Putting the Person First

There are approximately 40 million Americans, or 12 percent of the United States population, living with a disability, according to 2016 census bureau data.

Of those Americans, the most recent figures show around 11 percent of students with disabilities are enrolled in higher education institutions.

These institutions must provide reasonable accommodations for students with disabilities and beyond to ensure their access to equal educational opportunities, the U.S. Department of Education notes.

But the phrase “reasonable accommodations” and the term “disability” are both broad, said Amy Taylor, the director of the University of Idaho’s Center for Disability Access and Resources (CDAR). Disabilities can range anywhere from physical disabilities to learning and neurological disabilities. That is why the Center works to involve all students who want or need additional help, regardless of their disability.

“We’re here to make the university and education accessible to all learners,” Taylor said.

The Center provides advising, academic coaching, alternative studying and testing arrangements, classroom and campus accessibility options and assistive technologies, among others.

Christin Fort, CDAR’s assistant director, said flexibility is key in providing a more accessible and inclusive education for students with disabilities. After a detailed and interactive intake process with Taylor or Fort, they discuss the variety of options available for any particular student.

“We can be creative to find what does work for a student,” Fort said. “Because every student — no matter their disability — needs something different to help them succeed.”

When CDAR moved into the Bruce Pitman Center just over a year ago, Taylor said it gave the program more room to provide services for students. In the basement of the building, multiple study areas and testing rooms are fitted with soundproofing, adjustable lighting and convertible desks for the varying needs a student may have.

Many of the nearly 500 students the Center works with ask for help with note-taking, attendance, academic planning and testing accommodations, Fort said.

In addition to the help students can receive from CDAR, another program on campus is also designed to help and advocate for students on the autism spectrum.

The Raven Scholars Program, coordinator Leslie Gwartney said, was introduced in 2011 as an organization to help bridge the gap between high school and college for students with autism. Similar to CDAR, the program aims to provide individualized academic coaching and planning for the 23 students enrolled in the program this semester.

More than anything, Gwartney said she wants students with autism to know they can come to the Raven Scholars office for any guidance they might need.

“It’s a place to find success — a place to belong,” Gwartney said.

Part of that success, Gwartney said, comes from learning social and life skills through the program. This sort of education is what Gwartney calls hidden curriculum or the skills students on the autism spectrum might want help continuing to learn during their college experience.

More than helping with academics and educational accessibility, Taylor said she hopes to encourage students with disabilities to be transparent about the help they might need.

“Much of our job consists of directing students to be self-advocates,” Taylor said. “That really means knowing they can be doing better and reaching out to find that success.”

Gwartney said many students on the spectrum leave homes where their parents were largely the advocates for their children’s education. Like Taylor and Fort, Gwartney said self-advocacy for students with disabilities can go a long way.

“Sometimes it’s the small things that matter most,” Gwartney said. “Independence through self-advocacy is huge.”

Michaela Brown

When Michaela Brown was 16 years old, she contracted a virus that compromised her immune system — unleashing an array of illnesses.

“Every year is different,” Brown said. “From different pains to food allergies. I’ve learned to roll with it.”

Brown, now a 22-year-old fifth-year chemistry student at UI, has central sensitization syndrome, a chronic pain disorder, and narcolepsy, a neurological disorder that causes sudden sleep attacks.

“My body doesn’t understand the difference between normal touch and intense physical pain,” Brown said. “Pain meds don’t work, so I just have to deal with it.”

Although others can not directly see Brown’s disabilities, they can impact her education on a daily basis.

“People look at me and often think, ‘You don’t look sick.’ But it really is something I deal with and learn more about every day,” Brown said.

She said the common stressors among college students can trigger her chronic pain, making it difficult to attend classes or complete long projects. So, Brown immediately looked to CDAR to help with those daily difficulties.

From aiding in the process of notifying professors about her disabilities to creating more accommodating spaces to take tests in, Brown said the Center helped change the direction of her college experience.

“Having that kind of support has been really great,” Brown said. “It’s helped me to build so many unexpected relationships.”

Those relationships, Brown said, were formed out of learning more about her disabilities and allowing others to learn about what works best for her and her education.

“If you’re someone who doesn’t have a disability or illness, or you don’t know someone similar, then you are kind of left in the dark,” Brown said. “I feel that a lot when I tell people about myself and when I tell them about my story.”

Not everyone may know Brown is a student with a disability, but she said open communication about being disabled is most important to her.

“Sometimes I feel there is this stigma with invisible illnesses. People get confused when they can’t see a physical disability,” Brown said. “But everyone is in a different situation and it just takes a single conversation to learn more.”

Scott Jones

Scott Jones, a 23-year-old UI student with autism, sees autism as less of a “spectrum” and more of a “web” — an intricate maze that works differently for all people.

“Using the word spectrum almost complicates the understanding of autism more. A spider web can be so specialized and always changing,” Jones said. “You don’t always know someone has autism. Sometimes it takes looking behind the scenes.”

Diagnosed as autistic at age 6, Jones said his mother helped him plan most of his grade school education. However, college provided a new realm of freedom.

“Academics has never been my strongest suit. But the transition from high school into college was an easier transition than I expected,” Jones said. “I got more of that freedom with a college experience that I had less of before.”

For most of his college career, Jones said he had never heard of the Raven Scholars Program. Unexpectedly, he learned about the office’s work with students with autism and immediately reached out.

While the program offers many different services, Jones said he enjoys spending most of his free time at the Raven Scholars offices being around people who care about his success.

“It’s nice to have someone to answer to at weekly meetings, but it’s really great to know someone is there and has your back,” Jones said of the program advisers. “Whatever it is you need — they will explore all options to help you out.”

For the fifth-year anthropology student, social interaction may not come easy, but with a background in the study of humans, Jones said he used his education to grow socially in recent years.

“I don’t naturally pick social settings since I have to make a conscious effort in that way,” Jones said. “But, I’ve learned more about people as a whole while being here.”

Daniel Robertson

After spending several years out of school, Daniel Robertson didn’t expect to finish college.

“(But) I just woke up one morning and decided I had to finish school and do it for myself,” the 25-year-old UI student said.

The transfer student from North Idaho College has two years left before finishing his degree in management information systems.

Feeling comfortable and welcome in his environment was a struggle until Robertson came to UI. Diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and placed on the autism spectrum at age 5, Robertson said fitting in hasn’t always been easy.

“Once diagnosed, the base urge from everyone is to put you in a box and stifle which does not fit the mold,” Robertson said. “I didn’t fit the mold. I guess I still don’t — but that’s me.”

Robertson, who utilizes the Raven Scholars Program for help in “navigating college life,” said the organization works to help everyone in their own way.

“There are all these unwritten rules when you’re in school. You don’t always understand those rules right off the bat,” Robertson said. “It’s nice to have people there who can show you the ropes and help you understand the rules.”

Moving away from his hometown in North Idaho gave Robertson the chance to find a space where he felt accepted and could find success as a student.

“I’ve found a lot of personal growth in the last year,” Robertson said. “I’m proud of that.”

Bobbi Flowers

A non-traditional law student, 52-year-old Bobbi Flowers spent just as much time studying on campus as she did in a hospital over the last several years.

After many years in different careers and her husband’s cancer diagnosis, which lead her to the conclusion she could help others through law, Flowers graduated from the UI College of Law last December.

In the midst of her husband’s health issues, Flowers said he still encouraged her to finish her degree.

“It’s not something I ever dreamed of,” Flowers said. “But I had to find something and I wanted that something to help people.”

However, when Flowers was a child, she knew something wasn’t right with her reading abilities. Throughout most of her childhood education and several careers before entering law school, Flowers avoided finding diagnosing for her reading disability.

But in the early 90s, she learned she had scotopic sensitivity syndrome — a perceptual disorder that complicates the brain’s ability to process visual information, according to the Irlen Institute.

Until entering law school in 2013, Flowers went through most of her life without outside accommodations when it came to reading and processing information.

For people with the disorder, black and white texts often become blurry, long sentences can be difficult to follow and bright lights may be hardest to read in.

Instead, Flowers said her brain processes information best when it’s showcased on a rose tan color paper or through that color of lenses. That’s when CDAR stepped in.

With all the case studies, texts and exams law school requires, Flowers looked to CDAR to help communicate her educational needs. CDAR staff became her advocates.

With CDAR, Flowers could print and read from colored paper that worked with her eyes and take tests in rooms lit just for her.

“After all those years of reading without the extra help. It put me back a bit. School could have been so much harder without the help I received,” Flowers said. “I would have never passed law school without CDAR.”

Ashley Lorraine

Ashley Lorraine, a recent UI graduate, knows exactly which Moscow sidewalks are the smoothest to ride on and exactly what campus buildings have the most accessible elevators — if they have one at all.

Lorraine, who largely utilizes a wheelchair for transportation, was born with cerebral palsy — a neurological disorder that affects motor skills and function children.

When the now 30-year-old first began school in 2009, she knew academics weren’t her strong suit. Accessibility and figuring out the ways to best attend classes on a campus with many hills created difficulties in her studies.

“I don’t want people to struggle the way I had struggled in school. There is a huge learning curve to entering college and an even bigger one when there are limitations,” Lorraine said.

Lorraine did not work with CDAR in her time at the university, but she found help in her community.

“People think very physical disabilities are the hardest things, but we’re just living our lives like anyone else,” Lorraine said.

All forms of accommodation, no matter the disability, are what Fort and Taylor said are key to producing a more inclusive education for students with disabilities. Whether it be learning access or physical access, Taylor said the university is making strides in both.

“The addition of elevators, ramps, curb cutouts and classroom technology modifications are ongoing projects, and improvements are made regularly as budget allows,” Taylor said. “By making something accessible for students with disabilities, we are making things accessible to all learners.”

More than anything, Taylor said the programs on campus encourage communication between students with disabilities and those without disabilities.

“We like to embody the belief that disability is diversity,” Fort said.

Part of that diversity means recognizing all kinds of disabilities, Andrew Scheef said.

The assistant UI professor of special education said people tend to think about the image of a person in a wheelchair as the “universal symbol for disability.” Recognizing diversity among disabilities, he said, is important to better understanding disability.

“Like any part of identity, you can’t just understand who someone is by looking at them,” Scheef said. “Ask people first. Get to know them. Some people want to talk more than others, but you have to start somewhere.”

However, Scheef said he understands the hesitation people might have initiating these conversations.

“What I tell my students is the default is always person-first language,” Scheef said. “Simply put the person first when you speak to anyone and everyone.”

Brown said she has experienced first-hand the discomfort others might have when broaching the topic of disability.

“When people hear my story, people want to be very careful around me or baby me. But that doesn’t help anyone,” Brown said. “Treat people with disabilities the same as you would anyone else.”

Like Robertson, Brown said she knows how disability can bring about diversity and independence.

“Essentially, we all come off the same assembly line. Some of our wiring is just wired differently,” Robertson said. “But we’re each our own electrician. It all depends on what we do with what we have.”

The most important aspect of better understanding the experiences of students with disabilities, Flowers said, is simply taking the time to get to know others.

“What is a little time invested in someone?” Flowers said. “That could manifest itself into a life-changing experience.”

Story by Hailey Stewart

Photos by Joleen Evans

Design by Alex Brizee