Editor's Choice: Lessons on Disability and the Rights of Students

Community College Review, Summer, 1999 by Linda L. Treloar

These trends present challenges for community colleges that provide education designed to meet career, collegiate, developmental and continuing education needs of people in their surrounding communities (Cohen, 1995). To comply with Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the ADA of 1990, community colleges must assure that qualified students with disabilities have equal access to all institutional programs and services (Miller, 1998; U.S. Department of Justice, 1996). Achieving this goal begins with awareness of language and media images that foster self-awareness of our attitudes toward disability.

Fostering Self-Awareness

Historically, our language and media images surrounding disability have evoked sympathy, pity, or horror. We may infantilize those perceived as weaker or unable to care for themselves. We see a person using a wheelchair and assume cognitive impairment in addition to physical disability. Table 1 summarizes some myths that often surround our perceptions of people with disabilities. Viewing each student as a person begins with self-awareness of personal biases and assumptions about disability. How do we see others: as having value and worth, capable, equal, responsible for self, able to make decisions? "Delabeling" our perceptions precedes our establishing a close relationship with a person having disabilities (Taylor & Bogdan, 1993).

Table 1 Myths Surrounding People with Disabilities

Physically disabled = mentally disabled
Wheelchair = hard of hearing, blind, or stupid
Learning disabled = Ignorant or mentally disabled
People with disabilities want to be pitied.
You can always tell if a person has a disability
  by looking at them.
People with mental disabilities don't know when
  you make fun of them.
People with disabilities must have done something
  wrong to warrant disability.

Our biases and perspectives are not self-evident: What do my perceptions and expectations mean for me as a community college teacher and for students, disabled or nondisabled? Our response to someone who moves, speaks, hears, sees, thinks, or learns differently from the expected has powerful ramifications for that student's relationships with us and his or her peers. We strive to create relationships that emphasize cooperation, personal attributes, and equal status. In so doing, we no longer focus on cane, crutches, wheelchair or other aspects of disability: We see beyond differences in communication or appearance (Livneh, 1994). Positive attitudes toward people with disabilities replace negative responses for stigma, bias, pity, and paternalism.

Don't assume that you understand disability. You may never understand--unless you become disabled yourself. College students with disabilities have learned to compensate for differences; ask how you can work with them. Cathy, a young adult with physical disabilities, described difficulties related to physical disability as "challenges" rather than as "burdens" (Treloar, 1998b): "Sometimes they might be like an obstacle course, but there is a way to get to the other end. Just have to do it a bit differently--not the conventional means. I have speed bumps, doors and windows, all those different types of metaphors."