[NABS-L] Disability Office Problems

[Selene Monjaraz]

Hello,
I’m so sorry you’re going through this. This was actually a huge problem
for me last year. My disability office was really understanding about my
disability, but they didn’t quite know how to help me. Honestly, I felt
like they were leaning into the whole, “you need to be independent,” thing
a bit too hard. There’s a fine line between independence and support.
The most obvious thing is to show/tell them exactly what you need and how
to do it. That should not be our job as first year students because it adds
pressure on top of classes but it’s an unfortunate reality. If you’re not
sure how those accommodations are usually Done for you, I would talk to
students and staff at other universities about how they do things. I’m
studying elsewhere, but my home college has some really good disability
resources. I’ve never even heard of before and actually changed how I take
notes and do conversions.
First thing like someone else said go to your disability office and maybe
meet with them about how they can get you those accommodations. If they
remain unresponsive, I would talk to your professors and maybe even reach
out to your affiliate but hopefully you won’t have to go that far. Yes, you
can talk to your professors about them making things accessible as well but
you’re right that the disabilities office it’s literally their job to
accommodate you so do give them a bit of grace with the transition, but
don’t let them slide.
Best of luck,

Selene Monjaraz


On Mon, Feb 5, 2024 at 7:24 PM Isaac McBurney via NABS-L <nabs-l at nfbnet.org>
wrote:

> Hey NABS Students, I hope you are all doing well.
>
> For my Children’s Literature class, we have to read some PDFs from various
> journals through our library’s website. Some of these have worked well with
> VoiceOver on my iPad, but the two most recent ones didn’t work so well. It
> decided to read all three columns of text at the same time which isn’t very
> helpful when you’re trying to listen for complete sentences. I sent them to
> the disability office last Tuesday, and heard nothing back, so I decided to
> call them on Friday. They said they would work on it, and then sent me back
> a PDF that was somehow worse than before. I explained that this wouldn’t
> work with my screen reader, sending a screen recording along with it to
> show what it was doing, and they have yet to respond. The entire team
> changed last semester, so this is part of the issue as everyone is still
> learning stuff, but this shouldn’t be an excuse to not provide accessible
> materials to me and another blind student who I know is having a lot of
> issues with them too. They also weren’t very helpful with providing
> accessible book information, and wouldn’t convert another student’s
> textbooks to an accessible format, so it was done by another professor.
>
> So my questions are: what is the best path forward for this? What should I
> do to help them resolve this, because it really isn’t working. Is there
> anyone you would suggest I talk to at the college or otherwise, and has
> anyone had a similar experience? I thank you for your guidance, as this is
> only my second semester in college. I hope you have a great day!
>
> Thank you,
> Isaac McBurney  (He/Him/His) | Special Education, UMKC 2027
> Board Member, Missouri Association of Blind Students
>
> (isaacmcburney35 at gmail.com | 816-398-9541 | Linktree <
> https://linktr.ee/IsaacMcBurney?utm_source=linktree_profile_share&ltsid=6b804ce5-9e1f-49ce-b10e-933ab21379f6
> >)
>
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