Shannon: Alright, so it's it's my pleasure to introduce Laura Harris who is the Web services and distance learning librarian at anfield library at suny oswego.
Shannon: Laura is.
Shannon: One of the members of the suny libraries.
Shannon: Accessibility cohort and she was so gracious to agreed to talk about some research that she's doing with colleagues at oswego on models of disability and how that.
Shannon: impacts and shapes policies and processes and higher education so i'll turn it over to Laura and it sounds like Laura has put in some time for discussion.
Shannon: So i'll keep an eye on chat but we'll just wait to do, discussion and questions at the specific times, and they are in the webinar so thank you Laura and i'll let you take it away.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): hey.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): So what i'm going to cover today i'm going to talk about four basic models disability they're actually quite a few.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): More than this, and I grip some of these together.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): But the main ones i'm going to talk about or the medical and social, which are the most prominent and then we're also going to talk about the interaction models and the identity model and then we're going to talk a little bit about higher education.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): about the student experience and then talk about how the models sort of have either made themselves.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): visible in higher education or not this fall and just as a note i've used the acronym PWD a lot, because a person with disabilities is.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): A lot of texts out anytime So if you see that acronym throughout the presentation that's what it means I the person with disability or people with disability or multiple disabilities and as a side note i'm.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Somewhat relevant maybe not but I myself am disabled I have hearing loss, so I am coming at this from the perspective of someone.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Who is disabled.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Actually I forgot, but this is my outline the first model and the oldest model is the religious or moral model of disability and.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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 if the disability was present from birth, then it's the sin of the parents or someone you know their grandparents or so on.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Pass, then the disability remains so it's almost as a.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): sort of continued sin, you know, like you, messed up before you have to live with this disability, for the rest of your life.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Another way it has been construed is I as a gift is an opportunity for character development.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): And as.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): The quote I have here.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): mentions that the image of disability as a gift is legion and fiction, films and medicine and.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): When I read that the first thing that came to mind was the show daredevil.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Just a show of hands, how many people know that series or have watched that series on netflix from the marvel Cinematic universe.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Okay, so at least a few of you know what i'm talking about basically For those of you who aren't familiar with daredevil basically this guy who's a lawyer gets exposed to some toxic chemicals that make him go blind, but he developed superpowers and like.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): You know, like very good awareness and hearing and stuff that lets them fight bad guys and stuff and I read this quote, that was actually something he said in the last episode of the series was was only a few years ago, this is 2018.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): and basically he's like you know, maybe it was a gift from God he literally says gift from God in.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): That statement, so it is certainly something but it's still sort of.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Even though it's not our predominant model in society, right now, you can still see those echoes, especially in Armenia.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): So the next model, I want to talk about is the medical model is also called the biomedical model basically.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): him about in the mid 1800s or you know when science and industry we're really sort of picking up.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): In under this model is construed as a personal problem a medical problem obviously requiring some sort of solution, whether it is.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): something to be repaired or ameliorated somehow in a lesson to somehow.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): there's the implication that disabilities can be defined and measured and in the US, especially I have actually worked quite a bit with.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): And it ignores the social and environmental barriers that people with disabilities experience, which leads us to the social model disability.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): This came about in the mid 70s early to mid 70s, particularly in the UK.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Paul hunt and the up as we're in Britain and basically they said yes, people with disabilities happen pyramids specifically but disability.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): is caused by social conditions and, at the time they said physical impairments, as you can see the name of the organization says physical physically impaired on the model has since been expanded to include other sorts of impairments.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): And this model argues that 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 of the people with disabilities.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): You know there's This, I think.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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 are really arguing.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): The weaknesses of this model is that it implies that any negative effects of impairment, or only do to exclusion and discrimination.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Anyone with a chronic pain disorder.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): would argue that they're negative effects of the impairment itself.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): And then, not everyone with impairments is excluded, for example, I think, someone with hearing loss I especially hearing loss it developed later in my life I have not felt excluded from society.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Basically people's attitudes and that.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): All aspects of the environment, sorry to read directly from the side here they are fundamentally shaped by public policy, but then.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Also, that policies tend to reflect people's attitudes and they're Actually, I think it may be, in my bibliography.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): But dearth in brand stone did some research that actually found that yes, people's attitudes towards disability also shape their opinions on policies, so there has actually been some research backing up what Han was arguing.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Another one of the models is a human variations model also called the diversity model and this points out the disability is part of the natural physical, social and cultural variability of the human species, in other words it's just normal it's part of the variety of things.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): And one thing that I have seen a lot in the literature is this mentioned that.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Most people will end up disabled at some point in their life.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): You know, either as they get older or even someone who has a temporary disability have like say a broken arm or a broken leg and.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): And then, a more recent models to human rights model basically stating that people with disabilities have these human rights and should not be discriminated against.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Because of that.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): So, then, we have the international models of disability.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): and basically they're called international because they focus on the interaction between the individual, the disability and the functions and in the case of the environment.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Environmental model, also the environment.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): So it's looking at it, not necessarily as something.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): inherent to the individual, but what they do and the environmental model is really interesting.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): There is this town called chilmark that's on the island of martha's vineyard.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): people get married and see genetic characteristics in.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): will be common in that group and what happened was that a deaf man came over from England.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): And was congenitally deaf I believe had two children, who are also congenitally duck and so many of the.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): People in that community, you know as time went on were deaf 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): These models are going to be more subjective because each person has.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): different functions that they need or functions that they would like to be able to do, and of course each environment is different.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): One of the somewhat recent models that very similar to this is the bio psychosocial model, and this was developed by the International.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Classification functioning disability and health group which was part of the World Health Organization and so they're also looking at functioning and the impairments.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): So, like in the case of chilmark.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): That town in martha's vineyard those environmental factors were actually facilitators for the experience of people with this up that worked up in that community.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): except perhaps the human variation model which at least says this is normal, he identity or cultural affiliation model.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): For example.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): i'm sorry my brain just went like for a minute there.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): i'm sorry the example I keep thinking of is not.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): not appropriate for this um basically when you have a group of people that have shared a lived experience they become sort of an affiliation group.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Where you know people.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): They would argue that people who have that lived experience.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): People who do not have that lived experience cannot understand it, so this is more focused on the finding kinship with others.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Excuse me.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): So I know we're going to move on to talk about higher education and disability i'm going to talk a little bit about the student experience right now.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): But I will also add some additional details as we are going through the rest.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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 reregister each semester that they need accommodations and they have to provide documentation of their disability.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Future teachers here at oswego and 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 and.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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, essentially.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Now the Faculty and staff experience is very interesting and since I am a faculty Member at oswego.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): I can tell you that oftentimes there's no specific guidelines or resources for faculty and staff, when I went to look at the web page for our disability services office and they had a list of the accommodations are the types of accommodations that are available.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): link to a form to request accommodation, they had a lot of resources for the students and there's nothing similar for faculty and staff.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): that the information that is out there for faculty in particular is often focused on how to accommodate students and 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): To make this something worth addressing more thoroughly.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): So let's look at the at 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): And this is there's a great book it's in my bibliography it's actually an open access book, so it can be freely downloaded if you it's called academic ape listen and I haven't i've got maybe a third of the way through it and it's it's incredible I highly recommend it.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): But the author had spoken with a student who said that the termination process is like battle chip where you don't know what's, on the other side of the board.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Primary School and high school and middle school it's a abrupt change.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): And then there's also this myth of rarity which I talked about also with the medical model.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): And, unfortunately, the phrase, but there are no disabled students in my class is something that I have heard that's something our accessibility group at oswego has talked about that sort of.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): sentiment and it's just not really logical.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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 recorded having a disability so that's roughly one in five.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): And Actually, this is in line with.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): National averages as well, I believe.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): it's something like 20% of adults between age, it was 18 and 44.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): identified as having a disability, and that was a statistic from the Center for Disease Control.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): The my Nordic model is definitely at play I found several sources.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): They cheered out Steve one is from educause and for those of you who aren't academia, you probably know what edge because 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): And one of those, unfortunately, is that maybe they have used the services, there are the accommodations and have that useful.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): They may not know what's available to them, which again makes sense when you consider.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): They go from this team model.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): In secondary and primary and then in post secondary they're just sort of thrown in their.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): desire for self sufficiency is definitely one.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): And I can't remember which paper this came from, but.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Some students by the time they reach college age, the thing you know I don't think 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): They have experience bad experiences with their professors and I read something in that academic evil ISM book where i'm.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): A Professor basically decided that not to provide the accommodation that the disability services office asked suggested, or that the student needed they thought they knew better.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): And I came across an interesting quote a few months ago.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): and
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): This student who's a medical student at Johns Johns Hopkins said accommodations do not often take accommodating people off campus.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): colleges are still very many of them, probably a majority of them are residential and.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): You know, part of having a residential college is to sort of promote that immersion in college life, you know the social things and everything.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): And then we get into the diversity model.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): So.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): there's this concept of a ballistic exceptionalism basically where you may be.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): in favor of social justice.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): and consider yourself progressive.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): But somehow that just doesn't apply to disability.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): And you'll see this quote from academic able ISM.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): That progressive people will use words like more on or idiot and I have to confess, when I read that I thought i've done that probably fairly recently.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): And those are things that are.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): sort of refer to intellectual disabilities, so we may have as a society, the sort of blindness towards.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): You know about a quarter mentioned disability and the rest, if not.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): So I believe the next thing is discussion and I didn't anticipate.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): reaching this point of the presentation so early.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): But hopefully we can have a robust discussion.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): about these things, so I wanted to ask, now that you know what these models are have you observed them.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): At your college or university.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): How do you think colleges and universities treat disabled students differently from disabled faculty and staff and to then focus more on libraries.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): You know, we were just talking about how disability services office and the commendations 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): I think you can read the other question and I would love to open this up to discussion now.
Shannon: Laura you got a question in the chat from holly asking how do you see the the models that you've presented showing up in your work as an online librarian or as an online librarianship in general.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): well.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): I think, supporting students online.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): When thinking about disability can be tricky.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): I actually finished my second master's degree in so fairly recently and.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): As a student.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): With a disability.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): I found the process of trying to get an accommodation trying to register with the disability services office quite frustrating.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Luckily, I will say this, I actually found online learning to be much easier, as someone with.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): A hearing problem because I wasn't listening to 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): And I don't think there's been any study of this, but we may find that people with disabilities may choose specifically to.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): pursue online courses, and so I think that's something to consider when we are providing services to.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Online classes.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): I think there's again that whole myth of rarity.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): You know, oh there aren't any disabled people taking online classes.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): And again, statistically that's highly unlikely, and yet for me that process was really.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): frustrating and I ended up simply.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Asking the Professor for.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): An alternative which he was able to supply very easily thankfully.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): But I kind of went when I think about how students.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Other students with disabilities who are online students may also encounter problems with getting accommodations because the disability services Office may not have.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): thought of that.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): So I will yes.
Shannon: There was just a carly raised her hand so i'm just a.
Shannon: carly if you want to chime in here but sorry to interrupt you and Laura.
Carli Spina: Laura I didn't know how you wanted to handle like.
Carli Spina: jamming in on the discussion questions, which is why I raised my hand, but do you want me to go ahead and start it.
Carli Spina: 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.
Carli Spina: 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.
Carli Spina: 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.
Carli Spina: 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.
Carli Spina: 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 um.
Carli Spina: 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.
Carli Spina: 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.
Carli Spina: I just didn't want to have to deal with what that would require even as somebody who could easily, relatively speaking.
Carli Spina: Have gotten a doctor's note um, but I think libraries, sometimes have the opportunity to do more, of supporting students without requiring that.
Carli Spina: 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.
Carli Spina: 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 we're providing services so that they offer lots of options for people.
Carli Spina: 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Thank you carly.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): um.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): I see.
Shannon: yeah there's another chat you want me to read it out Laura.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): um I was going to read it out.
Okay.
Shannon: Sure carry Martin said, one thing that can be done as further training for faculty.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): on ways to support and accommodate students with accommodation needs think there's a disconnect between requesting accommodations and faculty knowing how to actually do that and I definitely agree with you.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): We, as we go, we have been.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): sort of practical.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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 at oswego.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): sessions that we offer.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): But I agree with you.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): That may be regular costs as well and i'm not 100% sure of the process, but.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): We have disability services analyst I think her title is.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): And she would basically go in and tell faculty how to remediate different pieces of content or she might have a remediated version.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Like maybe there's a PDF that's old, and you know, cannot be ocr and maybe there's a 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Okay, so carrie followed up and she said, a challenge for libraries to set for students have registered with an office of disability on campus we aren't informed of disabilities.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): So how can we brought in our we are running our approach to services and increase awareness, where.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): When I agree, I think.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): And that might be a way you come to know what the students challenges are even if they're not registered, and so it is, I think hard for the library in general.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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, of people who walk into the library are disabled.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): in some way or another, I see, we have some other comments.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Yvonne says yes, it seems that we should be making things accessible up fun as much as possible.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): And that is something I know our accessibility group on campus has differentiated between the idea of commendation versus accessibility and we think of it as accessibility is when it's accessible, from the start, when you're designing it that way.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): and accommodation is sort of fixing it after the fact.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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 that students have a disability and.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): carly Would you mind, giving us a definition of universal design for learning.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Carli Spina: um so universal design for learning is basically a framework that applies universal design to education and universal design is a concept that came from.
Carli Spina: industrial design and architectural design those apply 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.
Carli Spina: It might be that they have a disability, it might be that the language that you're offering the class in 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.
Carli Spina: 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 a teaching activities.
Carli Spina: 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.
Carli Spina: Aware of the limitations there's a lot that it can really offer people but full disclosure I wrote a book about it so i'm probably biased.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Maybe a little.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Carry pointed out that most accommodations typically benefit everyone, we serve, and I think part of what carly was saying, totally backs that up one thing I always think of is captions obviously captions help people like me but let's say.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): You know 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 you're a student in a dorm and your roommates asleep.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Again captions could be useful, so I really think you know, and I think carly alluded to this that the limitations are definitely.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): We all have limitations and sometimes they're situational sometimes they're not.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): let's see.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Julian says as an mls student, I think it would be helpful to include class work on providing service to patrons and all levels of disability.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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 carrie does as well.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): And Michelle agrees with carys comment that accommodations help everyone Yvonne shared a very helpful link to the udl guidelines.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): I think i'm all caught up on the chat now.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): I definitely agree with your comment Chilean about having that.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Including things about accessibility.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): I do think one of the.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): challenges we have, and I think a lot of us within Sunni have is that a lot of times we are at the mercy of the larger.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): institute institution, and one thing that exacerbates me about our library is that on where majority of our books are the aisles are not bright enough for someone with a wheelchair.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Luckily, we do have a surface where our staff can go and pull the books.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): And that's something we definitely would like to.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): fix here, but we are limited by when the College is willing to sort of.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): revamp the library, something I believe we're starting to discuss now but we're not sure when it will actually happen so.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): I see renee you've raised your hand you want to go ahead.
Renee Schmidt: 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.
Renee Schmidt: colleges now and it is it's shameful how difficult it is for her to access the stacks the the yeah the space between the shelves is not wide enough for wheelchair user to you know actually browse in a practical way.
Renee Schmidt: And and in both places she can't use the elevators in the libraries, so if she needs something from the nonfiction.
Renee Schmidt: librarian and both places there you know they would bend over backwards to go grab anything for her, but that just completely defeats any.
Renee Schmidt: You know serendipity or just.
Renee Schmidt: Learning.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): fun of France in the show.
Renee Schmidt: yeah and just learning how you know getting better at that skill of finding what you need on your own and.
Renee Schmidt: And that's a real toughie because it's you know most institutions just are not going to have the money to suddenly.
Renee Schmidt: fix it or replace an elevator and especially when it's only for one or two students.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): yeah I think it's interesting how.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): The structures can sometimes.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): constrain the way we react because.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): You know, on her own if the stacks ios were only long wide enough, so I think that's a valid point that I mean.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): it's not just a an issue of.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Not being able to access it it's not being able to learn so.
Renee Schmidt: 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.
Renee Schmidt: folks with physical disabilities anyway, but one thing I will say that we do at Cuba is we, we do have a great relationship with our office of accessibility resources so.
Renee Schmidt: Like we have a student right now, who needs a specific chair, so they have brought over an extra of that and and we keep it here for that student so.
Renee Schmidt: 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 field single out for that that's not you know that's not ideal at all, but we're trying to figure out how to.
Renee Schmidt: At least be able to accommodate the students so they're as comfortable as possible.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): You know minds me of something I read in that academic able ISM book.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): And they're talking about Ada and retrofitting things and it occurs, you know he's like you really can't.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Design for disabled people if you aren't actually involving disabled people in the discussions.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Which is kind of like yeah that makes sense.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): And you know as we're entering into our discussions about you know how the line will be retrofitted basically.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): I feel like it would be good for us to have students and, of course, what a deaf student 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): You know, a wide variety of chairs that suited a wide variety of needs wouldn't it be nice if we just had that they could just sit there without having the ass.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): i'm Shannon asked, I said because I work with those teacher candidates and the Faculty in the programs do I have any insights on what K to 12 is doing better or differently than higher ED.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): And I do think the team.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): approach is one way they're doing it better, I feel like the student is much more supported that way.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): I think that's it off the top of my head.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): it's really good it's really kind of many.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): I have many moments of well you know, having my mind blown by that book.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): and actually just I debated talking about this at the beginning and next time I do this presentation, I will talk about it at the beginning, but.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): I we did a 10 day accessibility challenge for faculty here, this is the accessibility worker, but as we go that i'm part of and.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): fell down the rabbit hole of the different models of disability and it just really kind of.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): blew my mind, because I had never.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): I think really thought about it outside the medical way and the functional way when I was.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): got my first set of hearing aids, it was part of.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): And it really is, you know so.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): So in meshed in our society, and yes, definitely within the Ada it's all about fixing it fixing the situation and not.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Not designing right from the start.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): And I saw i'm Sorry, I think it was Susan did you have your hand up.
Susan Davis (UB): Yes, I did Thank you um I was, thank you for discussing these these models because certainly they're not.
Susan Davis (UB): 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.
Susan Davis (UB): When you were commenting on ethic, it was at oswego 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.
Susan Davis (UB): 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.
Susan Davis (UB): wheelchair bound staff member and again, some of the things early on, where we're handcrafted by.
Susan Davis (UB): 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.
Susan Davis (UB): Because also he needs to use a mouse stick, you know the.
Susan Davis (UB): Computer has to be higher, and this was before you know stand up stands where we're popular so we did, yes, a wheelchair who uses, so we thank you for saying that that way anyway.
Susan Davis (UB): Anyway, so i'm just curious as to what what you've learned about how across Sunni these different um you know policies or practices are are happening.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Unfortunately I don't really know what's going on.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): outside of Sunni or within Sunni rather.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): I do know that there I can think of a handful of other faculty members with disabilities here and I have no idea what their processes have been.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): But I do think what I am describing is fairly common there was a study I remember glancing at that.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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 what clean, most of them had like some idea like contact human resources, but it is.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): which I have seen some things but.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): I don't know I think it's interesting that sometimes the focus is granted, yes, the students are what bring in the money.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): To the colleges and universities, but.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): carrie says do employers even really.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): offer enough opportunities to share it a specimen place disabilities and get the necessary accommodations.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): And she says, the emphasis on supporting students is strong, which was great, but it is like crickets when it comes to faculty and staff, and I believe.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): When I was looking for my job.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): and ended up at this job.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): This That was the first time, where I was kind of thinking of.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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 and i'm like yes, I have a disability and I don't think there was any discussion about it, like you know, to get accommodations for anything.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): And laurie says her experiences faculty at oneonta was a six month ordeal which.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): That makes me sad and angry.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Just pandemic has increased the offerings for mental health here, I do think the way the pandemic has affected things is really.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Interesting I have.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): And they were really reluctant to give it to her.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): And yet now when everybody had to work from home it's kind of like.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): I don't know it's it's.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): I feel like it was a lot easier to get everybody working online, then, and yet we have these employers saying Oh, you know we can't do this is too hard.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): And I think it's kind of disingenuous because it clear clearly wasn't if you could get all your people on zoom this quickly you know.
Shannon: Laura it looks like we have a hand up from Leah and I think that's probably the last question, we can.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): go a little bit long I just.
Shannon: want to make sure, make sure we're on.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): track yeah.
Leah Galka (she/her/hers): Do we have.
Shannon: A great conversation yeah.
Leah Galka (she/her/hers): Do we have time for a question or.
Shannon: I think so.
Shannon: I think so we'll just I think this will be the last one.
Leah Galka (she/her/hers): Okay um I had a student I was talking to a student this morning, actually, and she mentioned that.
Leah Galka (she/her/hers): This is kind of a very specific question, so I apologize um but that if a building was built before.
Leah Galka (she/her/hers): 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 hadn't heard that before it kind of blew my mind, a little bit, so I didn't know if that.
Leah Galka (she/her/hers): 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.
Leah Galka (she/her/hers): Sorry it's a little bit maybe that's a little too specific question but.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): I wouldn't be surprised.
Oh.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): Apparently 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.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): You know the other thing is you hear the phrase it's not just about accommodation it's about reasonable accommodation, who gets to decide what's reasonable, well, it can say Oh well, retrofitting our building all so.
Leah Galka (she/her/hers): I was 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 um.
Leah Galka (she/her/hers): yeah.
Leah Galka (she/her/hers): It fits in well with my with my day so far this workshop, so thank you.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): All Thank you so much, everyone for coming and for contributing to the conversation I hope this was useful sounds like hopefully it was so.
Shannon: Thank you for doing this Laura it's it's been great.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): And I would like to give a special shout out to gym and vicki my parents.
Laura Harris (she/her/hers): who attended the session for moral support so.
Shannon: Excellent.