For mentors: on making graduate school more accessible for students
My personal experience with campus accessibility resources as a student was that (for the most part) I did not use them. This is not to say that I did not need accessibility support — however my most positive experiences along these lines were things that my advisor directly provided in graduate school.
When I began my first faculty position, they were provided directly by my department. It wasn’t until several years into faculty life that I asked for accommodation from my university, and the experience was not all that pleasant — I was questioned as to whether I needed services; told that my request (a nearby, accessible parking spot) would require a tenured faculty member to give up a perk. Finally, I had to go to my academic supervisor for support.
Now I find myself mentoring students with disabilities, and it’s my turn to provide direct support as much as possible, as well as to help them navigate the disability services that are provided by our campus. Several recent articles have covered topics such as mentorship [1,2]; writing collaboratively [4]; and first person accounts of student life [3], including both positive success stories and stories of harm [5]. These stories are an important step because disabled voices are often silenced and this causes isolation and harm.
My goal in writing this is not to repeat those accounts, but rather to try to suggest practical guidance to mentors. As advisors we always want what’s best for our students, and my hope is that this guide can complement and enhance existing mentoring strategies.
Remember to check in, regularly. Whether or not you are disabled, you will make mistakes and forget things; your assumptions will not match reality. If your students are willing, make this a conversation space that is safe, supportive, and commonplace so that you can work together to identify and solve problems. Some common assumptions are that a student can schedule things “at the last minute” (may be difficult if accommodations require a long lead time); that “essential” software is accessible (there may be better alternatives that the student would suggest if you discuss first); and that a student’s work reflects their expertise and effort when it may also reflect the limitations of their access to services or the fact that they haven’t had enough time to do things that are “easy” for those who have no need to deal with accessibility services and bugs.
Think about places where ableism creeps into academic practice and lead by example in questioning and rethinking them. I try to teach “compassionate time management” for example, which centers life balance and starts from a goal of “be in a good place” (whatever that means for your body/mind/life) rather than “do more”. Non-disabled advisors might not realize that students with disabilities deal with a constant barrage of ableist assumptions about the places they won’t enter (whether it’s a student who is Deaf in orchestra, bringing an assistance dog into a chemistry lab, or a blind student accessing the TA interface for their campus learning management systems (LMS) rather than the student interface). Disabled advisors might need to remember that your lived experience may be different from your students’.
Look for structural problems and structural solutions. If an instructor is failing to make class accessible, ask a lot of questions. In one case, it turned out they were only notified a week ahead of time (through no fault of the student) and had not had training in tools for making their course accessible (most of us aren’t taught to teach outside of one or two brief teaching assistantships). Don’t just educate this one instructor, make sure students know that big things (like accessible slides) should be shared directly and early, and teach about accessibility in a faculty meeting. In another case there was a communication breakdown about uploaded pdfs, which were not being made accessible. A possible solution is to modify their LMS to automate notifications to disability services about uploads. These structural “solutions” may not always work and require effort over time, but they ideally also reduce the burden on individual students and improve the overall quality of the experience.
Don’t depend on campus disability services to solve all problems. Campus disability services are often extremely valuable, and you should absolutely use them, where they exist. However, they may default to a set of prescribed minimum requirements to meet a legal obligation to protect the university, and even when they do not they are typically under-resourced and overwhelmed. A combination of advocacy and supplementation are both important to successfully support students, particularly graduate students who may have needs that campus sees more rarely. For example, we have negotiated for a student employee dedicated to accessibility support for grad student’s research. In an example of supplementation, it’s been important to experiment with supportive turn taking strategies in a seminar that no amount of captioning can replace for inclusion of a Deaf student. In fact, the collective commitment to turn take (and not interrupt one another) makes captioning more possible so everyone’s contributions are captured.
While the above strategies have been valuable in helping students with disabilities succeed, it is also critical to remember that most mentors, even those with disabilities themselves, cannot anticipate and provide every student with everything they need. Encourage your students to meet others with similar needs and goals, be humble about what you cannot understand (even if you have a disability yourself) and check in on their worries about longer term career goals (such as whether a faculty position is a possibility).
[0] Thanks to members of AccessSIGCHI and make4all.org for their help in proof reading this.
[1] Martinez-Cola, Marisela. “Collectors, Nightlights, and Allies, Oh My! White Mentors in the Academy.” Understanding and Dismantling Privilege 10.1 (2020): 25–57.
[2] Shinohara, Kristen, Michael McQuaid, and Nayeri Jacobo. “Access Differential and Inequitable Access: Inaccessibility for Doctoral Students in Computing.” The 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility. 2020.
[3] Jain, Dhruv, Venkatesh Potluri, and Ather Sharif. “Navigating Graduate School with a Disability.” The 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility. 2020.
[4] Das, Maitraye, Darren Gergle, and Anne Marie Piper. “‘It doesn’t win you friends’ Understanding Accessibility in Collaborative Writing for People with Vision Impairments.” Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 3.CSCW (2019): 1–26.
[5] Ymous, Anon, et al. “‘I am just terrified of my future’ — Epistemic Violence in Disability Related Technology Research.” Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2020.
