Thriving in college is hard. The US News and World Report reports that only 62% of American college students graduate from a university within six years’ time. The reasons range from academic to financial difficulties, but for students with disabilities, the challenges are even greater.
According to the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES), 21% of undergraduates and 11% of postgraduate students have at least one disability. The NCES defines disability as “deafness or serious difficulty hearing; blindness or serious difficulty seeing; serious difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions because of a physical, mental, or emotional condition; or serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs.” The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires colleges and universities to provide accommodations for all students to succeed. These accommodations include access to buildings, communications aids, interpreters, course and test-taking modifications. Although colleges and universities are required to provide these services, the degree to which services are offered varies widely.
A Study in Accessibility
Johns Hopkins University conducted a recent study to rate the quality of disability services at the 50 most accessible universities in the US. The rankings were based on public information available on the universities’ websites. Women’s eNews selected three universities to review Johns Hopkins University which ranked #1, the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) which ranked #2, and Temple University which ranked #50. Below, we examine the criteria for these scores:
Requesting Accommodations
At the beginning of their college careers, requesting accommodations is a top priority for students with disabilities. While all three universities require documentation to start the process, the instructions beyond that vary, as do the websites that provide this information.
The UCLA website and application process appear to be the easiest to follow. First, the homepage offers shortcut buttons to the qualifications for disability services, the application process, and accommodations. Further, on the application webpage, there are clear, step-by-step instructions. These instructions even include a timeline for the process and FAQs. In addition to a portal link, UCLA also provides a PDF copy of its application available to the public. Comparatively, Temple University and Johns Hopkins do not include this feature on their websites. This does the student a disservice since they cannot view the application before applying to the university, making it more difficult to select a university when the application process is inaccessible.
In addition, the UCLA application process is relatively easy to follow. After the initial application and submission of documentation, if students are approved for services, the Center matches students with a disability specialist. Once the Center links the student with the specialist, the Center provides the specialist’s schedule enabling students to select a day and time that works best for them. After their accommodations are approved, students may inform their professors of their required accommodations via the portal. At the bottom of the page, a direct email address is provided to submit questions, ensuring students experience success at every stage of their application process.
Like UCLA, the Temple disability services website provides a shortcut to the registration page which reads, “New Students Register Here”. This shortcut eliminates the need to navigate through multiple drop-down menus to locate the registration information. There is also a side link for documentation instructions, with easy-to-follow, bulleted lists of documentation requirements and examples of documentation requested.
At Temple, since students are implored to “register” rather than “apply”, and because there are no instructions beyond registering and submitting documentation, it is unclear what the next steps are following registration. In addition, since the registration is only visible to current students, there is no way of knowing if ‘registering’ suggests a different option than ‘applying.’
Another confusing aspect of the Temple website is that, unlike UCLA’s streamlined approach where the application shortcut and accommodations shortcut appear on the same homepage, the Temple accommodations page remains under the ‘Student Services’ drop-down list, while the registration page is located under the ‘“Getting Started”’ drop-down. Thus, finding basic information on this website requires some digging.
Johns Hopkins’ site, however, appears to be the least accessible of the three. First, there are four different disability services interfaces: Disability Services, The Office of Disability Services for Undergrads, The Office of Institutional Equity, and The Student Disability Services page. Only after students reach the Student Disability Services page are they able to find step-by-step application instructions. Accordingly, students must take the initiative to find and schedule a meeting with a disability specialist. The list is long, which may deter students from pursuing these services.
Accommodations Offered
Although all three schools offer similar accommodations. Temple and UCLA provide details about their accommodations on their websites, but Johns Hopkins only provides a list of accommodations with no accompanying information.
One of the most impressive services offered by all three universities includes assistive technology, providing audio-to-text applications such as Glean and Otter. UCLA and Johns Hopkins also offer Lifescribe Smart Pen, a device which matches audio to notes and allows students to download both for future listening. They also offer Assistive Listening Devices, which utilize an FM system to deliver the professor’s lecture directly into their hearing aids. Both schools also provide peer notetaking, although the schools still prefer students use technology for greater accuracy. For deaf and hard-of-hearing students, all three schools offer a real-time audio transcription service and sign language interpreters.
For students who are blind or have low vision, course materials are also available in Braille at all three universities, and they also have access to the Kurzweil 1000 and Job Access with Speech (JAWS) software, both powerful text-to-speech applications. Kurzweil also provides a Kurzweil 3000 program that helps students of all disabilities synthesize information. Beyond technology, all three schools offer test-taking, registration, and course accommodations, the details of which are determined by the student and their disability specialist. UCLA and Temple also provide adaptive furniture, while Temple also provides ergonomic and mounting solutions for those with physical and motor disabilities.
In this tale of three universities, it is clear why each university received the ranking that it did, while also providing clear obstacles that need to be addressed for all three universities to provide the maximum number of services and resources to students with disabilities.
About the Author: Taylor Hamilton is a fellow with The Loreen Arbus Accessibility is Fundamental Program, a fellowship created with Women’s eNews to train women with disabilities as professional journalists so that they can write, research and report on the most crucial issues impacting the disabilities community.
