vimeo.com/.../436881468

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,

Italian literature and
critical disabilities 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
original time. I wasn't

really able to finish my paragraph."
And I remember she looked at me

incredulous and said to me,
"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 her 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

'cause 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 to substantiate

the need for accommodations. So
it's just a lot of misinformation

Enabled with ignorance, 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 noticing, picking
up on their own symptoms they seek

out individually supports. So I

certainly, on a personal level, benefited
from my

mother's knowledge and from her
experiences as a parent advocate.

I think my awareness of a level
of discrimination