News and Events
Breaking Down Barriers
Thanks to changing attitudes and a lot more government
money, students with disabilities are flocking to Ontario's
colleges and universities
October 28, 2006
Toronto Star
Daniel Girard, Education Reporter
It long ago moved beyond simply erecting wheelchair ramps
into campus buildings.
A record number of students with disabilities study at Ontario's
universities and colleges. Their ranks have swelled nearly
sixfold in a decade-and-a-half on the strength of evolving
societal acceptance, progressive public policy, advanced technology
and people who refused to take no for an answer.
On campuses a generation ago, they were few, stigmatized
and left to go it alone. Today, school administrators are
helping them increasingly take their place in lecture halls
and laboratories where the focus is much more about fulfilling
academic expectations than battling perceived limitations.
"It just makes sense," says Frank Smith of the
National Educational Association of Disabled Students (NEADS)
in Ottawa. "Everybody needs to be included. "Everybody
needs to have an opportunity."
More than 30,000 Ontario university and college students
— or about 5 per cent — identify themselves as
disabled and study in a range of programs as diverse as they
are. Some have more commonly recognized or visible disabilities
and are in a wheelchair or use a cane or sign language interpreter,
while others battle dyslexia, depression, Crohn's disease
and other so-called invisible disabilities.
Over the years, federal and provincial laws, infrastructure
projects and capital grants have enabled universities and
colleges to retrofit older buildings with such things as elevators,
and make new ones accessible.
Meanwhile, Queen's Park, under governments of all political
stripes, has boosted funding to post-secondary institutions
for services for disabled students. Last year, it reached
$28.2 million, which was used for such things as new technology
for students with learning disabilities, more note-taking
support and improving physical access for those with limited
mobility.
It's all part of the "normalization" of campus
life for disabled students, says Aaron Broverman, 20. The
fourth-year journalism student at Toronto's Ryerson University
has what he describes as a "mild form" of cerebral
palsy and frequently uses a scooter to get around. While school
officials made it clear even before his arrival on campus
that a host of disability accommodations were available, he's
needed very few.
"Things have gone very well," says Broverman, who
came to Ryerson from the Vancouver area to prove that he could
successfully live away from home. His experience is proof
the stigma for disabled students has greatly diminished, he
says.
"People have become more used to seeing people with
disabilities on campuses. It just seems like it's more normal."
Premier Dalton McGuinty wants to make it even more so. In
their 2005 budget, the Liberals announced that people with
disabilities would be one of four groups — along with
aboriginal people, francophones and the first in a family
to attend university or college — targeted for higher
participation in post-secondary education.
Adopting the recommendation of a post-secondary education
task force, the government announced five years of escalating
funding. It also asked advisory groups to look at ways to
improve not only participation rates and success but jobs
after graduation.
"If this province is to reach its potential, we need
every individual in it to be able to reach their potential,"
says Chris Bentley, minister of training, colleges and universities.
"We should not leave anybody on the sidelines.
And, frankly, we can't afford to."
Studies consistently show that people with disabilities are
much more likely to live in poverty than others in the general
population. A key reason is that a far smaller percentage
of them complete post-secondary education. Getting more of
them into the system is a start but advocates say much more
is needed.
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`Everybody needs to be included. Everybody needs to have an
opportunity'
Frank Smith, National Educational Association of Disabled
Students
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"We're tremendously further along than we were,"
says Eunice Lund-Lucas, manager of disability
services at Trent University in Peterborough.
But, she says, the dramatic increase in higher-needs students
on campuses has outpaced the money to deal will them, especially
for hiring support staff and buying expensive new equipment
vital to the success of some people.
"We've typically spent more time reacting to needs than
proactively planning to meet them," says Lund-Lucas,
who is also president of the Canadian Association of Disability
Service Providers in Post-secondary Education. "We're
getting better but it's not happening as fast as we'd all
like.
"Integration is about getting to the stage where they're
part of the thought process in everything we do, not an add-on."
While the dramatic growth in participation by students with
disabilities in Ontario universities and colleges dates to
the start of the 1990s, it's rooted in provincial policy a
decade earlier. In 1980, Bette Stephenson, education minister
under Progressive Conservative premier Bill Davis, introduced
Bill 82, which promised to integrate children with special
needs into the public school system.
It's seen as a watershed because it enshrined in law —
and the minds of Ontarians — the notion that students
with disabilities belonged in the same classrooms as so-called
"normal" ones. It was only a matter of time until
efforts were made to better welcome them into universities
and colleges.
In the late 1980s, the Liberals were the first to target
post-secondary funding to improve disabled access, including
money for all schools to open special needs offices.
The Conservatives announced in their 1997 budget a five-year,
$30-million fund to help those with learning disabilities
go on to post-secondary studies. The initiative included a
task force headed by Stephenson that designed and implemented
pilot projects at 13 universities and colleges.
When those pilot projects ended in 2002, the Tories expanded
them province-wide. In addition, they offered funding for
universities and colleges to hire a learning strategist to
work with students with learning disabilities and an adaptive
technologist to make them aware of the latest equipment available.
Ontario is seen as among the best in the country at meeting
the needs of post-secondary students with disabilities. Professionals
in the field on each campus belong to provincial associations
and regularly exchange information on best practices and emerging
trends. They also belong to national groups that learn from
the successes and failures of other provinces, and about new
programs and technologies.
Stephenson says it's a "real achievement" that
attitudes in society have changed in the last 25 years to
the point that "kids who are in wheelchairs can think
seriously about going to university and college." But
she says much more remains to be done for those with invisible
disabilities.
"There's still an attitude among some people that if
you require some kind of accommodation, you're not as smart
as you should be," says Stephenson, whose daughter overcame
a severe learning disability to become a school principal.
"Research, of course, has shown that's just garbage."
Students diagnosed with learning disabilities form the largest
percentage of students with disabilities on Ontario campuses
at more than 40 per cent. Like with many others with disabilities,
improved technology has played a key role in their ability
to access — and succeed — at university and college.
But just how much is left to do is evident each fall when
every Ontario university and college drafts an accessibility
plan identifying barriers faced by students with disabilities
and how to overcome them, a requirement of Ontario legislation
passed in 2001 and expanded last year.
A range of the proposals from some schools this year include:
Increasing the availability of alternative course material
for blind students.
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`People have become more used to seeing people with disabilities
on campuses'
Aaron Broverman, Ryerson University student
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Seminars and workshops for faculty, staff and students on
the needs of those with disabilities.
Making baskets and small carts available in the library to
enable students with limited strength and mobility to carry
more than one book.
Updating campus security and emergency response centres to
accept text messages from those unable to speak.
Mental health is "the last big barrier" to fall,
says Susan Alcorn MacKay, director of disability services
at the Glenn Crombie Centre at Cambrian College in Sudbury.
It continues to be misunderstood by many faculty, staff and
students, meaning people are often stigmatized and struggle
to get help.
"It's not the physical barriers that are the main problem
right now, it's the attitudinal ones," says Alcorn MacKay,
who was a member of the task force launched by the Conservatives
in 1997 and is director of one of only two learning disability
assessment centres in Ontario for students heading into post-secondary
schools.
But through the better understanding of mental health, ongoing
seminars and workshops and staff recruitment on campus over
the next few years, "we'll continue to break them down,"
she says.
Angela Hildyard, vice-president of human resources and equity
at the University of Toronto, acknowledges that there's still
more work needed to change some attitudes.
"Yes, we've got some folks who may object to us going
down this path,"
Hildyard says. "My response to them is: `If this was
your child, if this was your partner, if this was you, then
what would you want to see happen?'"
Still, long-time U of T criminology professor Anthony Doob
this week condemned the school's brass for planning to move
his department next year from a wheelchair-accessible building
to one that won't be accessible despite a $3.5 million retrofit.
The renovated facility, which is in the shadow of the Legislature
building, will have an accessible first floor, but no means
for those unable to walk to get to the other three floors,
including faculty offices and the student lounge. "The
symbolism is absolutely horrible," Doob says.
A U of T spokesperson says because there's no specific need
right now for accessibility for students, staff or faculty,
the building has a lower priority for upgrades than others
on campus.
Long-time disabled rights campaigner David Lepofsky says
it's another example of the work that remains to be done.
In addition to such old barriers, he says, there are a host
of new ones, such as university and college websites that
are not updated with the latest computer software that allows
the blind — like him — to read them.
It's inexcusable in places of higher learning, says Lepofsky,
a crown attorney. They have entire faculties of people to
design, build and implement programs and equipment to increase
accessibility, he says.
"They shouldn't be followers," he says. "They
should be in the lead."
While technology, public policy and changing societal norms
have certainly played a key role in breaking down barriers
for people with disabilities on Ontario campuses, Dan Pletzer,
manager of counselling and disability services at Nipissing
University in North Bay, says it's the students — and
their families and advocates — who've led the way. They
have battled through ignorance and made people understand
that they belong.
"Because of them, these issues have gone from the periphery
to much more mainstream," says Pletzer, who is also chair
of the Inter-University Disability Issues Association in Ontario.
"They weren't just given a voice, they took it and have
become louder.
"It took a long time, but now they're being heard."
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