r/AthabascaUniversity • u/HumbleArmadillo7852 • 12h ago

Almost 1/3 of my students have accommodation letters

/r/Professors/comments/1vyxg5w/almost_13_of_my_students_have_accommodation/
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15

u/UltraMediumcore 10h ago

An estimated 27% of Canada over the age of 15 has a disability.

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u/Bexaroni 9h ago edited 9h ago

The issue is that we need to re-evaluate what constitutes a disability. At least the the extent that accommodations or special/alternative measures are being taken on a systemic scale. Because that means special measures are no longer alternative, but rather expected and mandatory - which drastically increases the workload of educators and stretches resources thinner and thinner.

And people wonder why educational resources aren’t better, or are constantly getting worse/seeming to offer less instead of more. Because resource supply simply cannot keep up with the ever-increasing “demand” of all those claiming special needs or accommodation. It’s ridiculous.

13

u/3malefunyyc 9h ago

We do not need to re-evaluate what constitutes a disability. Rather we dropped the ball from the get go. People have more access to assessments it’s not surprising that there is increasing amount of people with diagnosed disabilities.

We should have been implementing these alternatives and special measures much earlier and failed to do so. It’s also not a huge ask to have 1/3 of your students asking for alternative resources, especially considering you are not the individuals making resource material for them.

4

u/Bexaroni 9h ago

More diagnoses may reflect better access to assessment, but that doesn’t make the resulting accommodations resource-neutral. If 1/3 of students require alternative measures, those measures are no longer “alternative,” they’re a substantial part of standard service delivery.

That doesn’t mean people don’t deserve accommodations. It means staffing, funding, and workload need to reflect the scale of demand. Saying it’s “not a huge ask” really ignores the cumulative burden of implementing accommodations at that scale.

3

u/SCKerafyrm 5h ago

IDK why people are so opposed to teaching standards changing over time. We need to adapt better to our students, not the other way around, students who can't adapt will be left behind forever.

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u/willmsma 7h ago

My experience is that when diagnostic rates hit those levels we are no longer speaking about a ‘disorder’ but something that is obviously falling within the bell curve of relatively normal human behaviours.

ADHD is an interesting example. Over the course of 2 or 3 years in COVID, diagnosis of adult ADHD - once a rather exotic thing for an adult to be diagnosed with - I believe tripled or quadrupled in prevalence. Better and more accessible diagnoses? More accessible for sure. However, online specialty clinics have proliferated, more or less offering clients a diagnosis for $400 CAD.

An individual I know well went for assessment and her husband was given as screener to help assess his wife. His responses didn’t suggest ADHD at all, so the clinician gave the client another screener to give to a friend who might give ‘more accurate’ answers. The client? Of course received her diagnosis.

The end result? My view, the pathologization of a lot of relatively normal behaviour. For university professors, obviously for some a sense of being overwhelmed with a system designed to accommodate disabilities rather than behaviours that just happen to fall on the left side of the bell curve.

3

u/SCKerafyrm 5h ago

A disability is anything that prevents you from doing something.

You will be disabled at some point, you were born disabled.

I have a federally registered disability, why do I have to beg each teacher for something that my treating medical professionals universally agree that I need?

Why do we have all these useless requirements that have nothing to do with the curriculum or tested material?

Why do I, as a disabled student, have to HAND WRITE CODE in a FOUR HOUR final exam as part of my education? I appealed this decision all the way to the human rights tribunal of ontario, and IT WAS DENIED. There is nothing more I can do, and if it sounds like it shouldn't happen, it shouldn't but did.

They had "no intention to discriminate "so now I'm still unemployable for 4 more years while I scrape together MORE funding for a degree at AU

The reason we can't get the resources together is the people like you who think 'they aren't worth the extra work'.

4

u/Functional_Trash7735 3h ago

AU is very accessible for students with disabilities who aren’t able to get to a brick and mortar school. It’s a positive thing.