Academic Freedom and Accessibility

It often seems like academic freedom afforded to faculty and a student’s need for accessibility are in conflict with each other and one must emerge victorious. Many faculty feel that accessibility in some way compromises their right to academic freedom and that accessibility is more important than academic freedom. While it is easy to see why faculty would feel this way since accessibility is legally mandated, it is not an accurate representation of the balance between the two.

Yes, accessibility is legally mandated. Yes, students who feel that they have been discriminated against can file a federal complaint or file a lawsuit under the federal laws. But the commitment to accessibility should go beyond the legal reasons colleges and universities need to ensure that their programs, activities, services, and courses are accessible. As educators, we need to commit to accessibility because the content we are free to share with students under academic freedom is important. And all students should be able to access it.

As you will come to learn throughout this course, building access into the design phase for a course, activity, assignment or service is easier than trying to retrofit access into an already designed course, activity or assignment. Plus the accessibility features built into the course are integrated into the course as a whole so they benefit all students, not just those with a disability. Consider the student who speaks English as a second language. If you provide captions on a video in your course, you are not only providing access for the student who cannot hear, but you are also providing a learning tool for the other students as they can see the spelling of the word while it is being pronounced so they can continue to build their vocabulary skills. Captions also allow the adult student, who is fitting school work around work and family obligations, to watch videos with the volume low after his/her family has gone to bed for the night and still get the content. Including captions truly makes that video an inclusive, universally designed learning tool.

It is also important to remember that accommodations are not “get out of jail free” cards for students with disabilities. As you have learned in other parts of the course, there are three things that accommodations do not do:

reduce program or course standards;
fundamentally alter the nature of the course or assignment;
or pose an undue burden.

So what happens when it appears that a requested accommodation does reduce program or course standards, fundamentally alters the nature of the course or assignment or poses an undue burden? It is time for the disability services to work with both the faculty member and the student to determine the best way to accommodate the student and maintain the academic integrity of the course. How do we do it? We first start by examining the learning objectives of the course. The learning objectives are the contract between the student and the faculty member - they specify exactly what it is that the student has to do to successfully complete the course and earn credit. If the student has requested to convey his/her learning through oral presentations instead of a written assignment, the first question that needs to be answered is whether or not demonstrating mastery of course content using the conventions of academic writing is a learning objective of the course. If the answer is “yes, writing is included in the learning objectives of the course” then we need to brainstorm a different way to accommodate the student’s needs; an oral presentation would not be reasonable. If the answer is no, then it might be reasonable to substitute a written assignment for an oral presentation.

The field of disability services is filled with a lot of ambiguity and many shades of gray; it is rare that the answer to common accommodation questions and requests are clear, black and white, definitive decisions. The motto of the field is “it depends.” It can be stressful to work in such ambiguity, but it can also be liberating, as it opens the door for creativity. Designing accessible courses and activities are also invitations to think outside of the box and be more creative in our academic endeavors. In his book Building Accessible Websites Links to an external site., Joe Clark (2002) stated, “I refuse to advocate the unnecessary compromise of visual sophistication for accessibility. But I will not advocate the compromise of accessibility for visual sophistication, either.” Clark indicates that one does not have to come at the expense of the other; the same is true of the relationship between academic freedom and accessibility. Will faculty and disability services have to spend a little more time thinking through and brainstorming how to make something work? Most likely. Will it take more work? Probably. Will it be worth it? In my experience, absolutely.

Estimated time: 5 minutes