My name is Natalia Rivera. I'm a doctoral student.
And, well, doctoral graduate actually. And in the Department of Hispanic
Languages and Literature at the University of Pittsburgh.
I'm also a Spanish Instructor and I specialize in Latin American and
[inaudible] literature and critical disability studies.
So my interests, my academic interests are intimately tied to my personal
experience as a student and now instructor with
a learning disability and co-occurring anxiety.
So, the first memory that I remember, just on a personal level,
recognizing that there was some access issues or some degree of
especially in the high school level, some degree of
a lack of knowledge, really, of different types of learning styles
and different types of processing speeds because of my diagnosis of attention
deficit disorder. One of the key components of how that,
you know, how ADD affects me is that I have a slower processing speed.
So, while my reading comprehension is strong,
my processing speed affects my writing speed so I'm not always
able to produce a paragraph in a timely manner. So, we often
had problems in English class. This was in tenth grade and
the expectation was that we would be able to write a paragraph in half-hour.
And often times I would need double amount of time. I would need an hour.
And sometimes I wouldn't even be able to finish one simple paragraph
in an hour.
And I remember my English instructor, at the time,
after class when I sort of approached her and said,
"Uhm, hey. Not withstanding the additional time. I wasn't
really able to finish my paragraph." And I remember she looked at me
incredulous and said to me, "I mean, if you can't even write a paragraph,
a simple paragraph in one hour, I don't know what to tell you."
So, I remember that moment. I also remember later on
when I was preparing for AP Exams. This also happened in high school.
This was my junior year. I was taking an AP World History class
And I remember that I approached my instructor, already knowing on my own
because I had already had plenty of experience advocating for myself since
I was a child. I already knew that all standardized testing
had a process for requesting accommodations.
So, I remember approaching my AP World History Exam and-
I meant, my AP World History teacher and explaining to him
that I was registered with disability resources, that I had a documented
disability and that these were the particular accommodations I needed
time and a half. It was a very common accommodation.
And I remember him telling me, "I don't have a problem providing you
classroom accommodations. I'm just not sure that
that extended time is provided on the AP Exam." And I was just
flabbergasted that an instructor would actively misinform me that way
because even I knew at the tender age of, I don't know, sixteen,
that ATS always provided a process for requesting
accommodation. So, I was stunned that an adult felt that he could
just misinform me that way. And I know
that misinforming me not necessarily with a negative intent, but he
genuinely had no notion of the process. And
yeah. So, it's un-willful misinformation, but
the effect is similar. Because imagine had he said something like that
to a student who had no idea how to request accommodations.
You know, how to attain an evaluation needed to substantiate
the need for accommodations. So it's just a lot of misinformation
enabled with ignorance and not so much malice.
But, just the complete lack of information out there just really compromises
student's ability to advocate for themselves.
In my personal work with the disability rights
community because I worked two and a half years at a disability
rights organization called Autistic Self Advocacy Network
and meeting a lot of people my age
a lot of students don't find out that they have a diagnosis until much later
in life. Once they start picking up on their own symptoms, they seek
out individually supports. So I
certainly, on a personal level, I benefited from my
mother's knowledge and from her experiences as a parent advocate.
I think my awareness of a level of discrimination
even if it was kind of on the level of microaggression,
I think I had more awareness of discrimination at the high school level
but, my initial exposure to advocacy really happened when I was young
and I remember going... There were some days off from school
and I remember going to the office with my mom. And I remember meeting
other moms and seeing her work part time at
this parent advocacy group for parents with disabilities
so I thank my mother for, you know, introducing me
to the concept of self advocacy and for empowering me
to use it in every aspect of my life and at a professional level
and an academic level, as well.
So, I don't really remember the day of the Americans with Disabilities Act
'cause I was just a couple of months old.
But, the impact on me, basically I sincerely
doubt had I been born, I don't know, forty years ago
as opposed to thirty years ago, there's a possibility that I would not have
attended college. And even if I had attended college,
I just sort of feel that I would have never considered doing a
PhD, if it hadn't been for the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Because graduate school, the level of support at the undergraduate level,
at least at a liberal arts college,
that tends to be more supportive is radically different from graduate school
where the level of support is practically non-existent, I feel
and I think a lot of graduate students feel the same way.
So without the ADA, I'm not even sure I would have been fortunate enough
to attend college so I think that it offered me
the protections that I needed to go beyond what my
wildest dreams, right? So I feel like...
I've had a very privileged life and I'm grateful for my academic
opportunities that I know there are so many deserving students
who didn't have the opportunities that I had and I'm not only grateful to my family
for their unyielding dedication
to advocacy and also very
grateful for the ADA as well. I mean, disabilities definitely run in my family
neuro-developmental disabilities, learning disabilities. I do have a cousin who
was on the autism spectrum and
I don't think, by no means, benefited
by the protections offered by the Americans with Disabilities Act in the
same degree that I did. I think unfortunately because I think there
still cultural stigma
particularly if an autism spectrum disorder
co-occurs with a intellectual disability, but he
finished his associate's degree with minimal supports.
I think because the ADA empowered me, I feel like
I'm prepared as an instructor to offer support
to students with other disabilities. I have
students with documented disabilities and I feel that because
of my personal experience as a student
with disability, I feel much more prepared to work with
a wider range of students who need different needs and I'm prepared
to be accommodating and I'm prepared to
at least endeavored to make students feel like they're valuable members of
my classroom. I'm not a perfect instructor. I still have a lot to learn
but, I think that level of
humanity, I think, that speaks to a lot of students and I think that I'm
better able to connect to connect with my students. So,
the ADA allowed me to be useful as an instructor, basically. But, I
remember one interview I did with a student on the
autism spectrum, who was attending a
college specifically for students with learning disabilities.
And she made a very astute observation about
learning disabilities under colleges and sort of their
focus on vocational training as opposed to academic training and
this was a smart girl who wanted to
pursue a degree in the humanities and she was doing an Interdisciplinary Liberal
Arts degree, but she couldn't take philosophy, for instance. Or
she couldn't do a major in history. And I think the way
the classes, the course work, the curriculum...
just how all the academic options were structured in this particular college
it sort of reinforced this idea that traditional academic
disciplines are somehow out of reach for a student who
reads as having an intellectual disability or who reads as having
potential learning difficulties and she lamented and I
wholeheartedly agreed with her appraisal. She lamented the fact that she couldn't
pursue a traditional discipline she would have wanted. She wanted to be a historian.
So I think that in a way, people wouldn't really read the legislation
very carefully. I guess in their attempt
to sort of include people, they're inadvertently limiting the options
for a lot of students because there are students who may need to
do- There are students who may want to pursue
physics, right? But they need a longer timeline to complete
their coursework, but it's just in a traditional four-year
college. Those mechanisms just aren't in place to provide
that support system for a student who needs additional support, but
who wants to pursue a traditional academic discipline. So, I think in that
regard, even though the spirit of the ADA, you definitely get the sense
with the wording of the legislation that it's intended to
sort of correct that kind of
societal exclusion and academic exclusion of students who want to pursue traditional
disciplines, but I think in that regard, the level of
enforcement I think is still very differential. I think another thing
that I do want to add, just for my personal
observations as an instructor,
the regular enforcement of the 2009 Amendment -
which was critical in the sense that it broadened the category of disability
to include vary proteins. And by "protein", I mean,
very inconsistent disabilities. For instance,
something like cancer or a auto- immune disorder
finally was incorporated into this broader category of disabilities, so it wasn't
just- So, that 2009 Amendment was critical because
it rendered clear that disability did not have to be
"stable". It did not have to be a "consistent"
you know, "putatively consistent" physical disability to qualify
as a disability under the legislation. So, this included
disabilities, whether somatic or cognitive disabilities
that were either inconsistent in nature or went through periods of
remission. So, something like bipolar disorder, right?
So, the 2008 Amendment, what was great about it was that it made clear that
not withstanding the point through which you're sort of going
sort of like thinking something like bipolar disorder where you're going
through sort of a manic depressive episode that at a institutional
level there was still a responsibility to provide out of supports to that person
who was experiencing cyclical changes. And what I've noticed
at the university level, especially with science programs,
that they include a tidbit that actually seems very almost
unlawful to me. You look at the
graduate handbooks and the undergraduate handbooks as well
they have this very strange policy that you're supposed to
let your professors know about your disability. That you
must tell your professors within the first two weeks of the semester
that you have documented disability. The problem is that a lot of
disabilities don't work that way. There are moments where you're
"functional". You know, relatively functional and there are moments where
you are not functional in socially understood terms, right?
And especially for students, this is not unusual for students who
receive a diagnosis later in life when they're just commencing college
which is a transitional period, so it makes sense that certain symptoms
that were not disabling in other contexts, suddenly become disabling
when you enter college. And that policy
basically
basically misinforms students into
thinking that they are not able
to request supports when they've reached a point where their
condition has become so disabling that they can't necessarily meet
requirements at the expected time frame. So, it's almost as if there's like a
mechanism in place to give the
false impression that you're not able to receive supports
later in the semester. So, I think in that sense it's more like
even if there are protections in place, institutional ignorance
and the regular enforcement continue to be a problem. So, if I could pick one
thing that needs to change in terms of access...
I'm gonna start a little bit abstract and then I'm gonna try to clarify what I mean
I think we sort of overcome this concept of
autonomy. What do I mean by that? And I think a lot of
disability rights activists, when we think about advocacy, they do think about
in terms of no collective grassroots movement, so there is an
emphasis on relationality, there's an emphasis on mutual support.
And I think traditionally in
Occidental culture, in Western culture,
the responsibility for seeking social accommodations for disabilities,
largely incumbent upon the individual and not society.
I think the ADA certainly
gives the impression that social
accommodation is in fact, what the terms or the phrase suggests,
"a social responsibility", but in practice it's not treated like a
collective responsibility and I see this a lot in the university in administration
level. So when a student begins
college, not only are you responsible for time management,
for learning how to live independently for the first time, if that's the case,
learning to live with roommates, which may not actually be accessible for you
if you're a student with a disability. You are also responsible for coordinating your
own accommodations and depending on the kinds of
accommodations that you need, I think at the undergraduate level - in my case -
it wasn't so overwhelming, I could still manage it, but at the graduate level
to try to request new accommodations, based on the new needs that you
develop because of the shifting levels of work and
sort of in the overall. It's just your coursework is just more demanding
at the graduate level.
There needs to be a way for social accommodation,
academic accommodations to be-
it needs to be re-thought of as a collective responsibility, but at the
administrative level there is a responsibility at the administrative level
for the student to succeed and that it is not merely
an autonomous burden, it is a collective responsibility.
It is a collective duty.
I do think that we as community members can take on the
responsibility to sort of identify those disabilities rights organizations that
are actively working towards providing
supports and services
and not focusing on the cure aspect because the cure aspect is not
allowing us to address the immediate societal needs.
So, I think organizations like the
Autistic Self Advocacy Network, the one that I worked for,
they have these wonderful advocacy center programs. They really work on
providing cognitively accessible resources for political
advocacy, for instance. And they empower
students to think of ways
for advocating for supports on college campuses.
So, looking at organizations that
empower people to advocate for themselves with the skills that they
have to feel that their lives are worth
living as they are.