Is To Design An Activity Sothat it meets the learning
needs of all students.
So Not Just Givinga lecture but also
Having Visual Aidsalong with that lecture
And Then Also Having Anactivity that students
Can Participatein so that they're
Learning What-- They're Doingwhat they're learning, so
Making Sure That Peoplecan learn in all manners.
And This Also Assists Studentswith disabilities as well.
So You're Helping Everybody Inthe classroom in that manner.
Layah BogenNo, I love that.
And I Think That'svery important.
So Talking Aboutusing UDL principles
And Ada In The Classroom,what can faculty
Do To Remain Proactivewith their course design,
Especially Instead Of Beingreactive when it comes
to using these principles?
Carrie SnyderThat's a great question.
I Think You Need To Back Up Andas you're designing a course--
And We Know A Lot Of Facultyare teaching the same courses
semester after semester.
So As You're Getting Readyto prepare for the semester,
Look At The Syllabus,look at the activities
That You Have Designed,and think about,
How Can I Ensure That This Isgoing to help all learners?
So can I--
I Have A Lecturehere that I'm doing.
What Kind Of Visuals CanI add to that lecture
To Help Enhance Itfor visual learners?
Are There Anyhands-on activities
That I Can Add To This Lectureto help students better
understand?
It Doesn't Have To Beanything out of the ordinary.
It Can Be Smallgroup discussions.
It can be case studies.
It Can Be Things Thatjust draw the students in
To Help Them Use Their Thinkingto learn the principles that
are being discussed.
Layah BogenRight.
And As You Mentioned Before,it ties in with accessibility,
but it's also--
It's Just Great Practices To Usein online education in general.
So I Absolutely Love That,and everyone does benefit
from using these principles.
I also do want to talk about--
I Support Faculty Inmy day-to-day job.
And Especially When We Havea new course that we're
Developing, One Of Thefoundational things
That We Like To Do Ismaking sure everything's ADA
compliant.
So What Are Waysthat faculty can make
Sure That Theircontent is accessible?
What Success Have You Had Withhelping faculty with this?
Carrie SnyderThat's another great question.
One of the things--
One Of The Easiest Thingsthat faculty can do
Is As They're Designinghandouts, PowerPoints.
Things Like That, Is Usingthe accessibility checker
that is built into Microsoft.
It's really easy to do.
And That Really Helps Themto find out what might not
be accessible in their content.
Another thing is use captioning.
Any Videos That You'reusing, make sure
that they're captioned.
That Not Only Helps Students Whomay have a hearing disability,
But It Helps Students Whohave auditory processing
disabilities.
And It Also Helps Studentsfor whom English is not
their first language.
Layah BogenAnd so that--
I Just Want To Go Back Withthe Microsoft accessibility.
I Also Use That Almostevery single day.
I Kind Of Help Facultycheck the process.
And it is very quick.
And I Know It'snot the end all, be
All Of Ensuring Thateverything's great,
But It's A Really Good Startingpoint that at least every one
Can Also Access Anddo, which is great.
So I Know You Cando that with Word.
I do it a lot with PowerPoint.
And Then Something ElseI also want to bring up
Is, Especiallyvisually, that there
Are Websites That Faculty Cango to check the color contrast.
Carrie SnyderColor contrast is another good one
And Also Ensuring That Thefont is a sufficient size.
Sometimes Faculty Try Tocrowd a lot onto one slide.
And Then The Font Gets Smallerand smaller and smaller.
The More That Is Crowded Ontothe slide and the smaller
That The Font Gets,the more difficult
it gets for some students.
That Can Be Studentswith visual impairments.
That can be students with ADHD.
So We Want To Make Surethat the font is larger
And That We Have Less Crowdedon the slides as well.
And Then The Color Contrastis another great point.
If You're Using, For Example,yellow and white together,
It's Going To Be Verydifficult for students to see.
So You Want To Havereally great contrast.
And There Are A Lotof great websites
That Will Demonstratethat for you.
I Tend To Just Use Plainwhite and black because that's
The Best Contrast Thatyou can possibly get.
And Then If You Want To Do Somethings around the outside that
Are A Little Moredecorative, that's great.
But There Are Othercolors that you can use,
And The Websiteswill show you that.
Layah BogenAbsolutely, yeah, because you
Might Love Hot Pink, Butusing that with yellow
is probably not the best thing.
But Yeah, Thereare definitely ways
That You Can Be Creativeand also be accessible.
So no, that's great.
And Can You Tell Me A Timewhen a professor utilized
Ada Compliance In Their Coursemaybe for the first time?
Or Is There Any Time You Canthink about when it really
Made A Huge Impact Oryou worked with a student
And All These Changeswere very successful?
Carrie SnyderSo first I want to say that every day
Professors Are UsingADA compliance,
They Are Providing Studentswith accommodations.
And The Impact Of That Canbe seen at commencement.
Layah BogenOh, wow.
Carrie SnyderBut one specific situation that I found
Was A Student Who Had Recentlybeen diagnosed with vision loss
And Had Not Been Awarethat the office existed.
A Professor Referred Thestudent to our office,
And We Were Able To Connectthe student with various types
Of Assistive Technologyand also work with them
To Understand Thatthey could use
note taking in the classroom.
They Could Use Audiorecording in the classroom.
They Could Get The Materialsfrom the professor ahead
Of Time, The Powerpoints, Sothat they could be blown up
On Their Computeror their laptop
So That They Could Actually Seethe PowerPoints because when
They Were Far Away On The Board,they weren't able to see them.
The Student Wentfrom thinking they
Were Going To Have To Dropout of college to being
able to finish their degree.
Layah BogenThat is a-- that is a success story.
Carrie SnyderAbsolutely.
Layah BogenThat's really amazing.
And Also Just Thatthat student maybe
wasn't aware of your services.
I Know We Talked About This Inthe previous episode with you,
But It Is The Recommendationthat also faculty
When They're Talkingabout their syllabus
Do Mention Drs And Encouragestudents to reach out if they
think it would be useful.
And I Think That'san important topic
To Continue To Bringup, especially when we
talk about ADA.
Something Else-- So Youmentioned this one student,
And I Want To Knowwhat your thoughts are
On How The Number Of Templestudents with disabilities
Grew From 50 In 1977to 3,500 in 2020.
And I'm Also Assuming Enrollmenttakes a factor into that.
But What Else Do You Thinkthis is correlated with?
Carrie SnyderSo if you think back to the '70s,
Mainstreaming Was Just Beginningto be a thing in that time,
Meaning Studentswith disabilities
attending public schools.
So There Weren'tthat many students
With Disabilities Graduatingfrom public schools
And Going To Collegeat that time.
The ADA hadn't been passed yet.
So Students Didn't Haveprotections in colleges.
And It Was Reallyonly in the '60s
Where Students Withdisabilities started
Protesting For Their Rightto attend classes in colleges
with their nondisabled peers.
So The '70s Were Reallya time of transition.
So Students With Disabilities,especially physical
Disabilities, Weren't Asprevalent on college campuses.
Students Withinvisible disabilities
Weren't Aware Thatthey had rights
Because The Ada Hadn'tbeen passed yet.
So It's Not Surprising Tome that the number would
have been so low at that point.
As Disabled Activists Startedgetting out there, spreading
The Word, Saying,hey, we have a right
To Have An Educationas well, more people
Were Aware Thatthey had that right.
And Then After TheADA passed in 1990,
More People Were Awarethat they had the right.
I Think Drs Is Doing A Greatjob of getting the word out.
I Think Professorsare doing a great job
of getting the word out.
So I Think It Has A Lot To Dowith education laws, both K
through 12 and in general.
It Has A Lot To Do Withdisability activists.
And I Just Thinkit has a lot to do
With People Being More Awareof invisible disabilities being
disabilities.
Layah BogenJust when you said '60s, '70s,
I'm Also Thinkingthis is something
That I Wish I Also Learnedin my history classes.
And Also, This Is Somethingthat I and a lot of other people
Take For Grantedand don't really
Think About Accessing Educationday to day and the struggle
that it can be for people.
So it's such an important topic.
And Thank You Forexplaining that statistic.
And Something ElseI want to touch on--
We're Talking About Visibleand invisible disabilities.
And I'm Thinking-- I'mcurious if you think--
do you see that--
There's A Lot Ofwork to be done.
And I Almost Feel Like It Seemslike invisible disabilities is
Something-- Is Kind Ofa coming to now almost.
So Is That Yourexperience, where
You're Findingthat there's maybe
A Second Or Another Wave Oftrying to incorporate this
into online education?
Carrie SnyderI think there are a lot
Of-- So There's Two Stigmaswith invisible disabilities.
There's Thenondisabled population
Not Necessarily Recognizingthat invisible disabilities are
disabilities.
But Then There's People Withthe invisible disabilities
Themselves Notnecessarily knowing
that they qualify for services.
And I Was Actually Inthat situation myself
as a student in college.
I Knew I Had A Chronic Illness,and I sat through a midterm
that I should not have been at.
And When I Went To My Doctorand said, What can I do?
Do I Have To Drop Outof college? he said,
Why Didn't You-- Why Haven'tyou been to disabled student
Services To Register As Astudent with a disability?
And I said, but I don't qualify.
And he said, yes, you do.
I'll write you a letter.
And that's how I got services.
And I Used Services All Throughmy bachelors, my master's,
and my doctorate.
But if my doctor--
If I Hadn't Said To My Doctor, Istruggled through this midterm,
Do I Have To Dropout of college?
And If He Hadn't Said, Of Coursenot, we can get you services,
It Never Would Haveoccurred to me.
So There Are Somany students who
Don't Think That Healthconditions qualify
As Disabilities Or That Mentalhealth conditions qualify
as disabilities.
So We Need To Getthe word out to them
And Let Them Know Thatif you're struggling,
Our Office Is Thereto assist you.
And In Online Learning,it's harder, I think,
Because In Theclassroom, professors
May See Students Strugglingand may reach out to them.
But In Online Learning,especially asynchronous,
It's Just A Studentdoesn't do their work.
A professor may not know why.
Or Even In Synchronous, Maybethe student doesn't show up,
Or Their Camera'soff, or you're not
Getting That Samerelationship develop that you
have in an in-person classroom.
Layah BogenAnd you also brought up mental health.
And In The Beginningof the episode,
I Was Mentioning Howthe term is coming
To A Close And Final Exams,so I can imagine how maybe--
I Don't Know If Youwould find there's
An Influx Of Studentsreaching out last minute
or faculty scrambling.
Can You Tell Us Alittle bit about what
might be going on now?
Carrie SnyderSo this is a really busy time
for our office.
We Do Have A Lot Ofstudents reaching out
Who Had Not Registeredwith us previously.
Some Of Them Are Realizingthat finals are coming up
And That Maybe They Have Neededaccommodations all along,
And They Just Haven'tgotten to us until now.
We're Working Withthem so that they can
have accommodations for finals.
And We Do Haveprofessors also who
May Be Reaching Outto us to figure out
How They Can Accommodatestudents for finals.
Layah BogenRight.
So that does sound very busy.
Carrie SnyderIt is.
Layah BogenThat sounds very busy.
And Yeah, I Do Hope It Goeswell with everyone involved.
But Hopefully It's Somethingwhere faculty and students
Alike Can Learn Fromwhat's going on this term
And Hopefully Applyit to the next one.
Though, I'm Surethere's always going
To Be Something Thatdoes happen to come up.
So As We Kind Ofwrap up this episode,
What Advice Wouldyou give to students
Who Rely On Drs Servicesat the university on what
To Do After They Graduateand enter the workforce?
Because Temple, It's Asupportive environment;
we have all these resources.
But Then Whengraduation day comes,
Are They Kind Of Leftup to their own devices?
Carrie SnyderSo first of all, Career Services is wonderful.
And We're Working With Differentdepartments on that right now.
We're Talking About Howstudents with disabilities
Can Go On Interviews,how and when you should
Disclose That You Havea disability if you
need accommodations.
And There Are Somestudents who may never
Need To Disclose Thatthey have a disability.
Some Students Have Avisible disability,
So That's Goingto be obvious when
they go into the interview.
How do you navigate that?
And Then We Can Talkabout how do you
Navigate Requestingaccommodations on the job.
So Students Can Goto Career Services.
If They're Not Comfortableor if Career Services
Isn't Quite Surehow to help them
Through Thoseconversations, they
can always come and talk to us.
And There's Actually Areally great service.
I've used it myself.
It's A Website That Haswonderful resources,
And It's Called AskJan, AskJan.org.
And It Has All The Resourcesyou could think about.
It Talks Fromgoing to interviews
To How To Ask Foraccommodations to what
To Do If You Think You'rebeing discriminated
against on the job.
Layah BogenThat is very helpful.
And Yeah, Because I Can Imaginewe're kind of in a bubble here.
Every Universityhas its own bubble.
And It's Good To Knowthat there is a support
Network Once Students Leave Andalso faculty are aware of that.
You Mentioned Theresource Ask Jan.
I Also Want Tomention the resource
That Our Department Has, Whichis the Canvas accessibility ADA
Site, Which Faculty Andstaff can enroll into.
And We Cover A Lotof these topics.
And Also, I Encourage Facultyto reach out and look at the DRS
website and resources.
So Thank You So Much,Carrie, for being here today.
And I Hope That We Getyou back another time.
Carrie SnyderThank you.
So much I appreciate it.
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