ADA office meets varied needs of those with disabilities

Ever wonder what keeps UD running smoothly? Up Close & Personnel profiles the employees who keep UD ticking around the clock throughout the year. This week, the focus is on UD’s ADA office.

Debbie Farris (right) and Nancy Thomas

3:35 p.m., March 15, 2005--Debbie Farris, coordinator for the office that provides accommodations at UD for those with disabilities, said she likes her job because it’s unpredictable. “You never know what’s going to happen when you come to work in the morning,” she said.

On any given day in the campus ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) office, Farris and Nancy Thomas, staff assistant, might be talking to a student with an anxiety disorder, asking a professor to share his lecture notes with a dysgraphic student who has difficulty writing, proctoring a solo exam for a student who has an emotional problem that causes him or her to talk during classroom tests or hiring work-study students to scan texts electronically so a blind student can listen to them on a talking computer.

UD’s ADA office began working with Mary Husty the summer before she came to campus with a cervical fracture from a 2002 diving accident.

Husty, a sophomore elementary education major, said her Smyth Hall room was adapted to accommodate her wheelchair. Farris and Thomas arranged volunteer note-takers to help Husty in class and sometimes have her classes moved to wheelchair-accessible buildings. She has the option of taking her exams in the ADA office, where she has extra time and can use a scribe or a computer.

Farris and Thomas connect with students, faculty and visitors with disabilities to the accommodations they need to be successful on campus. They currently work with 120 students and assist faculty and visitors when needs arise.

They have helped persons with deafness, strokes, severe stuttering, cerebral palsy, clinical depression, vision problems, spinal cord injuries, learning disabilities, broken limbs, multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia, bi-polar disease, emotional disabilities, obsessive compulsive disorder, muscular dystrophy and Asperger’s Syndrome--a disability that may result in a lack of social skills and preoccupation with certain subjects.

Farris and Thomas may accompany a builder to design accommodations for a student who uses a wheelchair or hire a fast-typing student with a laptop to e-mail text of lectures and classroom discussions in almost real time to a student with hearing problems who also is armed with a laptop and sitting in the same classroom. Interpreters also are arranged for students who are deaf and use sign language.

When Farris started working with students with disabilities 20 years ago in California, most of her students were blind or had other physical disabilities. Students with severe physical disabilities often didn’t come go to college, and students with emotional and learning disabilities often were not identified until after the Americans With Disabilities Act went into effect in 1992.

ADA office staff say the biggest issue they currently deal with is accommodations for students with emotional disabilities and physical disabilities that are not readily apparent. “A lot of times, if you do not have a well-documented need, then they are not going to get accommodations,’’ Thomas said.

Farris said the emphasis on aiding students with disabilities has shifted from providing special classes and isolated settings for them to helping them negotiate their own way on campus with suitable accommodations. An accommodation might be an afternoon schedule for a student who takes morning medications or separate testing for a student who is distracted in a classroom setting.

Farris said students who roll out of bed 10 minutes before class might be surprised to hear how many steps a student with handicaps takes to get to class.

“Just to do the personal things you do in the morning, people with disabilities struggle to do what a nondisabled person takes for granted--just getting up, getting dressed, eating, getting to class. It takes them about three times as long as it would if you just jumped in your car or just walked to class. Obstacles are a constant, whether architectural or attitudinal,” she said.

“We’re also here as a resource for faculty, staff and visitors,’’ Farris said. “We don’t know everything, but I know where to call to get answers.”

Farris and Thomas said their work is rewarding because students are often thankful even for small accommodations that level the playing field for them.

“They’ve struggled for a long time because of learning or other disabilities, and, when they finally get extra time or another accommodation they need, they say it makes a big difference,” Farris said.

Photo by Kathy F. Atkinson

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