So… Student disability services. I wouldn’t have passed a single class without them, but that doesn’t make them perfect. Not by a long shot. Let’s just jump right in, shall we? Note: I do not have any physical disabilities, so I can’t speak for how well they accommodate physically disabled students.
In order to get accommodations in your classes, you need to be formally diagnosed. No exceptions. This, of course, puts anyone who isn’t a white man at a significant disadvantage due to the racial and gender biases in medical professionals and even in the diagnostic criteria themselves. It’s also extremely expensive to get diagnosed, making it almost impossible for students from low-income families to get accommodations. For example, I believe my psychological assessment (testing for mental illnesses and intellectual disabilities, among other things) cost me about $1600. I was extremely fortunate in that the disability services covered the cost, although I’m fairly certain they weren’t supposed to do that. But they haven’t come after me for the money yet!
In my experience living in Ontario, it was free to be diagnosed with social anxiety, clinical depression, and ADHD— but the ADHD was likely only covered because I was 17 when I started the diagnostic process. So, I just needed my new psychiatrist (covered by my tuition) to fill out some forms confirming that I had those disorders. I’m sure the process is vastly more expensive if you don’t have access to universal healthcare.
Now, this whole process of getting formally diagnosed doesn’t happen in a week or two. I had already been diagnosed with the anxiety, depression, and ADHD when I started university so I was lucky enough that, once I got the documentation from the school psychiatrist, I could get some basic accommodations within the first month or so of classes. But it wasn’t until after my second semester that I finally completed my psychological assessment. So, for my entire first year I was forced to work with minimal accommodation. Considering that I was also adjusting to my new workload and having moved out? I’d say it significantly impacted my grades.
So, hopefully, by the time you start your second year, you finally get your shiny new (questionably accurate if you aren’t a white man) diagnoses. Now you can get some accommodations. But what if you have impairments that didn’t get diagnosed? Or ones that just fell shy of the criteria in the DSM? Unfortunately, you’re out of luck.
I’ve personally had a bad experience with this. I’m fairly certain I have dyscalculia (dyslexia for numbers), but since I can eventually get the answers to arithmetic questions I wasn’t diagnosed. Never mind the immense difficulty I have computing them or the huge toll it takes on me. I’ll go further into this another time because I have a lot to say on the matter. Suffice to say, requiring a formal diagnosis leaves students who aren’t “disabled enough” for a diagnosis to fall through the cracks.
I’ve barely even scratched the surface here of the problems with student disability services and the accommodations they’re allowed to provide. I’ll likely do a small series of posts about them. In short: requiring a formal diagnosis for accommodation excludes the most vulnerable disabled students and forces us to go through a significant portion of our schooling at a severe disadvantage.
Astro Autistic 