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
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, 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 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