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Understanding Disability Services Toward Improving Graduate Student Support

Authors:

Murtaza Tamjeed,

Vinita Tibdewal,

Madison Russell,

Michael McQuaid,

Kristen ShinoharaAuthors Info & Claims

ASSETS '21: Proceedings of the 23rd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

Article No.: 3, Pages 1 - 14

https://doi.org/10.1145/3441852.3471231

Published: 17 October 2021 Publication History

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Abstract

Few students with disabilities transition from undergraduate to graduate programs. Graduate students often receive ineffective and insufficient accommodations, including lack of support specific to graduate students, because disability services policies are shaped by undergraduate experiences. To understand how disability services offices accommodate graduate students: we (1) critically analyzed disability services websites of 18 U.S. institutions, and (2) interviewed 17 disability services staff. Disability services websites publicly present institutional accommodation policies and guidelines, and staff are responsible for identifying, providing, and implementing reasonable accommodations. We found that policies may be interpreted differently depending on specific student circumstances. We discuss our findings in two main themes: (a) Policies and attitudes ascribed to disability, technology, and faculty, and (b) Impacts of policies and perspectives on accommodation decisions for graduate students. The contributions of this work include an empirical investigation of institutional support for disabled graduate students and suggestions for how to improve support from disability services offices to empower students.

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Index Terms

Understanding Disability Services Toward Improving Graduate Student Support
1. Applied computing
2. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing profession
  2. User characteristics

Index terms have been assigned to the content through auto-classification.

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cover image ACM Conferences

ASSETS '21: Proceedings of the 23rd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

October 2021

730 pages

ISBN:9781450383066

DOI:10.1145/3441852

Editors:
Jonathan Lazar
University of Maryland, USA
,
Jinjuan Heidi Feng
Towson University, USA
,
Faustina Hwang
Towson University, USA

Copyright © 2021 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 17 October 2021

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ASSETS '21: The 23rd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

October 18 - 22, 2021

Virtual Event, USA

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ASSETS '21 Paper Acceptance Rate 36 of 134 submissions, 27%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 436 of 1,556 submissions, 28%

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Cited By

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643834.3661509
Gray MAmos JBailey SGrande-Allen KKofron CStukes S(2024)BME Master's Programs: Who Are They for and What Can They Offer?Biomedical Engineering Education10.1007/s43683-024-00141-x4:2(175-183)Online publication date: 13-Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/s43683-024-00141-x
Mack KSidik NDesai AMcDonnell EMehta KZhang CMankoff J(2023)Maintaining the Accessibility Ecosystem: a Multi-Stakeholder Analysis of Accessibility in Higher EducationProceedings of the 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3597638.3614547(1-6)Online publication date: 22-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3597638.3614547
Higgins EOliver ZHamidi F(2023)Towards a Social Justice Aligned Makerspace: Co-designing Custom Assistive Technology within a University EcosystemProceedings of the 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3597638.3608393(1-13)Online publication date: 22-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3597638.3608393
Hadi Mogavi RHoffman JDeng CDu YHaq EHui PSpikol DViberg OMartínez-Monés AGuo P(2023)Envisioning an Inclusive Metaverse: Student Perspectives on Accessible and Empowering Metaverse-Enabled LearningProceedings of the Tenth ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale10.1145/3573051.3596185(346-353)Online publication date: 20-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3573051.3596185
Yıldız ZSubaşı Ö(2023)An Institutional Perspective: How Gatekeepers on a Higher Education Interact for the Organization of AccessComputer Supported Cooperative Work10.1007/s10606-023-09471-w32:3(713-744)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2023
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Zhang HMorris MNurius PMack KBrown JKuehn KSefidgar YXu XRiskin EDey AMankoff J(2022)Impact of Online Learning in the Context of COVID-19 on Undergraduates with Disabilities and Mental Health ConcernsACM Transactions on Accessible Computing10.1145/353851415:4(1-27)Online publication date: 22-Oct-2022
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