(The following represents my own thoughts).

Each year there are a percentage of students in post secondary who go through the process of gaining accommodations for their coursework. This is not specific to any one institution and is expected practice across all colleges and universities in Canada. Students are applying for accommodation in greater numbers (Copfer Terreberry, 2017) and discovering that the process and practice can, in some cases, take more time and have different barriers than if they hadn’t applied for them at all (Bartolo, et al., 2023; Dolmage, 2017; and Parsons, et al., 2021). Accommodations for coursework are expected to ensure equitable access for students with disabilities and/or support needs in their courses, particularly around assignments, assignment submission, and exams. The important piece here is equitable access (Bartolo, et al. 2023).

Accommodations are a recognition that the current system has barriers in it for some people and not others, and individual accommodations are about removing barriers to create equity. There are as many kinds of accommodations as there are people – unfortunately the power around access to those accommodations is not always in the hands of those who use them. Access can be layered with more bureaucracy, more forced disclosure, and more stigma than students who don’t use accommodations experience (Bartolo, et al., 2023; Copfer Terreberry, 2017; Dolmage, 2017). Institutions continue to work within tightly-timelined course offerings (such as semester systems), making some time-based accommodations limited in scope. Some students choose not to go through an accommodations process or to use accommodations once they have rights to due to negative experiences with attempts at access (Copfer Terreberry, 2017; Dolmage, 2017; and Bartolo, et al., 2023).

Please know that this is not the fault of the people who work in the systems that ensure student accommodations. What I’m referring to is a systemic problem, not a people problem. Each and every person I’ve met who works in accommodations is aware of the shortfalls of the system and does what they can to mitigate them.

More than ever, young post secondary students who require accommodation have had previous experience with in-person support in secondary school in the form of Education Assistants, tutors, teachers with targeted teaching, or other support (Bartolo, et al., 2023). Transitioning into the post secondary landscape can be a shock for those who have previously had those supports. There are rare instances of teaching or lab assistants in post secondary classrooms, and the broad majority of classrooms are high student-to-teacher ratio with responsibility for identifying support needs placed squarely on the shoulders of those who need it most (Dolmage, 2017; Parsons, et al. 2021). Returning adults who have been out of school for a period of time may be coming with late diagnoses of learning disabilities or neurodiversity and may be attempting to access appropriate supports for the first time.

I think about accommodations for coursework much like wearing my glasses. I am perfectly capable of driving, but would not be able to do so without them – they are an accommodation that makes it possible for me to drive. The difference is that when I get into my car I’m not asked to email someone to ask for permission to wear glasses, I don’t have someone barring the door of my car asking if I’d like to use them ‘this time’ or do without them, and I don’t have to fill out paperwork every three-to-four months justifying that I still need them. There was an implicit assumption when I was licensed to drive that if I need to wear glasses that I will know what I need, and that I will wear them.

In recent years, a response put forward to promote equity of access is Universal Design for Learning (UDL), a classroom and coursework design methodology that endeavors to build more student-centred learning experiences through flexibility in engagement, representation, and expression for students (CAST, 2024). My own anecdotal experience is that the public K-12 system in BC has been working in this UDL realm much longer than the post-secondary sector, and that there is still a level of reluctance on the part of some instructors and/or programs to move to a UDL-based learning facilitation methodology. Adoption of UDL can seem like an insurmountable task as it shifts so much of the (so called) old-school teaching-centred classroom into a more student-centred, learning-focused facilitation. Some subjects and course delivery methods are inherently more difficult for implementation of UDL and making the shift wholesale from traditional teaching to UDL can not be done overnight. UDL is more than a checklist, it’s a philosophical shift in thinking about who has access to education and how that can be expanded to ensure access for all equity-seeking groups. Implementation brings individual instructors up against their internal biases and expectations and can seem like an added workload to a group of people who are already very heavily workloaded.

UDL and the accommodations system work on opposite sides of the teacher-student relationship. UDL assumes that the instructor or learning experience designer has a responsibility to ensure access, while the accommodations system assumes that the learner has the responsibility to identify barriers in their learning experience, justify them (through diagnosis), and address them systemically (with the support of student services). UDL intends the classroom learning to reflect the diversity of students, and the accommodations system intends individual students to have different treatment/experiences than the rest of the classroom. UDL is about community building, accommodations is about integration (Bartolo, et al., 2023).

Do we need accommodations? Absolutely. For the most part, the system is not ready to let go of individual accommodations for individual students and will not be ready until there is a comprehensive shift in philosophy and practice around education and who has access to knowledge. There are critics of UDL, too. Two areas of criticism are (1) that CAST better substantiate the underlying research cited around UDL’s effectiveness (Boysen, 2024) and (2), that UDL is not enough without social justice and multicultural education to be effective. Individual teachers may have difficulty getting out of their own socio-economic (and) ethnocentricity to ensure that equity-seeking groups are not alienated by implicit bias (Hackman, 2008).

Right now, I don’t have any answers. My experience tells me that each person is doing their best every day – instructors, students, student services staff – and that each person is limited and enabled by their own implicit bias, knowledge, depth of engagement with decolonization, and capacity from day to day in amongst all other priorities that compete with education. Instructors are held to a high standard, sometimes higher than attainable for a single, fallible person to reach, and balanced against the student right to equitable learning environments. I wonder if, done well, accommodations and UDL are the building of two sides of a bridge, each side working to reach the other to cross the accessibility divide.

Somehow, within this imperfect system, instructors are able to share knowledge, students are able to learn, and relationships that centre around the love of different disciplines help to bridge the divide students experience in their access. For myself, I will continue to trust that students know when to put on their own glasses.

References:
Bartolo, P., Borg, M., Callus, A.M., De Gaetano, A., Mangiafico, M., Mazzacano D’Amato, E., Sammut, C., Vella Vidal, R., and Vincent, J. (2023). Aspirations and accommodations for students with disability to equitably access higher education: A systematic scoping review. Frontiers in Education, 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2023.1218120

Boysen, G. (2024) A critical analysis of the research evidence behind CAST’s universal design for learning guidelines. Policy Futures in Education. 22(7). https://doi.org/10.1177/14782103241255428

CAST (2024). Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 3.0. https://udlguidelines.cast.org

Copfer Terreberry, S. (2017). Understanding student and faculty perceptions of the accommodation and support procedures for students with LD in Ontario universities: A mixed methods approach. [Doctoral thesis, University of Western Ontario]. Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 5054. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/5024

Dolmage, J. (2017). Academic ableism: Disability in higher education. University of Michigan Press. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9708722

Hackman, H. (2008). Broadening the pathway to academic success: The critical intersections of social justice education, critical multicultural education, and universal instructional design. In Higbee, J., and Goff., E. (eds) Pedagogy and student services for institutional transformation: Implementing universal design in higher education. pp 25-28. Minnesota Printing. ED503835-libre.pdf

Parsons, J., KCColl, M. A., Martin, A.m and Rynard, D. (2021). Accommodations and academic performance: First-year university students with disabilities. Canadian Journal of Higher Education. 51(1), p. 41-56. https://doi.org/10.47678/cjhe.vi0.188985