Um, no. Just no.
There is a blind student in my “hobby” French class. He can read braille. The professor gives him a thumb drive with her lecture powerpoint which gets converted by software he has into braille and he can read from it. Most of what she does to accommodate him involves the computer. If she is talking about a picture or photo in the course of lecture, she will have us attempt to describe it in French - for our benefit as well as his.
I used to work at a library for the blind and accompanied my blind supervisor to a lot of things. One thing I learned from students: universities pretty much suck at providing accommodations to students with visual disabilities.
I am inclined to believe the student. But I also don’t think that her grade should be raised to an A automatically. Perhaps given the proper accommodations and allowed to retake the test.
And yes, things like having to identify anything individual will necessitate someone describing it to the blind person.
How, exactly, would they “screen out” persons with visual disabilities?
I was a paid tutor in the Office of Accessibility at the state university I attended when I was an undergrad. Services we provided vision impaired students included note taking, reading those notes onto tapes (this was 20+ years ago) and/or having them converted to Braille, reading textbooks onto tapes and/or having them converted to Braille, reading tests (we would describe in detail any visuals such as in this case without giving away the answers), and writing their papers (of course, in their own words). If we could do all of that 20+ years ago, I would think that Dartmouth could provide sufficient services to this student and others like her.
This student deserves the same chance to thrive and obtain an education at Dartmouth as any other student there–and the tools she needs due to her disability. Dartmouth knew of her condition when they admitted her; they even have praised her athletics in a way that drew attention to the fact that someone who is so amazing (which she truly must be) attends their college. I don’t see a problem with raising her grades a bit in classes in which she was denied the accommodations she needed to show her capabilities. In any case, I hope that this raises their awareness and helps this student and future students.
@romanigypsyeyes there is a place on the common app for “is there anything else we should know” where a student may write that they are blind, for example. A teacher or guidance counselor could mention it in a recommendation letter (with student’s and family’s permission.) I would think that including the disability could be a plus in setting the student apart. Even though the college would be discriminating by screening out such an individual, they do have the information in many cases.
For our kids with chronic medical issues, we didn’t discuss this with the Us except after they were admitted. Our kids MAY have written some about overcoming adversity, but as I didn’t ever read their apps or essays, I’m not sure.
We feared that disclosing too much about health issues may have flagged their apps in a bad way and perhaps made adcoms reluctant to admit, believing they might need lots of extra services.
No all.
Tim Cordes is blind.
My company (very large, multinational corporation) does a pretty good job accommodating employees. We were beta testers for software which was being developed to convert sound to text for deaf employees, and text to sound for blind employees. All of our facilities in the US are ADA compliant, and individual managers are given extensive training and support so they know how to help disabled employees do their jobs effectively.
We do less well accommodating things like ADD and ADHD, where the employee is used to a level of support from HS and college which doesn’t really exist in the workplace. “Back in the day” when secretarial/admin staff had ratio’s of 3/1 (i.e. one admin to support three people) someone could rely on assistance for a lot of stuff which is unrealistic today with ratios of 10/1 or 12/1.
EVERYONE makes their own travel arrangements via an online portal. EVERYONE keeps their own calendar online. EVERYONE except for the most senior executives does their own expense reports, routine status updates, team documents, etc. So a new employee who has a disability which makes these types of administrative details very difficult is going to struggle. Not every job is going to be suitable for someone who needs a lot of organizational support to function at a high level. We can be proactive in getting support to an employee who is struggling, but to be blunt- some jobs just require core organizational skills. I can’t phone someone’s apartment every morning to remind them to get to work on time (seriously- that was one young team members suggestion when I asked how we could fix the attendance issue. His mom had been getting him out of bed in HS, and continued to phone him all through college. But I was his boss, not his mom.)
So you can’t lump all “disabilities” into the same bucket when talking about employers.
Well, if I had a family member who was a professional plaintiff’s attorney, I think I might be inclined to use her if I had a claim. I don’t think that reflects on the validity of the claim at all.
I think the student has a claim. However, this would have been much better handled in place from the get go talking to the disability office about each these classes individually. Saying “I cannot take this test without a reader. I’m going down to talk to the disability office now.” I also think I would be doing a bunch of research from the get go to make sure the pieces were already in place for my kid to be successful in a college. I wouldn’t want my kid to be the FIRST in this position because of course it won’t go smoothly. I’m sympathetic and I hope she gets appropriate accommodations wherever she ends up. But I really don’t see how she got to the end of a semester without demanding them.
And I agree they should not change her grades.
Hopefully, they will get behind their student that they admitted, and make the appropriate accommodations said student is eligible for.
As someone who works at a university, I believe her and think she probably has a good case. Further, I think often it’s the only way to get some institutions to honor their obligations and staff up the office if needed. Our disability office seems to be fine but it’s not out of the goodness of the university’s heart. They have to comply.
It sounds like she is eligible and entitled to these accommodations, which they claim to provide and she stated that they repeatedly failed to deliver.
Musakparent, sorry to say but if everyone had the attitude that they would only attend a school where accommodations were provided adequately, then no progress would be made. The entire history of civil rights depends on someone being first and trailblazing. I am mystified by families who want to choose a school based on the accommodations offered or even the vibe of the disabilities office. These are legal rights. Universities need to be pushed and case law needs to be established. It doesn’t have to be adversarial, as this case is. Often staff and faculty at schools are only too happy to get educated and learn a few things about students with disabilities and their abilities to achieve. And as PetraMC says, they really do have to comply and they know it.
I’m the first grad student in my department… ever… to get accommodations. I’m a test case.
I have to fight with my building every semester because when they reset the locks, they don’t program the wheelchair exit to work after 6 AM when the doors lock.
Yeah, it kind of sucks, but it is what it is. Those after me will have it easier… in theory.
Thank you romani. It’s hard but you are trailblazing and it will indeed be easier for others.
My post should say 6 pm not am.
It wasn’t intentional. I wasn’t disabled when I started but I sure as hell wasn’t dropping out. Many programs would have subtly pushed me out but I was lucky to already be in a program that had a disability justice focus.
I only say this because I thought I understood disability in the academy before getting sick. I had no idea until it was me needing the accommodations. It feels like a never ending battle… And that’s with department support.
My kid with disabilities went to a top school and found only support, even though her accommodations were a work in progress. We never would have imagined that this school would be so helpful: she certainly chose it for other reasons.
Perhaps key was her obvious reluctance to use the accommodations and avoidance of a victim identity: she got work done in advance to avoid crises, and if given an extra two weeks to finish a project, did it in two days once able. If things got too tough, she took leaves.
The school actually suggested a reduced course load and paid financial aid for the extra time spent. I like to think this helped someone else down the road.
All of this said, there was a blind student at this same school who had a very difficult time and should have been better served.
As long as a disability does not pose an administrative or financial burden on the school, and does not substantially change the academic program, compliance is really the best course for the school and of course the student. But the definition of compliance is, unfortunately, being established over time in the courts in some cases.
Even though I went to school in the dark ages (according to D17) I had only about 25% of my normal hearing.
My mom never indulged me, I knew she was in my corner, but she wanted me to be able to stand on my own two feet. I went through public school and college without any additional help. If I couldn’t hear the teacher or professor I had to move to the front of the room or go up after class and ask questions. I knew it was MY responsibility to make sure that everything was done and heard correctly.
To this day I remember getting the one detention that I got (i was a teacher’s kid so I didn’t dare get in trouble ). I heard the wrong page for homework and my 7th grade teacher gave me a detention because my homework wasn’t done. I thought that he was SO mean. Well it taught me to always make sure I heard and double checked all my assignments.
I’m sorry but asking them to change the grades because she didn’t get digital copies of books and people to read her tests to her is just a cop out. It is her responsibility to make sure that the university had those things in place, if they don’t SHE should have been making calls. The world doesn’t hand you everything on a silver platter and she is going to find it hard adjusting to the corporate world.
I think the accommodations for the blind pose a particular challenge for schools because so much of what is taught is based on visual clues. I feel they need to adhere to the ADA like everyone else should and just because it causes the professor to change the lesson does not mean it should not be done.
Anyone who has produced presentations for the workplace knows that they need to be title 508 compliant. Not very difficult, all it takes is to describe in words what is seen in the picture, graph, or table.
I think whether she has a case or not will depend on what accommodations were requested and what (and when they) were received. If she didn’t request accommodations until after the semester began, then I feel Dartmouth would be less liable than if she had requested them with ample time before. Whatever the decision, I don’t think her grade should change, but maybe she should be given the chance to retake the class tuition free with the requested accommodations in place.
The issues experienced by the blind student we knew, who attended another Ivy, were mostly centered around delays in getting what she needed. Other people were involved who had other priorities and the professor was not very forgiving, inappropriately so. This really is a kind of new frontier.
Kemmomma, I think your feelings come from the fact that you did not have help, whether by choice or not. You are fortunate, in a relative sense, that you were able to find ways to get what you needed, without accommodations. But I also wonder if things might have been easier, and you would be more sympathetic, if you had had more institutional support. I think your experience leads you to not fully understand the grievance.
It might help to realize there are disabilities that really DO need accommodations to level the playing field. These are not favors or advantages but carefully calibrated supports that enable a student to succeed to the best of his or her academic abilities, regardless of disability.
Blindness most certainly requires accommodations to level the playing field and a student should not have to pull teeth to get them. There are often delays and red tape. Other examples might be a student under care for cancer, a student with type 1 diabetes or a seizure disorder, a paraplegic and so on.
There was a well-know book written by a paraplegic student who was given a suite at Harvard so her mother could live with her. This is NOT adequate accommodation in my view since having your mother with you is hardly a “normal” experience. I wonder what folks here think of that.