Sometimes unintentional ableism bubbles up in the shape of myths that society tells us about what a learning experience needs to feel like for students across the board. One hesitation I hear often from educators is their concern about fairness to other students when considering what accommodations are “reasonable” for their disabled students in the same class. The tension is an invented one, rooted in ableism, that teachers have been conditioned over time to believe.
Accommodating disabled students would only create unfairness for non-disabled students if we understand accommodations as shortcuts. But that’s not what accommodations are. Accommodations aren’t cheats. Accommodations are intended to lessen the load relative to the disproportionate effort that disabled students have to put in in order to succeed in courses that, much of the time, are not designed with them in mind. I think that disproportionate effort is a piece that gets lost in accommodations discussions. The goal should not be to standardize or equalize learning experiences. Instead, the focus ought to be on equity. Accommodations are justice in the form of scaffolding and support specific to individual students’ needs according to (a) the learning outcomes of the course and (b) the way their disability manifests in their lived experience.
Caitlin Cornell 