What is meant by reasonable accommodation?
Reasonable accommodations are made in order to level the playing field for qualified individuals with disabilities. As much as possible, accommodations are designed to minimize the functional limitations of an individual in a given task.
These adjustments permit students with disabilities the opportunity to learn by removing barriers that do not compromise academic standards. Thus, wherever possible the disability is minimized as a measure of performance in the academic environment. This is typically accomplished with services or strategies focused on the end result, rather than the means by which that result is customarily achieved.
Consider these examples:
- A student who is deaf cannot hear class lectures. Provision of sign language interpreters as an accommodation gives the deaf student access to the information discussed in the classroom at nearly the same time it is presented, and in their first language of American Sign Language. Thus, the student has a better opportunity to interact with the rest of the class. Students who are deaf are often provided with note-takers, even though the lectures are interpreted. This is because it is virtually impossible to follow a signed lecture and take notes at the same time.
- Students whose physical limitations prevent them from writing efficiently or from writing at all, may request note-taking services as an accommodation. They may also use a scribe for taking exams. Thus, the student will not be graded on their inability to physically write, but on the ability to learn and to demonstrate that they have learned the material.
- Students with mobility limitations, such as wheelchair users, may request that classroom locations be moved if they are not accessible on a ground floor or by elevator.
- Students who are blind are accommodated by receiving printed materials (textbooks, course syllabi, handouts) in braille, on audiotapes or from live readers.
- Students with learning disabilities may be accommodated in a variety of ways, depending on the limitations of their particular type of learning disability.
In these examples, as in practice, students must meet the academic standards. They must demonstrate their mastery of assigned material. In other words, they don't receive "help," but they enjoy their civil right to learn and compete on the same level as their peers.
The ADA assumes that people with disabilities have contributions to make, and that they have every right to attend colleges and universities -- regardless of whether they have a disability. Thus, access means empowering students with disabilities to take better control of their academic environment, permitting them to demonstrate their skill and knowledge
Maintained by webmaster@wpi.eduLast modified: August 28, 2007 14:47:37