By Caleigh Bartash
Online school in a pandemic is hard enough. Students have trouble paying attention. They worry about their health and their families while trying to earn good grades and graduate.
Adversity in the classroom is nothing new for University of Maryland students with disabilities. But the pandemic creates a host of new problems to grapple with.
Disabled students can receive accommodation plans from the university’s Accessibility and Disability Service through the Counseling Department. ADS adapted to online classes just like students did, providing new accommodations such as closed captioning and transcription services for Zoom meetings.
But as the pandemic progressed, students felt left behind, they said.
Juhi Narula, a senior business marketing and psychology student, said she faced unexpected difficulties with one her most important accommodations: typed class notes. ADS pays students to record notes for their peers with disabilities, but none of Narula’s classmates signed up.
Narula said she was surprised. It was the first time that she could not secure a note taker. She marked it up to fellow students’ pandemic burnout but still sought a solution.
After emailing over 20 people with no luck, Narula finally found out about a third-party notes service more than halfway into the semester. She wishes ADS could offer an FAQ page or point person to make implementing accommodations easier, she said.
The senior said she also wants the department to be more involved.
“I do think students with disabilities need to learn self-advocacy as a skill, but I don’t think it’s our job to have to do everything ourselves,” Narula said.
Narula said ADS has good intentions, but the limited staff seems worn thin during the pandemic, a period of high demand. All of the challenges made it hard for Narula to enjoy her senior year, she said.
The double major said studying without typed notes increased her already heavy workload. Narula estimated that she completed assignments in double the time of the average student before the pandemic. She said the figure has changed to triple this semester, harming her learning experience in the process.
“If I’m so focused on all of these mini assignments and trying to get them done by the deadline, I’m not focusing on the content anymore,” Narula said.
Narula isn’t the only one who wants more support. Sophomore computer engineering major Zoe Muneses said she wishes ADS would be more proactive, especially amid the pandemic and the ensuing mental health crisis.
“Don’t wait for students to be like, ‘Hey, we’re struggling.’ Maybe take more to prevent us from reaching that point,” Muneses said.
Muneses said it is harder to pay attention and to follow a schedule in an online setting. However, she would like the option to have recorded lectures when in-person classes return in the fall.
Alysa Conway, a senior government and politics and public policy student, said she wanted all of the resources that UMD offered during virtual school, including recordings, to be offered once in-person instruction resumes. She said many accommodations for disabled students could help every student in person.
Like Narula and Muneses, Conway said she wants to see ADS move away from the expectation that only students should advocate for themselves. Rather, Conway said she supports an approach that would put the onus on the university to develop inclusive classrooms.
Conway said the process of signing up for her own accommodations before the pandemic was not easy. She felt she had to prove herself to the university when she first tried to get her own disability plan, Conway said.
The politics student said she thought accommodations had been given more freely during the pandemic and wondered if the university and ADS could have been more flexible all along.
“It’s being given out like a breeze, like somebody won cotton candy at carnival,” Conway said. “And I’m just like, ‘Why did I have to fight tooth and nail with being able to get my accommodations?’”
With a return to in-person courses on the horizon, Conway’s advice for ADS is simple. She wants the department to keep helping struggling students when the pandemic fades away.
“Just keep the same energy, keep giving out resources,” Conway said.
Featured image: Accommodations reduce barriers in education for students with disabilities. But the pandemic has increased classroom obstacles. Photo by Joel Lev-Tov.