Important Considerations When
Teaching Student with Disabilities

In general, please consider: 

·         Attendance and promptness: Students using wheelchairs or other utility devices may encounter obstacles to getting to class on time.  Others may have periodic or irregular difficulties, either from their disability or from medication.  Faculty and staff can help by being flexible in applying attendance and promptness rules to such students.

·         Classroom adjustments: A wide range of students with disabilities may be served in the classroom when a faculty member makes book lists available prior to the beginning of the term, by speaking directly toward the class, and by writing key lecture points and assignments on the board.

·         Faculty-student relationships: Dialogue between the student and the instructor is essential early in the term, and follow-up meetings are recommended.  Faculty should not feel apprehensive about discussing the student’s needs as they relate to the course.  There is no reason to avoid using terms that refer to the disability, such as “blind”,  “see”, or “walk”.  However, care should be taken to avoid generalizing a particular limitation to other aspects of the student’s functioning.  Often, for example, people in wheelchairs are spoken to very loudly, as if they were deaf.  The student probably will have some experience with the kind of initial uneasiness you may bring to the relationship.  The student’s own suggestions, based on experience with the disability and with schoolwork, are invaluable in accommodating disabilities in college.

·         Functional problems: Some understanding is required in working with subtler and sometimes unexpected manifestations of a disability.  Chronic weakness and fatigue characterize some disabilities and medical conditions.  Drowsiness, fatigue or impairments of memory or speed may result from prescribed medications.  It is important to distinguish such difficulties and interference with the student’s ability to perform from the apathetic behavior it may resemble.

·         Note-taking: Students who cannot take notes or have difficulty taking notes adequately would be helped by allowing them to tape-record lectures, by making an outline of lecture materials available to them, or by assisting them in borrowing classmates’ notes. 

• Testing and evaluation: Depending on the disability, the student may require the administration of examinations orally, the use of readers and/or scribes, extension of time for the duration of exams, modification of the test formats or, in some cases, providing make-up or take home exams.  For out-of-class assignments, the extension of deadlines may be justified.  The objective of such considerations should always be to accommodate the student’s learning differences, not to weaken scholastic requirements.  The same standards for evaluation and grading should be applied to all students, regardless of disabilities.