Deaf College Student Fights for Adequate Accomodations
Friday October 3, 2008
It took me an hour to read through the entire Glenn's Story Book blog, but it was worth it to get the big picture. Glenn, a deaf college student at Central Washington University, is chronicling his struggle to get adequate accomodations from the Disability Support Services office there. It is a complex saga, involving:
- Typewell (a trained transcriber listens and summarizes information) transcribers who quit their jobs out of dissatisfaction with DSS policy
- Students' grades being jeopardized by inadequate services
- Less skilled/experienced Typewell transcribers replacing the ones who quit
- Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) stenographers showing up late for class
- On-site CART transcribers producing sloppy work, with missed information. One professor tells Glenn that the CART transcript is so bad that it will be hard for him to pass the class
- Remote CART transcribers unable to hear the classroom audio, resulting in an almost useless transcript
- Budgetary politics behind the loss of skilled, experienced Typewell transcribers
Related blog posts: CART versus Typewell: Does a College Have the Right to Choose?
Comments
Thank you Jamie for taking the time to read this entire blog and for your insightful comments and empathy regarding it. Glenn has been fighting this battle for almost a year now. Hopefully others in the Deaf community will also come alongside and lend their support to his cause, making a strong combined voice for change. The education of Deaf and hard of hearing students at CWU depends on it.
Thank you again Jamie!
Here in Poland, where I obtained my degree in chemistry in 2001, there is no such thing as notetakers or other commodities for the deaf provided by the university (the FM systems came after I graduated). But, during my career as a student at the university, only one person was not willing to show me his notes from the class (and there were plenty others), and I only had problems with one professor. All the other professors and students were really helpful and friendly, without any ADA to tell them what to do.
I was lucky, I know this.