Handicap Student Office, Office for Handicapped Students, Access Office and, finally, the moniker that resides on the door of S5 Memorial Union, Office of Disability Services.
Through the name changes, ODS held the same goal of helping students with “diverse abilities” gain access and accommodations within the university. These accommodations span from extended exam time to interpreters, depending on the disability.
“It’s not like a menu they choose from or a list,” Director of Disability Services, Barbara Hammer said. “They come in and we talk through what seems to make sense for them, and we try to make it work."
The most common accommodations requested relate to exams, Hammer said. ODS accommodates these requests through extended time, distraction-reduced environments for tests, scribers, readers or alternative formats such as E-text or reading software. Note taking also falls under this category, in which a peer volunteers as a note taker and turns in notes for the student.
ODS: One Diverse Student
ODS had little over 1,000 students register with the office, and this year’s numbers are similar, Hammer said. Registering means that the student self identifies as having a disability and wants to use the services that ODS provides.
“I can assure you that there are quite a few more people on campus who have disabilities,” Hammer said. “But they wouldn’t necessarily come here because they’re not requesting any kind of accommodation. Access at that point for them is not an issue, so they wouldn’t have a reason to come through here.”
About 3 percent of the student population are those that register, per the data Hammer provided. But the data for percentage of individuals with disabilities in the United States varies from report to report.
“You might see data that says 6 percent of the population of the United States are individuals with disabilities, but some places you can go and see 18 percent, so it’s anybody’s guess,” Hammer said. “It depends on who is collecting the data and how they report it and how they define ‘disability,’ things like that.”
‘Disability’ is defined in different groupings in ODS, with the major groups being nonvisible and visible. These are broken down into different types of nonvisible and visible disabilities. Some are more prevalent on campus and in the ODS office than others.
“Far and away the largest number of students that come through here are students with nonvisible disabilities,” Hammer said. “Of those, students come in with the diagnosis of Attention Deficit Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, specific learning disabilities, like a disorder of written expression or reading or something that. And sometimes those are combined. We have a lot of students that come through that have more than one presenting disability.”
Those coming in with psychological disabilities, such as depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder are next on the list. Chronic health conditions, those with sensory disabilities, such as deafness, hard of hearing, blind, low vision and those with physical mobility or dexterity disabilities follow. Those with cognitive disabilities, meaning that they fall on the Autism spectrum, round out the list with the lowest number of students, Hammer said.
The university has been supporting students with the aforementioned disabilities for a long time with the Handicap Student Office in the 1960s. The passing of the American with Disabilities Act in 1990 brought along the name change to Access Office.
MU is a public institution, thus requiring it to provide programs and services such as those under ODS because of the ADA and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 legislation. Section 504 prohibits discrimination based on disability, such as denying employment or access to programs, while the ADA provides the broad legislation and coverage for protecting those with disabilities from discrimination.
This legislation prompted a want and need for a more
comprehensive structure at the university.
Graphic made with infogr.am.
“In the mid to late 90s the decision was made that they really needed to pump up the services,
kind of make it a full service office,” Hammer said.
“One person wasn’t sufficient to take care
of all the needs that the students had. So, they hired a Director of Disability Services in 1996.
She built the office, added staff and that is when they changed the name to be the Office of
Disability Services, so that’s when it became in its current incarnation.”
Under Hammer’s guidance and her seven fellow staff members, the office continues to grow
with the addition of a Deaf Services Coordinator, Angela Graves, in July 2012. Graves is a
certified sign language interpreter that helps a lot with communication-access policies and
accommodations all across campus. ODS has also added graduate assistant positions, which helps
provide more on-on-one assistance, Hammer.
Graphic made with infogr.am.
Typical Disabilities Accomodated Through ODS
Adoption of a service animal policy to prevent problems between those using service animals and the university were put in place several years ago, as well.
Hammer, who describes herself as “not a spring chicken” capitalizes on her experiences over the years to create new policy.
“We have an accessibility policy that we adopted about a year and a half ago that really is designed to push the university in the direction to being more inclusive, proactive about accessibility than it has been in the past,” Hammer said.
MU provides many avenues for those with “diverse abilities,” connecting all Tigers under one community.
“It’s a good place to be,” Hammer said.
