The transition to online courses has been difficult for some Syracuse University students with disabilities. Though disability services and staff remain available, ensuring that online classes are accessible has proven to be challenging and, at times, unsuccessful. 

SU announced March 16 that it would transition to online learning for the rest of the semester due to the coronavirus pandemic. Coronavirus causes COVID-19, a respiratory disease that has infected at least 138,876 people in New York state and killed 5,489.

As instructors redesign their courses to take place virtually, some students have struggled to navigate online conferencing platforms or access class documents. For others, managing looming college deadlines alongside family life has exacerbated existing mental health conditions. 

Restructuring courses to be accessible for students with disabilities can seem daunting, SU students and staff said. But instructors, they said, need to make sure it happens. 

Redesigned courses

The shift to online learning was abrupt and unfamiliar for many professors, but it’s important that teaching staff think about how the structures of their virtual classes affect a spectrum of students, said Kate Deibel, SU’s inclusion and accessibility librarian. 

“You can’t just simply take a course that you gave in person and suddenly change it to an online course,” Deibel said. Instructors have to be willing to make concessions about how their class works, but they “really cannot drop the ball on accessibility.” 

Some instructors have chosen to end face-to-face class meetings, opting instead for digital assignments or modules through sites such as Blackboard. Others are still meeting with their students through Blackboard Collaborate Ultra, Zoom or Google Hangouts.

Deibel, who works to ensure that SU’s library resources are accessible to students, said instructors should familiarize themselves with the capabilities of the online interface they’ve chosen for class and reach out for help if they’re not sure how to utilize its features.

SU provides resources and tutorials for instructors to use when designing their courses, Deibel said. In many cases, professors just don’t know accessibility features exist. 

Blackboard Ally helps instructors evaluate how accessible course materials are and can provide alternate formats to students, Deibel said. The university also has resources for creating accessible documents and presentations.

“You’re not going to do 100 percent perfect with this, but it’s a matter of providing the tools out there,” Deibel said. 

Instructors should try to use web pages or Word documents to display course content instead of PDF files, and they should provide optional captions for any video or audio content, Deibel said.  There’s also tools to download documents as MP3 files so students can listen to course content instead of reading it, Deibel said. 

Instructors recording videos or livestreaming their class should also limit distracting background noise from traffic, pets and kids, Deibel said. 

Even when course materials are accessible, managing due dates and class meetings across multiple interfaces can be difficult, especially for students with disabilities, said Judy Kopp, assistant director of the Office of Disability Services. 

“One of the big challenges that I hear is that students have to keep track of which class is using which modality,” Kopp said. “All the shifting that goes on with this is requiring quite a bit of organization which is challenging for anybody. Students that maybe have more anxiety or have executive function disorders — it can become really challenging.” 

Complications 

Students and instructors aren’t just up against a technical learning curve. They also have to contend with newfound disruptions the pandemic has caused. 

Andrew Benbenek, a junior broadcast and digital journalism major, said he chose to stay in his Syracuse apartment rather than return home. Benbenek, an InclusiveU student, knew taking classes from home wouldn’t work for him. 

InclusiveU aims to provide students with intellectual and developmental disabilities an inclusive and accessible college environment. 

Seeing professors, students and InclusiveU mentors in-person helps Benbenek stay engaged, he said. Suspending on-campus courses has removed the social aspect of college, he said.

“It is now up to the student to show up to class, to do their homework — and ones that normally would have a mentor to help them with these kinds of things,” he said.

Home life can also be an obstacle for students with attention disorders, Kopp said. 

“A lot of our students need a less distracting environment, and home can be hard, especially if there’s multiple people working at home, or multiple college students or having even high school siblings that are home,” Kopp said.

As students adjust to their redesigned coursework and grapple with the social and financial fallout of the virus, professors need to be especially accommodating of students facing mental health challenges, Deibel said. 

“Mental health is an aspect of accessibility we don’t talk about enough,” Deibel said. “A lot of people are not doing very well right now.” 

Limiting contact with colleagues and friends can cut off important supports for students and professionals with conditions such as depression, Deibel said. Instructors need to respond to requests for mental health accommodations in the same way they would to students with a visual or hearing impairment, she said. Professors have an obligation to accommodate students, she said. 

“If something you’re teaching is causing a barrier, you are failing at teaching,” Deibel said. “You have to make sure that the students have the chance to succeed.” 

Flexibility and a path forward

Before working at a firm in Washington, D.C., Gary Shaheen developed and taught an SU business course about inclusive entrepreneurship. He is now working on a similar, online version of the class for Hobart and Smith College. 

Shaheen worries that many instructors have lost valuable in-person lines of communication with students who may be struggling with class due to a disability. 

“Being sensitive and hearing their stories, you can do that over the phone, you can do that in a video way, but so much, especially around mental health issues, it’s such a risk for many folks — the stigma, the reluctance, the fear,” Shaheen said. 

Professors, now more than ever, need to let students know that they are there to help, he said.

“This is a time where remote doesn’t mean being remote,” Shaheen said. “You have to be even more hands on and attentive and intuitive with your students because you’re just not seeing them every day.”

The Office of Disability Services is operating virtually, but its staff and counselors are still functioning at full capacity, Kopp said. ODS is working to make sure that students still know that its office is there to support them, she said. Its staff is busy, like it always is, she said. 

ODS staff has communicated with all of its registered students and provided a series of website resources and advice for instructors. Students can still speak to an ODS counselor and get connected to other tutoring and counseling services available through SU, she said. 

Students who’ve never requested accommodations before but need to due to online course formats or mental health struggles resulting from the coronavirus pandemic should contact ODS, Kopp said. 

“There could be multiple reasons that a student could not need accommodations before but might need them now,” Kopp said. “We just want to make sure those students can still find us and don’t think that, ‘well the university is closed, I’ve got to just suffer through this on my own.’” 

Shaheen said he hopes instructors realize that the accommodations and flexibility they are currently being called on to provide shouldn’t just be limited to crisis. Instructors should always be providing content in accessible ways and speaking openly with their students, he said. 

Making accessibility fundamental to designing a course may help disrupt the stigma that often surrounds students with disabilities, he said. 

“Having a disability doesn’t mean dis-anything,” Shaheen said. “Sometimes all we see is the dis of the disability rather than seeing the strengths that come out of daily living.” 

Published on April 8, 2020 at 1:46 am

Contact Michael: msessa@syr.edu | @MichaelSessa3