ADA Training and Dealing with Unaccommodating Professors

Earlier this semester, I had a physical science lab professor who was not very accommodating. This professor, Professor W, acted as though he didn’t know he was going to have a blind student in his class. When I walked in on the first day of the lab, he seemed surprised. He said to me, in effect, “You’re going to need a helper,” and told me to go to the Disability and Access Center, which is in charge of such accommodations, to talk to them about having a lab assistant assigned to me. I went to the DAC, but I didn’t do what he suggested. Instead, I told them what happened and asked if there was anything I could do. Why am I telling you all about this? I want to bring awareness to the issue of whether or not professors should be required to be trained in how to accommodate students with disabilities. Thankfully, most of my professors have been very accommodating, and I have not had to deal with this kind of problem, but I guess my luck was going to run out at some point. Now that I know how bad things can get, I feel very strongly about this topic. I think professors should be required to have at least some ADA training. I have talked with the director of the DAC about this, and he agrees with me, but apparently, there are some complications due to the way the state of TN applies ADA laws that keep this from being a requirement. I understand that one professor might teach his class one way, and another professor might teach his class in another way. I don’t have a problem with this. However, there should be an expectation that no matter how the professor is teaching the class that there is at least some way to accommodate students with disabilities. If a lab professor is having everyone do their lab individually, make him aware of the adaptive tech that is available so that the blind can truly participate in the lab. Professor W acted as if he didn’t know how to make this possible for me. The DAC talked with Professor W, and the people who work at the Adaptive Technology Center (ATC) told him about the possible technologies and methods I could use to participate in the lab. The DAC met with the lab coordinator to talk about what went down, and after this meeting, the DAC recommended that I switch to a different lab class with a professor who has had blind students before. After following the procedure to drop the first lab class and add the second, I finally got to meet my new professor, Professor P, for the first time. This was two weeks ago, and dropping Professor W’s class was a good decision. Professor P has everyone get into groups to do the lab experiments, so I get to contribute to what my group is doing. Last week, for example, we did some experiments that involved measuring how long it took to get a certain kind of reaction, and I was able to use my iPhone’s stopwatch to keep track of the time. This didn’t require a lot of fancy, expensive tech that would have taken forever to get to the university. All I needed was my iPhone, and that’s it. Shoutout to Apple for committing to make iOS and OS X accessible! I may not be able to do a lot of things, but I at least have something to contribute to the group. I know I’m not the only one at my university who has had to deal with unaccommodating professors. This is the reason I am writing this post. I am not critical of the DAC because they helped me fairly quickly and in a way that was good for everyone involved. I appreciate the DAC’s commitment to dealing with these problems. However, I feel like we as a group can do something about this, with the help of the DAC. Whenever you encounter a professor who either is not very accommodating or who has a negative attitude toward people with disabilities, staying with them is not okay. If you don’t want to be miserable the entire semester, you should do something. I’m not recommending large scale protests or anything outrageous like that. However, I would suggest that you drop that class as soon as you can and ask the DAC if there is anyone they would recommend who teaches that same class. Educating the professor is the ideal option. My new media professor, who is very accommodating, put her syllabus on D2L, the website my university uses for online components of courses. This wouldn’t have been a problem, except that it was a PDF on the webpage, and VoiceOver, the software that reads everything on the screen, was not reading it correctly. In this instance, all I had to do was tell her what was wrong, and she sent me a text-only copy of the syllabus that I could read. It wasn’t that hard, and there was no drama. However, for professors who aren’t so accommodating or who aren’t willing to listen, educating them can be a problem. I felt humiliated when Professor W told me I needed a helper because of the way he said it. I understood I would need help for the experiments, but I felt like he didn’t think I could do anything. Trying to tell a professor, or anyone else, that you are just like everyone else when you’re offended is very challenging. How can you come across the right way without sounding like a jerk? Whatever you do, if you are ever in that situation, don’t settle for being treated that way. Do what you have to do to get out of that class as soon as you can, and don’t look back. Maybe, if everyone who has had this experience drops the class with the unaccommodating professor in favor of one who is more accommodating, it will send a strong message that this is not okay. I hope that Professor W becomes more aware through this experience, and hopefully, he won’t do this to someone else in the future. That’s all I can hope for.