The University of Rhode Island’s Disability, Access and Inclusion office is receiving more complex requests for accommodations as students adjust to post-pandemic classroom requirements, and it is working to address the changing needs of students with disabilities.
DAI provided accommodations to 1,425 students, or around 8% of the URI student body, between July 1 and Nov. 13, according to Paige Ramsdell, director of DAI. The office approved more accommodations in September than in the entire fall 2023 semester.
Students with disabilities benefit from course and exam accommodations because, while the university works to support students, professors cannot address the needs of every student, according to Ramsdell. Accommodations range from in-class support, such as recorded lectures, to tests with time extensions.
Ninety percent of students self-identified with DAI have invisible disabilities, which are disabilities that are not easily recognizable, according to Ramsdell. Ramsdell said that mental health occurrences and ADHD diagnoses comprise over half of this percentage .
Students who reach out to DAI for accommodations in mid-July, before the academic year starts, receive approval within the week of their request, according to Ramsdell. When appointments congest the DAI office in September, the request-approval process can take up to two weeks.
Students come to DAI with more complex diagnostic profiles every year, according to Ramsdell. To accommodate the fact that students are coming in with well-documented needs, the office must consider factors such as multiple diagnoses and overlapping symptoms when approving or denying accommodation requests.
In past years, students requested less complex accommodations, such as extended time in a specific course, according to Ramsdell. Now, that same student might request multiple separate exam accommodations, like having a private testing space.
This “drastic increase” in the complexity of DAI cases started before the COVID-19 pandemic, partly due to a growing movement of disability advocacy, according to Ramsdell. However, the pandemic changed the extent in which students use accommodations.
Many first and second-year students, who make up a majority of DAI’s accommodation requests, according to Ramsdell, were on the cusp of entering high school when the world went into lockdown. For months, virtual instruction and independent assignments replaced hands-on, collaborative learning.
“For many of our students who really rely on those visual or in-person indicators when ‘it’s time to do a thing’ – if you remove all of those, what happens?” Ramsdell said.
During the pandemic, Ramsdell said DAI witnessed a lot of students struggling to stay on track behind a screen. As students received leniency on work done online, they grew accustomed to extended time in areas beyond testing.
“I think people are seeking increased flexibility, which is not always reasonable,” Ramsdell said. “If you miss a class, whether or not I say it’s okay, whether or not you have the most legitimate reason, that class is moving along without you, right? That’s just the nature of college-level coursework.”
First-year students with disabilities might struggle initially with the constraints of a 15-week semester, but DAI aims to accommodate where they can, according to Ramsdell. The office does this through one-on-one sessions geared toward self-advocacy and career readiness. Still, DAI runs into trouble when classroom requirements juxtapose requested needs.
Students with ADHD benefit from classroom flexibility, according to assistant psychology professor Nathan Cook. Individuals might process information slowly and struggle with retaining it, requiring extended time in lecture and at-home assignments.
DAI has prospective students fill out an intake form on the DAI website before meeting with them; students must select a “documented disability” from a list of 10 choices. While the office adopts a lenient definition of documentation, it encourages students to provide a personal statement about how their diagnosis affects their learning, as well as a signature from a clinician or specialist.
While accommodation services can formally support students with documented disabilities, course format and classroom functions might pose problems for students without official documentation, according to Leah Heilig, an assistant professor of professional and public writing. Heilig, who focuses her studies on accessibility, was one of those students.
“I never even bothered trying to find accommodations [in school], because it just didn’t seem like they would offer anything that would be useful for me,” Heilig said.
During her time as a student, Heilig’s only form of offered accommodation was a system that excused absences. Through teaching students online and in-person, and watching the needs of cohorts change, she saw that awareness changed the nature of accommodation itself.
Heilig uses closed captioning in her Zoom meetings, allows students not affiliated with DAI to request extensions on assignments and has an anonymous form for students to suggest supportive classroom changes.
“Recent years have made me be rethinking how I teach my classes,” Heilig said. “Addressing the neurodivergency within the student population – I think that’s going to be increasingly important.”
Harnessing self-advocacy within students – those with documented disabilities and those without – is one of DAI’s goals moving forward, according to Ramsdell.
Prospective URI students can contact DAI through the DAI section of the URI website and currently-enrolled students can schedule an appointment through Starfish .