Level the playing field.

That is what Mark Harris, director of the University of Iowa’s Student Disability Services (SDS), says his team strives to do by providing academic accommodations.  

Academic accommodations are available to eligible students who have an impairment that significantly limits one or more major life activities. These can include learning disabilities; medical disabilities; brain injuries; psychological disabilities, such as depression or anxiety disorders; or physical disabilities, including hearing and vision impairments. While some of these disabilities may be immediately apparent to others, Harris notes that 96 percent of disabilities are invisible.

Accommodations are not intended to give a student an unfair advantage over their peers, but instead to remove potential barriers to learning.

“We want each student to be able to perform based on factors other than their disability,” Harris says. “We try to factor out the impact of the disability, whatever it is, so they can rise and fall based on the efforts any other student would make.”

For example, Harris says some students with learning disabilities process information slower than their peers.

“That’s when extra time for an exam might be important because the assessment wouldn’t be fair to the student if there was not an accommodation,” Harris says. “It wouldn’t capture their mastery of a skill; it would capture an artifact of their slow processing speed. It’s a question of fairness.”

SDS offers a range of accommodations, and Harris says some of the most commonly used include extra time for exams, taking exams in a reduced-distraction environment; and getting class notes through an instructor or assigned note taker.

Common accommodations

• Adaptive furniture in the classroom
• Allow audio recording of class
• Allow short breaks or flexible attendance
• Alternate format textbooks
• Class notes
• Deaf/hard-of-hearing accommodations
• Extended time for exams
• Memory aids, such as a sheet of notes or formulas
• Preferential seating
• Priority registration
• Reduced distraction environment for exams
• Scribe for essay exams or Scantron forms
• Use of calculator, computer, or other adaptive equipment for exams
• World language substitution courses

However, Harris says students may not be aware of other available accommodations, such as being allowed to audio record a class. And preferential seating can be arranged. For example, a student with attention deficit disorder (ADD) may want to sit at the front of the class, or someone with post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) may want to sit with their back to the wall or near an exit.

If a student has a memory impairment—often seen in cases of traumatic brain injury—they can work with the instructor to create a sheet of terms or formulas to take into an exam. This aid helps a student remember a term or formula; however, they are responsible for demonstrating they can apply the knowledge.

Harris says filling in Scantron forms can be difficult for students with poor visual spatial processing. They tend to get off by a line, making the remainder of the test invalid. These students can request a scribe to fill in the Scantron bubbles for them.

For students whose learning disability prevents them from processing information in the same way or at the same rate as their peers, foreign language courses can be especially difficult. In these cases, the student has an opportunity to choose from other classes that would satisfy the language requirement.

Students also can, after providing proof of purchase of the original text, get textbooks in alternative formats, such as an e-text that can be read using text-to-speech software. Harris says what many students don’t know, however, is that such software is free and available to all UI students, even if they don’t qualify for an accommodation. Any student or member of UI faculty or staff can download Read & Write Gold, literacy software that facilitates text-to-speech conversion and offers support tools for reading, writing, research, and studying. However, only students who register with SDS can access textbooks with Read & Write Gold.

Accommodations also are available for students with temporary disabilities, which usually involve an injury to the dominant hand or arm.

“A lot of colleges don’t offer this; they are designed for permanent, ongoing disabilities,” Harris says. “We want to make sure students can use our office whether the disability is permanent or not. It’s nice to have a net to catch students when a major event occurs.”

Harris says the impact of academic accommodations can be significant.

“The burden of not doing well academically is huge,” Harris says. “It affects every aspect of a student’s experience here. Accommodations can change the trajectory of a college experience from one that was going downhill, to stabilizing, and then going uphill. They start doing better in classes, which in turn has an impact on their self-esteem and confidence.

“It can be a game-changer for a student.”

Joy Melody Woods, a graduate student in the UI College of Education with a concentration in schools, culture, and society, knows this first-hand. The Fort Worth, Texas, native was diagnosed with nonverbal learning disability, depression, anxiety, and a few other learning disabilities during her first year of grad school. Among the accommodations from which she has benefited are 50 percent extra time for exams, which are taken in a reduced distraction environment; excused absences; and e-texts, which the Read & Write Gold software reads to her.

“It’s really night and day,” Woods says. “I went from my first semester—for which I got a retroactive medical withdrawal for because of how severe my disabilities were—to my grades significantly improving. I hadn’t seen that good of grades since I can remember.”

Receiving an academic accommodation starts with the student completing an application on the SDS website, including providing documentation of the disability. Harris says the requirements have been reduced over the years because the UI doesn’t want them to become a barrier to getting help.

Once the application is processed, the student will be assigned an accommodations coordinator, who will be their primary point of contact for services. Each semester, the student will log into a web portal to download a letter outlining their accommodations, which they will then give to their instructors. Whether a student delivers the letter and uses the accommodations for a particular class is up to them.

“The student calls the shots in disclosure,” Harris says. “The instructor is never told why an accommodation is needed. This is important because under the law, the student never has to disclose anything about their disability.”

While instructors may not always know why an accommodation is necessary, they are actively involved in providing it. It could be coordinating with the Office of the Registrar or SDS to find appropriate space for a student to take an exam, providing instructions for proctors supervising an exam, or working with the student to determine what amount of attendance flexibility is appropriate.

Andrew Hosmanek, a lecturer in the Tippie College of Business, says one solution doesn’t always fit all students.

“I talked to one student who sometimes needs to step out of class, and he needed something to fill in the gaps, so I started videotaping class, and he had the link to the footage,” Hosmanek says. “For him, that worked. But for another student, who had a problem synthesizing spoken information, it didn’t. Another option is for a student to share their notes. I worried no one would offer to do that because students can be competitive. But I sent out an email and within five minutes three people volunteered. They didn’t know the reason, and it worked.”

Hosmanek urges instructors and students to not be afraid to have these conversations and says in his experience they can lead to productive working relationships.

“In a couple cases, a student has come to me with an accommodation letter and ended up doing research projects related to disability law or things like that,” Hosmanek says. “These are good students who have a substantially harder road to travel than folks who don’t have disabilities. If you take the time to see the person as a person and not just a problem or another letter to file, these are some of the most amazing students I’ve worked with.”

Harris says sometimes there is confusion about what constitutes an accommodation and what doesn’t. For example, there is no accommodation to help a student write a paper or provide tutoring. However, other campus resources can provide such help, such as the Writing Center and tutor referral sources.

“We’ll help figure out what formal academic accommodation we can provide, and then for everything else on the list, we can refer the student to other campus resources,” Harris says. “The main thing for the student and parent to know is that resources are available.”

Woods says she wishes more students, particularly graduate students, were aware of these services—and would get themselves tested if they find themselves struggling.

“The woman who tested me for learning disabilities told me I’d be surprised how many medical students and law students and PhD students come in because they don’t know what’s wrong,” Woods, the College of Education graduate student, says. “SDS is amazing, and there are so many resources available; you just have to ask.”

Hosmanek agrees. As a PhD student at the UI, he was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and used SDS. He says he always did just well enough to get by until the increased difficulty of the PhD program made it nearly impossible to navigate without help.

He says the experience helps him better understand the challenges some of his own students face.

“The first semester I was teaching, a student came to me with his SDS letter. He was sort of embarrassed and told me he just found out he had an anxiety disorder,” Hosmanek says. “I stuck out my hand and said, ‘Hey man, me too.’ He did well in class and it’s been great to see him blossom. It was something he was afraid to talk about, but I want to show people there doesn’t have to be that stigma.”

SDS has experienced a 117 percent increase in the number of students who use its services over the past five years, from 508 in 2012 to 1,104 in 2017. Hosmanek says when he started teaching, he got one or two accommodation letters each semester, but now it’s not unusual to get 20.  

“I don’t think there’s a higher rate of disabilities,” Hosmanek says. “Instead, I think more people have a better understanding of these disabilities, are getting diagnosed and treatment, and are standing up for themselves and asking for help.”

Woods says she maintains a blog and podcast that in part discuss her experiences as a black woman with depression, anxiety, and learning disabilities, and she takes part in UI campaigns to promote disability services.

“I hope people seeing my photo across campus or on buses lets people know that the person next to you could also have an unseen disability,” Woods says. “There’s still a stigma, but by talking openly about them we can break that stigma.”

She also has some advice for students: “Give yourself grace, and reach out if you need help. I know that’s hard. But know you’re not the only one.”