Many students enter higher education with expectations for growth, exploration, and a desire to discover themselves. However, the college experience poses many obstacles for 19 percent of undergraduates and 11.9% of graduate students with disabilities.
As post-secondary schools struggle to meet Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requirements, students with disabilities often face inaccessible housing, facilities, and accommodations that fall short of meeting individual needs. Elements outside of college like public transportation affect the everyday lives of students with disabilities as well, as do underfunded schools with disability programs that leave much to be desired. The ADA sets the tone for post-secondary schools across the United States, but is the minimum legal requirement for accessibility enough?
Transitioning from high school to college
Students protected under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) can experience difficult transitions into post-secondary education. IDEA is a law ensuring children with disabilities in the United States receive free appropriate public education, special education, and related services. However, IDEA and its many benefits don’t carry on into post-secondary education. For instance, years of Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), or a written education plan designed to help meet a student’s learning needs, no longer apply in higher education. While colleges do offer accommodations under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and the ADA, those are very different from what students become familiar with in high school and vary depending on the institution.
Also, unlike high school, it’s the student’s job to disclose their disability and seek out accommodations. This can require extensive research. It also demands interacting with diverse groups of individuals with varying levels of understanding surrounding accessibility. Post-secondary schools can ask for updated comprehensive evaluations or documentation proving a student’s disability. Not only can this be highly stressful, but it can also mean suspended or lessened disability accommodations. Applying for accommodations can be a tedious process that might lead some students to face an increased risk of not graduating. In fact, only 40% of undergraduate students with disabilities graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the same institution in 2017, compared to 57% of students without disabilities.
Inaccessible facilities
Physical barriers still pose a particular obstacle for some students with disabilities. Even buildings that technically meet ADA standards have proven difficult, uncomfortable, or even impossible for students with physical disabilities to navigate. For example, students at Penn State, a campus compliant with ADA standards, recently called for better infrastructure, citing hard-to-find accessible entrances or elevators. Also, some accessible entrances on campus required assistance as they were closed to the public, forcing students to either be late to classes or miss class altogether.
Student housing has its own set of challenges for students with disabilities. Of those challenges is the likelihood that students themselves must discover how accessible a dorm actually is. While most housing accommodations for students are decided along with other reasonable accommodations, some factors like small hallways and elevators, lack of automatic doors or broken ones, and others become ongoing issues.
Housing accommodations can also reflect how informed a university is in regard to accessibility. In 2014, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) charged an Ohio university for discrimination of a college student with a service animal. The university would not allow the student to have a support animal for her disability, causing her and her spouse to search for off-campus housing. Refusing to accommodate a student with an emotional support animal violates the Fair Housing Act, but the university claimed to be unaware. The case is a cautionary tale for universities interacting with students with disabilities. It also calls for better-educated staff on the subject of accessibility.
Accessibility in universities isn’t just about buildings, it also speaks to the need for accessible college websites. Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act requires that federally and state-funded facilities, including state-funded colleges and universities, meet online accessibility standards. Unfortunately, many colleges and universities have introduced unnecessary financial stress and issues for their students by implementing software that is not 508 compliant. Upgrading to web accessibility standards can be a momentous undertaking. Still, it can also be the difference between a student's ability to enroll in an institution or not, especially as online learning gains significance in students’ lives.
Ignorance or lack of care
Higher education often requires students accustomed to institutional support to advocate for themselves. This can be an overwhelming and often frustrating process, especially depending on reception from certain professors and administrative staff. Some students report being made to feel their accommodations are treated as a privilege as opposed to a need for optimal learning. A graduate student reported to Inside Higher Ed
"Learning should be a right, not a luxury. Many faculty members say they would love to present [accommodations] to students, they just don't know what's appropriate.”
Professors may choose books that don’t offer accessible alternatives. They might fail to have captioned videos and media, accessible PDFs, or online presentations. Some professors—tenured and unphased by new accessibility regulations—may even resist calls for a more accessible classroom. When administration and teaching staff don’t educate themselves on what accessible classrooms can look like beyond individual students’ disclosure, there can be a weak point that only grows over time.
Some students are so uninterested in the possibility of confusion or pushback that they forgo reasonable accommodations entirely. Studies show that nearly two-thirds of college students don’t receive accommodations due to lack of disclosure.
Additionally, students with disabilities are less likely to feel welcome on campus or supported by students without disabilities. Where college seems like an oasis for building friendships for many students, it can be an opposingly, quite isolating experience for students with disabilities.
The journey to accessible universities
Universities that move towards accessibility as a standard practice for all students as opposed to meeting minimal requirements by law not only help students with disabilities, they help everyone.
The ADA and Rehabilitation Act are great moves in the right direction to a more accessible society, but students with disabilities need more. Resources for students with disabilities that are easily defined and accessible simplify the transition from secondary school into higher education. They also set an inclusive and genuinely diverse example for disabled and non-disabled students, which can better establish a culture of accessibility on campus. College professors and administration well-versed in disability rights lead to accessible classrooms as the standard. This way, students wary about disclosing disabilities can be comforted by signs of accessibility, and in some cases, may not even need to disclose. How a disability affects an individual is unique to them. Higher learning facilities can be champions for diversity and inclusion by leading the way for more accessible institutions.
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