But I myself am disabled, I have a hearing loss. So, I am coming at this from the perspective of someone herself, who is disabled.
Actually I forgot put this in my outline the first model and the oldest model is the witness, or moral model of disability. And
that can be under that model disability can be construed in a few different ways it can be construed as a punishment. Usually as a result of sin, and the disability was present from birth, then it's the sin of the parents or someone you know their grandparents
or so on.
It can also be construed as a test of faith, where, if it goes away then they pass the test of faith and if they didn't pass, then the disability remain so.
It's almost as a
sort of continued sin, you know like, you messed up before you have to live with this disability for the rest of your life.
Another way it has been construed is a as a gift, an opportunity for character development.
And as a quote I have here.
mentioned that the image of disability as a gift is Legion and fiction films and medicine, and
the when I read that the first thing that came to mind was the show Daredevil.
Just a show of hands, how many people know that series or watched that series on Netflix from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Okay, so at least a few of you know what I'm talking about.
Basically, for those of you who aren't familiar with their travel.
Basically, this guy who's a lawyer gets exposed to some toxic chemicals that make him go blind, but he developed superpowers, like, you know like, very good awareness and hearing and stuff.
That lets him fight bad guys and stuff. And I read this quote that was actually something he said in the last episode of the series which was only a few years ago this is 2018.
And basically, he's like, you know, maybe it was a gift from God he literally says gift from God, in that statement. So, it is certainly something but it's still sort of, even though it's not our predominant model in society right now you can still see
those echoes, especially in our media.
So the next model I want to talk about is the medical model is also called the biomedical model, basically came about in the mid 1800s.
You know when Science and Industry we're really sort of picking up in under this model is construed as a personal problem, a medical problem, obviously requiring some sort of solution, whether it is something to be repaired or ameliorated somehow in a
lesson somehow.
And this tends to be the predominant view of disability in the US. Right now, there are some inherent weaknesses to this model, it's come under a lot of criticism because there's this implication that disabled bodies are inferior to able bodies and need
to be fixed.
There's the implication that disabilities can be neatly defined and measured and in the US, especially.
I have actually worked quite a bit with our teacher educator students in a class on special education, and there are 13 categories of disability. And if you don't fit in one of those categories.
Then, good luck to you.
There's also this assumption that disabilities are rare.
You know, it's just a one off thing that needs to be fixed.
And it ignores the social and environmental barriers that people with disabilities experience.
Which leads us to the social model of disability.
This came about in the mid 70s early to mid 70s, particularly in the UK.
Paul hunt, and the new key is, we're in Britain, and basically they said, Yes, people with disabilities happen pyramids specifically, but disability is caused by social conditions.
And at the time, they said physical impairments. As you can see, the name of the organization says physical and physically impaired. But the model has since been expanded to include other sorts of impairments.
And this model argues that a society and the institutions within society have been designed in such a way that people with impairments are excluded.
And there is a focus on the independence and sort of self determination.
The people with disabilities.
You know, there's this I think, cultural, in the past, where people would just sort of listen to their doctors and say, Sure, whatever you say. And in this case, the people with disabilities and really arguing, saying you know this is our lived experience,
you know, we do have valuable input to share about our own care our own future. What we need help with, and so on the weaknesses of this model is that it implies that any negative effects of impairment or only due to exclusion and discrimination.
Anyone with a chronic pain disorder would argue that there are negative effects of the impairment itself.
And then not everyone was impairments is excluded.
For example, I think, as someone with hearing loss. I especially hearing loss it developed later in my life. I have not felt excluded from society.
So there are a bunch of related models that sort of spread from the social model. And there is the minority group model, also called the socio political model.
This was developed by belief is a legal scholar, Han, and his major three points of this model is that the primary source of major problems that people with disabilities experience can be traced to basically people's attitudes and that
all aspects of the environment. Sorry to read directly from the slide here.
They are fundamentally shaped by public policy, but then also that policies tend to reflect people's attitudes and they're actually, I think it may be in my bibliography.
But dearth in brand stone, did some research that actually found that yes people's attitudes towards disability. Also shape their opinions on policy so there has actually been some research backing up what Han was arguing.
Another one of the models is the human variations model, also called the diversity model. And this points out that disability is part of the natural physical, social, and cultural variability of the human species, and other words, it's just normal as
part of the variety of things.
And one thing that I have seen a lot in the literature is this mentioned that
most people will end up disabled at some point in their life.
You know, either as they get older, or even someone who has a temporary disability, like say a broken arm or broken like
Scott Shriner said that social institutions which would include schools workplaces medical practices, those sorts of things they may not currently have the ability to respond to this wide variety, but they may have the potential.
And then a more recent model is the Human Rights model.
Basically, stating that people with disabilities have these human rights, and should not be discriminated against because of that.
So, then we have the interaction on models of disability.
And basically, the called international because they focus on the interaction between the individual, the disability and the functions and in the case of the environment.
Environmental model also the environment.
So, it's looking at it, not necessarily as something inherent to the individual but what they do.
And the environmental model is really interesting.
There is this town called chilmark that's on the island of Martha's Vineyard.
And from about, I think they said it was like 1650 through 1900. And it was a very sort of small, isolated town. So as you can imagine in a small town.
People get married, and see genetic characteristics in will be common in that group. And what happened was that a deaf man came over from England, and was congenitally deaf, I believe he had two children who are also congenitally up.
And so many of the
people in that community. You know, as time went on, we're def, and it became actually be developed their own sign language, and pretty much everyone knew the sign language there because deafness was so common in that community.
So, to address the comment that the more ability Someone has to function within their environment. Well if everybody in your town know sign language that surely makes it a lot easier for you to function within your environment.
These models are going to be more subjective, because each person has different functions that they need, or functions that they would like to be able to do.
And of course, each environment is different, the weakness of this model is that the disability is still seen as a drawback, and not just part of sort of the national or natural variety.
One of the somewhat recent models that very similar to this is the bio psychosocial model, and this was developed by the International Classification of functioning disability and how group, which was part of the World Health Organization.
And so they're also looking at functioning and the impairments.
They're looking at all areas of a person's life, and they are recognizing the environmental factors. And I think it's interesting that they look at not only the barriers, but also things that may facilitate.
So, like in the case of chilmark in that town in Martha's Vineyard those environmental factors for actually facilitators for the experience of people with this network death in that community.
And then lastly we have the identity or cultural affiliation models of disability. And one of the things you may have noticed about previous ones, is that they all sort of looked at disability as a negative, except perhaps the human variation model which
at least says this is normal.
He again any or cultural affiliation model is saying, Hey, this is a group of people that have had this kind of lived experience. And, as you probably know, anytime you have people with a shared experience.
For example,
I'm sorry my brain just went for a minute there.
I'm
sorry the example I keep thinking of is not not appropriate for this.
Basically when you have a group of people that have shared a lift experience, they become sort of an affiliation group
where, you know, people.
They would argue that people who have that lived experience, or people who do not have that lived experience cannot understand it. So this is more focused on the finding kinship with others.
And as you can see in this quote that I shared it is more interested in sort of helping disability, people with disabilities find others who have shared that lived experience.
And it's less interested in actually trying to change or affect change to the barriers that they experience.
So now we're going to move on to talking about higher education and disability.
I'm going to talk a little bit about the student experience right now.
But I will also add some additional details as we are going through the rest.
So students generally have to self disclose their disability to the college's disability services office in order to get accommodations.
They usually have to re register each semester that they need accommodations, and they have to provide documentation of their disability.
So it's actually quite an involved process. And also it is very different from what students experience in K to 12 environments, again, from my experience working with these
future teachers here as we go.
I know that they have these different legal plans, and their. This plan is usually put together by the parents, teachers, oftentimes, some sort of external expert like in
physical therapist or an orthopedic therapist or speech therapist.
So you have this whole team, sort of working with you to develop this plan. And that's very different, you know, when you go to college and suddenly it's like you have to do this all by yourself.
It's actually.
Now the faculty and staff experience is very interesting. And since I am a faculty member at us we go, I can tell you that oftentimes there's no specific guidelines or resources for faculty and staff.
When I went to look at the webpage for our disability services office. They had a list of the accommodations are the types of accommodations that are available link to a form to request accommodations.
They had a lot of resources for the students. And there's, there's nothing similar for faculty and staff.
Generally, I've been told to contact human resources for accommodations, and the information I found, and again this is not just that as we go.
not to get accommodations themselves. So there's kind of this implied message that faculty and staff aren't disabled and there aren't enough of them out there.
To make this something worth addressing more thoroughly.
So let's look at the higher education and how these models are sort of present.
When I mentioned a few moments ago, that it's really becomes a personal problem once you get to college.
That is right in line with the medical model.
And this is there's a great book. It's in my bibliography is actually an open access book.
So it can be freely downloaded if you, it's called academic a plus and.
And I haven't gotten maybe a third of the way through it and it's it's incredible I highly recommend it.
But the author had spoken with a student who said that termination process is like battleship where you don't know what's on the other side of the board.
So you have to keep guessing what's there. And, you know, it's like you throw your diagnosis over you know this barrier and hope that it lands, you know on the battleship, but you don't know what accommodations are available so you don't know exactly
what to ask for. And again, when you're doing this all alone when you've had basically a whole team of people in primary school and high school and middle school, it's a abrupt change.
And then there's also this myth of Rarity which I talked about also where the medical model.
And unfortunately, the phrase, but there are no disabled students in my class is something that I have heard something our accessibility group at Oswego has talked about that sort of sentiment.
And it's just not really logical.
So the most recent statistics from the National Center for Education Statistics. Unfortunately, covers the 2015 2016 school year so it's a little dated but that's how they work.
So in that year, 19.4% of undergraduate students reported having a disability.
So that's roughly one in five.
So if someone says there are no disabled students in my class. Maybe they have like three or four students maybe that would be true.
But if you know our average class size I think it's around 19 so chances are, you know, there are at least a few disabled students in the class.
And actually this is in line with national averages as well.
I believe it's something like 20% of adults between a age. It was 18 and 44
identified as having a disability and that was a statistic from the Center for Disease Control.
The mic minority group model is definitely at play.
I found several sources that you're Tao Steve one is from EDUCAUSE.
And for those of you who aren't academia, you probably know what EDUCAUSE is so they did this huge report.
And they found that many students, chose not to disclose their disability. And that seems to be the case for
seems to have been the case for quite a while. And there was a study in 2016, where they spoke to students in order to figure out why they weren't asking for accommodations or, you know, disclosing their disability status.
And one of those unfortunately is that maybe they have used the services there are the accommodations and have that useful.
They may not know what's available to them, which again makes sense when you consider.
They go from this team model in secondary and primary and then in post secondary. They're just sort of thrown in their desire for self sufficiency is definitely one.
And I can't remember which paper this came from but some students by the time they reach college age the thing you know i don't think i i don't feel that I have a disability.
So maybe they feel that they have the coping skills, or they feel fixed or what have you.
But then you can see from the items that I fold in those unfavorable attitudes that Han suggested affect policy.
A lot of students didn't want to deal with, you know, negative stigma.
They have experienced bad experiences with their professors, and I read something in that academic evil ism book where
a professor basically decided that, not to provide the accommodation that the disability services office ask suggested, or the student needed, they thought they knew better.
And they're like, this is what accommodation I'll give you, which I would say was definitely a negative experience and fear of future ramifications.
Again, probably from professors and their grades.
And I came across an interesting quote, a few months ago.
And this student who's a medical student at Johns Johns Hopkins, said accommodations do not often take her accommodating people off campus, you can have someone help you get to class but if you can't get the groceries, how can you stay in school, and
higher education really focuses only on academics, which seems a bit short sighted.
In my opinion, given that
colleges are so very many of them probably a majority of them are residential and, you know, part of having a residential college is to sort of promote that immersion, and college life you know the social things and everything.
And so if you only have accommodations for the academics, you may still be excluded from these other social functions and other parts of being at college.
And then we get into the diversity model.
So there's this concept of a ballistic exceptionalism.
Basically, where you may be in favor of social justice, and consider yourself progressive, but somehow that just doesn't apply to disability.
And you'll see this quote from academic atheism.
That progressive people will use words like moron, or idiot. And I have to confess when I read that I thought I've done that probably fairly recently.
And those are things that are sort of referred to intellectual disabilities so we may have, as a society, the sort of blindness towards disability in particular.
And unfortunately disability is often excluded from anything relating to be on campus.
There was a study just last year that found that less than a quarter of campus diversity statements explicitly included disability.
This is also the case when it comes to
corporations.
There was another study I don't have it cited here, but they looked at like large organizations, and their diversity statements and around the same.
You know about a quarter mentioned, disability, and the rest of not.
So, I believe the next thing is discussion, and I didn't anticipate reaching this point of the presentation so early.
But hopefully we can have a robust discussion about these things. So, I wanted to ask. Now that you know what these models are, have you observed them at your college or university.
How do you think colleges and universities treat disabled students differently from disabled faculty and staff, and to then focuses more on libraries.
You know, we were just talking about how disability services office, and the accommodations, really support, only that one function students academic function.
So, what other functions can the college provide support for and what functions can a library support specifically.
Think you can read the other question, and I would love to open this up to discussion now.
Laura you got a question in the chat from Holly, asking how do you see the models that you've presented, showing up in your work as an online librarian or as an online librarianship in general.
Well,
I think, supporting students online.
When thinking about disability can be tricky.
I actually finished my second master's degree in 2019 so fairly recently.
And
as a student with a disability.
I found the process of trying to get an accommodation, trying to register for the disability services office, quite frustrating.
I was not anywhere near the school that I got my second Master's from I was like, two, two and a half hour drive.
So I was never going to be on campus.
And, luckily, I will say this, I actually found my online learning to be much easier as someone with a hearing problem because I wasn't listening to a lecture.
So it wasn't a question, I mean I have hearing aids but that's that fixes a lot of things but not everything.
So I do think being in a classroom would be challenging for me so we may find people.
I don't think there's been any study of this but we may find that people with disabilities may choose specifically to pursue online courses. So I think that's something to consider when we are providing services to online classes.
I think there's again that whole myth of rarity.
You know, oh there aren't any disabled people taking online classes.
And again, statistically that's highly unlikely. And yet, for me that process was really
frustrating and I ended up simply
asking the professor for an alternative which he was able to supply very easily. Thankfully, but I kind of went when I think about how students.
Other students with disabilities for online students might also encounter problems with getting accommodations because the disability services office may not have thought of that.
So, I will. Yes, there was just a Carly raised her hand so I'm just
Carly if you want to chime in here, but sorry to interrupt you, Laura. Yeah, no, I didn't know how you wanted to handle like driving in on the discussion questions which is why I raised my hand.
But do you want me to go ahead and start.
But do you want me to go ahead and start Yes. So, I guess my observation is that, in my experience both as a student, a few times with a disability and working in variety of schools in higher education is that I feel like we're kind of, to some degree,
often trapped in the medical model because that's what the laws that apply to schools are focused on. So, for example, when it comes to stuff like registering with the disability services office.
You almost always have to get a doctor's letter, and that means you have to have an official diagnosis which not everyone might have depending on the type of disability and when it came about and what their access to healthcare is like, um, and so that's
one reason why I think the medical model is so dominant in colleges and universities is because of the laws that apply to us.
And it's not even just the ADA, but other things too like when copyright allows us to make things accessible for students often depends on whether or not they're registered with an official group like the accessibility office.
And I mean, I can say personally as somebody with a disability. I have done multiple graduate degrees where I didn't even bother telling them, because I just didn't want to have to deal with what that would require, even as somebody who could easily relatively
speaking, have gotten a doctor's note. Um, but I think libraries sometimes have the opportunity to do more of supporting students without requiring that official diagnosis, or that medical model approach because we can offer lots of options, not for everything
we can't do things like digitizing things for accessibility under copyright law but there are a lot of ways that we can just think about what we're collecting what we're offering.
How are providing services, so that they offer lots of options for people who might have different needs, whether or not they think of themselves as disabled, whether or not they're registered with disability services office just whatever people need.
Thank you, Carly.
I'm, I see. Yeah, there's another chat you want me to read it out, Laura.
Um, I was going to read it out. Okay.
Sure. Kerry said one thing that can be done is further training for faculty on ways to support and accommodate students with accommodation needs I think there's a disconnect between the question combinations and faculty.
Knowing how to actually do that.
And I definitely agree with you.
We, as we go we have been working on this sort of thing for probably about five or six years now, to sort of shift how faculty look at things and we have a lot of sort of practical
sessions we have something called breakout sessions which we do before and after spring semester, and they're basically professional development that's offered by faculty and staff at Oswego for faculty and staff, and as we go.
And so we'll do a little sessions on like this is how you do image descriptions, or this is how you use ally within Blackboard. So there are a lot of practical sessions that we offer.
But I agree with you there is a disconnect and actually I believe the process for us is that if a student has registered with a disability services office and they are taking an online class.
And she would basically go in and tell faculty how to remediate different pieces of content, or she might have a remediated version, like maybe there's a PDF that's old, and, you know, cannot be OCR, and maybe there's better cleaner version of that PDF
somewhere and it's just a matter of saying, Hey, you know, if you just upload this PDF, and that would be better.
Okay so Karen followed up and she started a challenge for libraries to set for students who are registered with an office of disability on campus we aren't informed of disabilities.
So how can we brought in our we broaden our approach to services and increase awareness, where accommodations could be needed workshops on what accommodations are often needed, and how we might incorporate that into our service models would be fantastic.
My concern is that we are currently on aware of how we can do better.
And I agree I think
it's something I sometimes envy, a full time faculty, is that they do have a chance to form those relationships with students, because they're interacting with them regularly.
And that might be a way you come to know what the students challenges are, even if they're not registered.
So it is I think hard for the library in general.
To know that like you're saying carry it definitely is a challenge that we don't know who those students are, I think, I think we have to keep that statistic in mind you know that, chances are one of one to five with people who walk into the library are
disabled in some way or another, I see we have some other comments.
Yvonne says yes it seems that we should be making things accessible upon as much as possible.
And that is something I know our accessibility group on campus has differentiated between the idea of accommodation versus accessibility. And we think of it as accessibility is when it's accessible from the start, when you're designing it that way.
And accommodation is sort of fixing it after the fact.
And Carly says I personally really appreciate Universal Design for Learning guidelines as a tool for trying to make workshops that are more inclusive and offer options for different needs, even when we don't know what that students have a disability and
would you mind giving us a definition of universal design for learning. I mean, I know what it is but I don't think I'm going to be able to define it really well so that's why I'm gonna make you do it.
I'm so Universal Design for Learning is basically a framework that applies universal design to education and universal design is a concept that came from industrial design and architectural design that was applied more widely now to basically try to design
for a wide variety of people in the first instance sort of acknowledging that users come to you with all sorts of needs all sorts of backgrounds.
It might be that they have a disability, it might be that the language that you're offering the class and isn't their first language. It might be that they're really distracted that day, and how can we design for that sort of broadness of human experience
that might be coming to us, and the UDL guidelines are really meant for the educational setting but they work well I think in libraries for a lot of our activities, particularly at teaching activities.
But I think for a lot of other stuff as well. And I will say that I think not everyone thinks there are some like detractors of universal design, but I personally think that as long as your sort of aware of the limitations there's a lot that it can really
really offer people but full disclosure, I wrote a book about it so I'm probably biased.
Maybe a little code pointed out that most accommodations typically benefit everyone we serve. And I think part of what he was saying, Totally back set up.
One thing I always think of is captions.
Obviously captions help people like me but let's say you're a parent with a young child and they will only sleep if they are great across you, but you need to watch something for a class you're taking you know captions could be useful, or let's say your
student in a dorm and your roommates asleep again captions could be useful so I really think, you know, and I think Carly alluded to this that the limitations are definitely.
We all have limitations, and sometimes they're situational sometimes they're not.
Let's see.
Julian says as an MLS student I think it would be helpful to include classwork on providing service to patrons at all levels of disability of ability and disability within our curriculum, at least in our program we don't have access to any training like
that, and it makes sense to approach, before we're even part of the workforce. And I think that's an excellent point. Carry does as well.
And Michelle agrees with Kerry's comment that accommodations help everyone. If I'm shared a very helpful link to the UDL guidelines,
all caught up on the chat.
I definitely agree with your comment chillin about having that be something that's addressed in graduate school, honestly, there are a lot of things that I have learned.
I've been a librarian for about 17 years now and there are a lot of things that I wish I'd learned much earlier in my career, including things about accessibility.
I do think one of the
challenges we have, and I think a lot of us within SUNY have is that a lot of times we are at the mercy of the larger institution. And one thing that exasperated me about our library is that on where the majority of our books are the aisles are not bright
enough for someone with a wheelchair.
Luckily we do have a surface where our staff can go and pull the books.
And that's something we definitely would like to fix here, but we are limited by when the college is willing to sort of
revamp the library.
Something I believe we're starting to discuss now but we're not sure when it will actually happen.
So, I see Renee you've raised your hand you want to go ahead.
Yeah sure I know that you bring up a great point. I have a daughter who's a wheelchair user I was thinking about this a couple minutes ago, and she's taken classes at two different colleges now.
And it is, it's shameful how difficult it is for her to access the stacks. The yeah the space between the shelves is not wide enough for wheelchair user to, you know, actually browse in a practical way.
And, and in both places. She can't use the elevators in the libraries, so if she needs something from the nonfiction librarian, and both places they're you know they would bend over backwards to go grab anything for her but that just completely defeats
any, you know serendipity or just learning fun and friends in the show. Yeah, and just learning, you know, getting better at that skill of finding what you need on your own and.
And that's a real toughie because it's, you know, most institutions are just are not going to have the money to suddenly fix it, or replace an elevator, and especially when it's only for one or two students.
I think it's interesting how the structures can sometimes constrain the way we react because
you know I'm thinking back to the social model, and the idea that, they're like, help us do this ourselves you know we are capable, and I'm sure your daughter is capable of finding these things, you know on her own.
If this tax aisles we're only long, wide enough.
So I think that's a valid point that I mean, it's not just a issue of not being able to access it it's not being able to learn.
Now,
right, and and Ada as great as a step forward as it is, it's, it's, it really does not solve a lot of issues.
Mm hmm. Folks with physical disabilities, anyway. But one thing I will say that we do a Cuba is, we, we do have a great relationship with our Office of accessibility resources so like we have a student right now who needs a specific chair, so they have
brought over an extra of that. And then we keep it here for that student So, which, you know, on the one hand I you know I feel badly that the student needs to come and ask for it or be single feel singled out for that.
That's not, you know, that's not ideal at all but we're trying to figure out how to at least be able to accommodate the students so there as comfortable as possible.
You know, minds me of something I read in that academic able ism book.
And they're talking about ADA and retrofitting things. and it occurs, you know, He's like, you really can't
design for disabled people if you aren't actually involving disabled people in the discussions, which is kind of like, Yeah, that makes sense.
And, you know, as we're entering into our discussions about you know how the life will be retrofitted basically.
I feel like it would be good for us to have students, and of course, what a deaf students might want is very different from what an autistic student might want or need.
So I feel like having multiple students with disabilities sort of giving us feedback. I particularly would be great and you know what you're describing I'm thinking, wouldn't it be nice if we just got chairs that were, you know, a wide variety of chairs
that suited a wide variety of needs. Wouldn't it be nice if we just had that make just sit there without having to ask.
I'm Shannon asked, he said, because I work with those teacher candidates, and the faculty and the programs. Do I have any insight on what K to 12 is doing better or differently than higher ed.
And I do think the team approach is one way they're doing it better. And I feel like the student is much more supported that way.
Off the top of my head, and Shannon provided the link to academic able ism, like I said, it is an open access book so you can download it for free.
It's really good, it's really kind of many.
I have many moments of Whoa, you know, having my mind blown by that buck.
And actually, just, I debated talking about this at the beginning, and the next time I do this presentation I will talk about it. At the beginning, but I, we did a 10 day accessibility challenge for faculty here, and this is that accessibility work but
as we go that I'm part of, and
I was helping work on the paper that I'm that I'm co writing with these colleagues and I started sort of poking about and asking questions like, you know, Why is this important and that's how I kind of
fell down the rabbit hole of the different models of disability. And it just really kind of blew my mind because I had never.
I think really thought about it outside the medical way, and the functional way.
When I was
got my first set of hearing aids, it was part of.
I paid for half of them, and the state that I was living in, which was Michigan at the time paid the other half, and it was part of a thing, you know, to help me keep my job, you know, to be able to hear better.
And that was sort of very much my experience with it as an adult.
And it really is, you know, so.
So enmeshed in our society and yes definitely within the ADA.
It's all about fixing it.
Fixing the situation, and not not designing right from the start.
And I saw. I'm sorry, I think it was Susan, did you have your hand up.
Yes, I did. Thank you. Um, I was. Thank you for discussing these, these models because certainly, they're not models that I guess we actively, think of as these different models just sort of you know how society is.
but I was really intrigued.
When you were commenting on ethic, it was at a sweet oh that again they have information about accommodations for students, but not not what they're what anyone's doing for faculty and staff so I wondered if you're maybe you're going to survey, other
Sunni's, I mean, how prevalent, or different are the practices at the at the various Sunni's because we have a wheelchair bound staff member.
And again, some of the things early on, we're hand crafted by, you know, our department had because he was he was handy with wood, and he could make you know some, some things so that the because also he needs to use a mouse stick you know the the computer
has to be higher and this was before, you know, stand up stands were popular. So we did.
Yes, a wheelchair who uses a weird. Thank you for saying that. That way, anyway.
Anyway, so I'm just curious as to what what you've learned about how across SUNY these different you know policies or practices are are happening.
Unfortunately I don't really know what's going on outside of Sunni or within Sunni rather.
I do know that there are, I can think of a handful of other faculty members with disabilities here.
And I have no idea what their processes have been.
But I do think what I am describing is fairly common. There was a study I remember glancing at that basically was a survey of faculty I think at a large institution and asking if they knew what to do for faculty who needed accommodations, and luckily,
most of them had like some idea like contact human resources, but it is.
It's interesting and frankly I see this a lot when we're talking about mental health to, which I think is definitely related, because we can be disabled by mental health issues, but I see a lot of focus on like, oh let's support the mental health of our
students, you know, and there seems to be less about supporting our own mental health, which I have seen some things, but
I don't know I think it's interesting that sometimes the focus is granted yes the students are what bring in the money to the colleges and universities, but
I think we really need to consider how we're supporting our faculty and staff, and I think that's just important from a retention point of view, you know,
Carrie says doing players, even really
offer enough opportunities to share it a specimen place disabilities and get the necessary accommodations.
And she says the emphasis on supporting students a strong which was great but it's like crickets when it comes to faculty and staff.
And I believe.
When I was looking for my job and ended up with this job.
This that was the first time where I was kind of thinking of.
Oh, yes I, you know, identifying as a person with a disability. And I remember you know I felt that out.
You know I checked that on my paperwork you know I'm like, Yes, I have a disability. And I don't think there was any discussion about it like you know to your accommodations for anything.
And, Laurie says her experiences faculty at Oneonta was a six month or deal, which.
That makes me sad and angry.
Yeah, Susan says it is pretty shocking when you think about the fact that the ADA has been around for many years I think it's like 31 years now, something like that.
And she says, and up is buffalo right.
Just pandemic has increased the offerings for mental health here. I do think the way the pandemic has affected things is really interesting.
I have
a colleague who prior to cope it had this whole big thing, where she wanted to work from home. As an accommodation for her disability.
And they were really reluctant to give it to her.
And yet now, when everybody had to work from home it's kind of like, I don't know, it's, it's, I feel like it was a lot easier to get everybody working online.
Then, and yeah, we have these employers saying, Oh, you know, we can't do this is too hard.
And I think it's kind of disingenuous because it clearly, clearly wasn't if you could get all your people on zoom this quickly, you know,
Laura, it looks like we have a hand up from Leah, and I think that's probably the last question.
We can go a little bit, just want to make sure, make sure we're tracking. Yeah.
Do we have been a great conversation.
We have time for a question or, I think so. I think so, We'll just.
I think this will be the last one.
Okay. Um, I had a student I was talking to a student this morning, actually, and she mentioned that this is kind of a very specific question so I apologize, but that if a building was built before at Ada laws came about that it's kind of grandfathered
in and doesn't necessarily need to like be a DA compliant. In the same way as a more recent, the bill building is that, I mean, I had heard that before it kind of blew my mind a little bit.
So I didn't know if that I haven't I haven't had a chance to like really look into that much but I didn't know if that's something that other people have heard or if that's.
Sorry, it's a little bit, maybe that's a little too specific question but I wouldn't be surprised.
Oh, and partly says that is true but there is a caveat for certain renovations and Renee says yes there's truth to that. And frankly, I'm not surprised because you know the other thing is, you hear the phrase, it's not just about accommodations, it's
about reasonable accommodation, who gets to decide what's reasonable.
Well, they can say oh well retrofitting our building. Is it reasonable.
So,
as a student who was a wheelchair user. And she was saying like, oh you know she's used to, you know, not necessarily being able to get around in the same way and, and it just, it was heartbreaking to kind of hear that from one of our students, so.
Yeah.
This fits in well with my with my day so far this workshop. So, thank you.
Well, thank you so much everyone for coming and for contributing to the conversation.
I hope this was useful it sounds like, hopefully, it was so thank you for doing this. Laura it's been great.