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Definitions and Naming Practices
Pedagogy and Accommodations Within the Undergraduate Classroom
Introduction
More than thirty years have passed since the Americans with Disability Act of 1990 (ADA), and major advances for access have been made. However, access remains an unfinished task, with many communities and individuals laboring to gain access that should be inherent and legally protected. Access is often thought of in terms of physical access, removing a “barrier” that might prevent someone from joining in space, such as the need for curb cuts to ensure a wheelchair user can safely navigate a street. Technical and professional communication scholar Lisa Melonçon defines accessibility more expansively, writing, “the material practice of making social and technical environments and texts as readily available, easy to use, and understandable to as many people as possible, including those with disabilities” (5). Access can be understood as the ability to engage with a space in addition to the material objects found (or absent) in a space.
Despite idealistic premises of the academy, higher education institutions are often inaccessible. I have experienced what some mentally disabled and Mad people call the diagnosis du jour, or diagnosis of the day (Prendergast 192). The psychiatric system has diagnosed me under a wide range of conditions and disorders in my early adulthood. Changes in diagnostic criteria can have significant impacts upon one’s lived experience – changing prescriptions/prescription dosages, new treatments, and the identity impacts that come with new medical language. As an undergraduate, after a year-long medical leave of absence from school, I met with Utah State University’s Disability Resource Center. The individual I worked with said there was nothing they could do to help me, presumably because of the nature of my diagnoses. Broadly, this project seeks to reduce the harm I encountered as an undergraduate student who was told the university could not help me. My experiences with ineffective academic systems are not unique to me. As Anderson et al. note, a significant number of students are unaware of the accommodation options they have. They write, “according to a 2020 survey (Mental Health America, 2020), 70% of students with mental health disabilities were not registered to obtain accommodations, and 33% stated they were not aware they were eligible” (Anderson et al. 6).
As a Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) and instructor of record for first-year composition (FYC) courses, I have often received accommodation letters on behalf of my students. Often, the accommodation notes something that does not exist in FYC, such as additional time for exams and quizzes. Building upon my own identities as a person and scholar, in this article, I set out to investigate the relationship between accommodation letters and access in FYC classrooms and argue that the accommodation letter is only a starting point for the ongoing enterprise of access.
Despite academic institutions’ legal, moral, and pedagogical responsibility to ensure all students have access to their learning spaces, accommodation at a higher education institution requires student labor before anything can be done. Students need to submit documentation of their Mad identity and/or disability to a designated campus office to obtain formal academic accommodations at a university. This automatically excludes students who are unable (or unaware) to secure a medical diagnosis – a requirement complicated by the uneven barriers to acquiring medical care. The office then sends letters to all applicable instructors on behalf of the student. These letters serve multiple functions beyond simply resolving student access needs; the letters exist to address pedagogical concerns, student access fatigue, and moral concerns about access, but often prioritize legal compliance.