HIDC: High Incidence Disabilities in Higher Education Conference

Consulting students with disabilities about the barriers they face in post-secondary settings is a necessary step towards making these institutions fully accessible. As stated in the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s Policy on accessible education for students with disabilities, “to make sure that education environments are free from social phenomena widely recognized as discriminatory… education providers should collect statistical information to monitor, identify, prevent and ameliorate systemic and adverse discrimination”. As such, education providers must take steps towards collecting this data in order to meet their obligations under the Ontario Human Rights Code. One way to collect this data is through surveying students who are registered with Disability Services Offices (DSOs). These surveys could provide institutions with rich data on the experiences of students with disabilities as they transition into, through, and out of educational programs. These surveys have the potential to identify barriers that educator providers themselves may not be able to detect and may also provide creative solutions to meet the diverse needs of students. This presentation will share results from surveys conducted by Accessibility Services at the University of Toronto, St. George between 2019-2022. Examples of different topics that education providers could focus on through similar surveys will be provided. These topics may include demographic data, experiences registering with DSOs, use of academic accommodations, community and sense of belonging, satisfaction with supports, engaging with resources, and more. This presentation will also provide examples of how the data gathered from these surveys has been used to reduce barriers and provide more student-centred supports through creating of new support roles, developing of new programs, changing the physical office space, and forming new partnerships. The goal of this presentation is to provide educational institutions a framework on how to conduct these surveys and translate the resulting data into systemic changes. By the end of this presentation, audience members will better understand their obligations around gathering student experience data and how these student experience surveys are integral for removing barriers for students with disabilities