Recap: The ADA’s Impact on Teaching
Understanding the Americans with Disabilities Act can help faculty create inclusive, psychologically safer learning environments for students.
In partnership with the UM’s Office of Equal Opportunity & Regulatory Compliance (EORC), CETL offered a workshop earlier this month on how the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) impacts our teaching work on campus. Billy Benson Jr. and Natalia Norwood of EORC joined me in providing instructors, staff, and students with information to help us ensure we’re following the law and creating equitable, inclusive, psychologically safer learning environments at UM.
Two offices, one goal
While Student Disability Services (SDS) works directly with students, the EORC office ensures UM remains in compliance with federal and state laws. They are also the primary point of contact for employees who wish to seek accommodations under the ADA.
From an employment perspective, the ADA contains three key provisions worth having a passing familiarity with. These are specific to employees, but we see direct analogs to how the law applies to students. They are:
Title I Employment: The ADA covers all employment by state/local governments and any employer with more than 15 employees. It protects employees from discrimination against qualified but disabled individuals in job application procedures, hiring, firing, advancement, compensation, job training, and other terms, conditions, and privileges of employment.
Why this matters: The University of Mississippi, as a state agency, is required to comply with the ADA.Reasonable Accommodations: The ADA defines this as a modification or adjustment to a job, the work environment, or the way things are usually done in the hiring process. Accommodations should be “reasonable,” which in the context of the ADA means that they do not place an undue burden on the employer and do not change essential functions.
Why this matters: Reasonable accommodations in a classroom setting are modifications or adjustments to the teaching and learning environment, including deadlines, attendance policies, testing procedures, or classroom furniture. They cannot change the core material students are expected to engage with and master.Interactive Process: The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) recommends an interactive process when settling upon accommodations, which simply means that the employer (UM) and employees (faculty/staff) work together to find a reasonable accommodation.
Why this matters: SDS will use an interactive process with students who apply for accommodations in their classes. This means that SDS staff and the student will work together to find reasonable accommodations. Faculty are not involved in this process, except when they believe a proposed accommodation creates an undue burden. In that situation, faculty work with SDS, not with the student directly, to ensure the accommodations are reasonable—i.e., not unduly burdensome.
What is a disability?
The ADA defines a person with a disability as a person who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities. This includes people who have a record of such an impairment, even if they do not currently have a disability. It also includes individuals who do not have a disability but are regarded as having a disability.
This means that if we treat a student as if they have a disability, such as by providing informal accommodations only to that student, the protections of the ADA can be invoked for that student, leading to the potential for legal exposure for the University. This is one reason the University asks faculty to refer students to SDS before providing individual accommodations.
How students get accommodations
The process of acquiring accommodations from SDS is time- and labor-intensive. Students are asked to provide a substantial amount of support for their request (the list of documentation guidelines is linked from this website).
After submitting their documentation, students then work with one of eight access service coordinators to determine what kinds of accommodations make sense. The two most common accommodations are flexible attendance policies and extra time on exams and/or assignments, which is often paired with reduced-distraction testing spaces.
As of September 3, SDS had 1,902 students enrolled in fall classes with accommodations registered through their office. They had another 230 active applications under review. Data from the National Center for Education Statistics suggests that only about one-third (37%) of college students report informing their college or university of a qualifying disability, meaning that as many as 63% of students who have a qualifying disability do not receive accommodations they may need. If we extrapolate from the data above, that means as many as 5,762 UM students may qualify for accommodations.
What instructors can do
SDS exists to help eliminate barriers for students to have an equitable opportunity for academic success. They do so through what’s sometimes called an accommodation approach, which requires modifying existing course structure to work for a subset of students. An alternative CETL recommends is the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) approach, which proactively creates a course designed to help all students have an equitable opportunity for academic success—importantly, with few (or no) additional accommodations needed.
Four core beliefs animating UDL are:
All students can reach the high expectations we set.
Barriers to success exist in the systems, not in the students.
Learner variability is the norm, so a one-size-fits-all approach does not work.
Continual self-reflection leads to lifelong, expert learners.
Another way of thinking about UDL is to think about difficulties students have in our courses, then to ask ourselves: Are these desirable or undesirable? Desirable difficulties advance learning in service to the goals or learning outcomes of our courses. An example of a desirable difficulty might be writing a research paper. Undesirable difficulties impede learning and/or are unrelated to the course’s goals or learning outcomes. An example of an undesirable difficulty might be finding a quiet place to write.
Four simple tips
To create more inclusive learning environments for all students, here are four high-impact things to consider:
Use sans-serif fonts that have a larger letter width, such as Verdana, Tahoma, Century Gothic, Trebuchet, Calibri, or Open Sans. (Note: Open Sans is one of UM’s official brand-standard fonts.) At minimum, use 12- or 14-point font size. (For more, consult the dyslexic style guide.)
Learn students’ names. If this is challenging, consider using name tents. Michelle Miller’s forthcoming book has a variety of strategies to help you learn and remember student names.
Recognize and interrupt your assumptions about students’ behaviors. When you notice a student doing something in class that makes you feel defensive or frustrated, such as doodling, staring out a window, or leaving the room frequently, try to think of the most charitable assumption you could make for that behavior. They may be disengaged, or maybe they have difficulty sitting still, feel confronted by making eye contact, or have a medical condition that necessitates frequent trips to the restroom. It costs us nothing to make a charitable assumption of our students in these moments.
Collect feedback from students regularly–and use it. This could be through an anonymous feedback form, a student feedback session (request one from CETL using this form), or a semi-regular exit slip. Importantly, address feedback students provide and make reasonable adjustments based on it.
Final notes
CETL, EORC, and SDS are all prepared to advise faculty who have questions or concerns about the accommodations process for students. EORC can also help employees who want to pursue workplace accommodations for themselves.
EORC collects voluntary disclosures of disability status for employees. When they are making the case for funding and resources for their office, knowledge about how many employees may need their assistance is invaluable in advocating for resources. We encourage you to fill out this form and return it to EORC. They will keep that information completely confidential; it is not associated with your employee file in any way.
Finally, remember: Unless you’ve had specialized training, you are not equipped to make decisions about what kinds of accommodations are reasonable for a particular student. Defer to the experts in SDS and EORC, and do your best to work with them and your students. You are not, under any circumstances, legally allowed to request, infer, or demand any medical information, including diagnoses, explanations, or symptoms, from your students. Doing so puts the University at legal risk. If you have questions, again, please reach out to EORC.
Slides from our event are here. Our upcoming events are listed on our website here.