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Disabled Academic Collective

8 Sep, 10 tweets, 3 min read

For everyone teaching this term: do you recommend students to go to the Accommodations Office at your uni? If you do, are you aware of what that process looks like? Hint - the process is not good. It is not empowering. It is costly, time consuming, and demoralizing. 1/10

Have you looked up the paperwork your students are expected to fill out? Does that paperwork center them and their needs, or does it center doctors? Does it ask students what accommodations they'd like to see? 2/10

Or does it ask doctors to recommend a set of accommodations based on diagnoses? Does the paperwork give students room to voice their own needs, needs that a doctor may not anticipate or understand? 3/10

Does the documentation ask needlessly personal questions? Like what medications a student is on? Many schools demand disclosure of incredibly personal medical details even when they're not relevant to the accommodations themselves. 4/10

Does the documentation require approval from a certain specialist? Do you know how costly it is for a student to get assessed for certain disabilities? Do you know if your school offers free screening and assessments for disabilities like ADHD or dyslexia? 5/10

How long is the average processing time for the paperwork? How many students file for accommodations? How responsive is the office you're sending them to? 6/10

When does student health care through the university kick in? Students may not be able to get medical documentation on time if plans begin at the start of the semester. Are there medical facilities on or near campus your students are covered at? 7/10

How often does a student need to file for accommodations? How recent does their paperwork have to be? Do students with chronic illnesses and/or long term disabilities have to file over and over for the same accommodations each year? 8/10

It's not fair to ask a student to go through a whole process for accommodations that you don't understand. It's not fair to ask them to go through something with tons of barriers built into it. Learn about the process before you ask them. 9/10

And figure out what you can do yourself to make that process better. Be proactive and push for an institutional change in policy. 10/10 #AcademicChatter #AcademicTwitter #HigherEd #DisabilityTwitter #PhDChat

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More from @DisabledAcadem

Disabled Academic Collective

@DisabledAcadem

25 Aug

FYI it's actually a lot of work to explain when things are inaccessible for me, why that is, and what can be done. It's labor that takes away my time, enthusiasm, and patience. 1/7

And so when I point out inaccessibility, I expect the solution to be one of shared labor. I've already gone above and beyond, esp when intervening in things that should have been caught by basic accessible event planning. 2/7

It's work that forces me to disclose particularities of my disability to people I don't know, don't trust, and now have a marred relationship with. People assume that I have a mobility issue alone because I use a mobility aid. 3/7

Read 7 tweets

Disabled Academic Collective

@DisabledAcadem

23 Jul

From the thread yesterday, it's clear that many educators are not using Universal Design, guiding their students to Disability Services, or implementing accommodations on a 1-1 basis. 1/9

I've posted a LOT on UDL (Universal Design for Learning) before and we have a whole guide on our resources page on the DAC website. Build access into your course with flexible deadlines, assignment choices, captions, etc. 2/9

You should also consider Day 1 of class a time to talk about the accommodations process. Don't just add it as a copy paste section of your syllabus. Walk students through the process, tell them what they can expect, remove the stigma and fear from it. 3/9

Read 9 tweets

Disabled Academic Collective

@DisabledAcadem

23 Jul

Today while repacking moving boxes I got super overwhelmed and started crying. Because moving is expensive, moving is physically demanding and painful, moving means losing my medical team. It means straying from my family again. 1/6

But it's also an opportunity to build a career that I can manage with my disabilities. Where I have flexibility and control. As shitty as the academy is to disabled scholars, it affords a lot of flexibility wherein I can manage my care. 2/6

But it's hard to do this again. Senior scholars cannot grasp the toll of it. Throughout grad school I moved to Charlottesville, two more times within Charlottesville, once to Philadelphia, and once back home to MA. And now this is another move. Six moves in six years. 3/6

Read 6 tweets

Disabled Academic Collective

@DisabledAcadem

22 Jul

Many students and staff with disabilities simply do not apply for accommodations. So when claims are made like "well no one else has ever needed this" or "this seems excessive, another student only needed x" they are way off the mark. 1/5

Oftentimes we need far more than we ask for, and we ask for only the things we absolutely NEED in order to scrape by, rather the things we could use to thrive in the system. Why? 2/5

Because the accommodations process is expensive, exploitative, degrading, and exhausting. We're asking for accommodations because our resources are stretched thin in an ableist system. 3/5

Read 6 tweets

Disabled Academic Collective

@DisabledAcadem

26 Jun

I hope everyone is acknowledging how poorly universities handled, are handling, and will handle protections for disabled students throughout the pandemic. 1/6

Some things to think about when discussing uni responses:
1. Unis have never been safe spaces for disabled people, accommodations have been denied to students long before, and will be long after - how do we enact change? 2/6

2. Nowhere is safe for disabled people. Telling us to leave academia is not an option. Regardless of the sector - capitalism is built on ableism. We need solutions in every sector. 3/6

Read 6 tweets

Disabled Academic Collective

@DisabledAcadem

26 Jun

If you are able-bodied and working in #DisabilityStudies because you were inspired by a relationship with a disabled person, I have some tough love for you. I am all for allyship, but allies cannot weigh in on all topics. 1/5

Why does it matter?
1. Because we're not there to correct you or intervene or combat stereotypes. Roughly 1.5% of tenured faculty and 6% of grad students are disabled.
2. You don't face the ramifications of poorly framed arguments, language choices, or research outcomes 2/5

3. You can proudly state your relationship to disability (my parent/sibling/partner/child is disabled) bc at the end of the day proximity is harmless, you're still able-bodied. But if we identify we're risking our jobs to disclose. 3/5

Read 5 tweets

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