Student Accessibility Services (SAS) partners with faculty, the Registrar’s Office, and campus departments such as FO&M, Conferences & Events, and Classroom Technologies to ensure that all curricular and co-curricular aspects of a Dartmouth education are accessible to students with disabilities. With respect to classroom accessibility, SAS must evaluate two key categories of factors: 1) pathways to and around the classroom and 2) classroom features. Depending on these factors, SAS may need to work with campus partners to modify the classroom space or relocate the class.
The accessibility of pathways to and around a building, classroom, lab, or studio require the following considerations:
- Proximity of accessible parking or shuttle stop to the accessible building entrance
- Topographic features such as steep hills
- Proximity of accessible building entrance(s) to accessible entrance for the classroom
- Clearly designated areas of refuge/evacuation routes for individual requiring assistance
- Proximity of accessible restrooms (ideally on same floor as the classroom)
- Quality of access (e.g., a lift is inferior to an elevator)
- Distance traveled to access
- The accessible path is unfortunately often less direct and therefore longer than the inaccessible path.
- Ease of wayfinding/Presence of signage/Availability of maps
- Especially when paths are less direct, maps and signage are seldom sufficiently detailed to highlight the accessible route, and step-by-step instructions tend to be hard to come by and follow
- Connected buildings such as the Baker/Berry complex and Silsby/Rocky present navigation challenges such as elevators that provide access to only certain parts of the building for a wheelchair-user or the 2nd floor of one building connecting to the 1st floor of another.
- Inclusiveness of access
- Consider the main entrance to Burke, where stairs are surrounded by gradual slopes on either side, vs. Silsby, where the main entrance points wheelchair-users to a side entrance that requires a lift. (pictures could be good here*)
- Weather conditions and construction can pose additional barriers.
Evaluating the accessibility of classroom/lab/studio space itself requires the following considerations:
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- Fixed/built-in vs. movable furniture
- Fixed-height lab tables, cabinets, and hoods, and fixed-width spaces for chairs
- Amount of open space
- Presence of tiered seating and/or cut-out spaces for a wheelchair
- All of the above features limit the location(s) where a specialized desk/chair could be placed and/or where a wheelchair-user could sit without standing out, presenting a safety hazard, and/or blocking the view of students behind.
- Acoustical quality (e.g., echo, dead spaces, noisy air handler)
- Lighting control
- Temperature control
- Air quality/filtration
- Legibility and location of blackboards/whiteboards/monitors
- Presence of lecture-capture or other technology to supplement instruction for students who cannot attend class regularly
- Space and any necessary safety measures/equipment for a service animal
The most important accessibility features a professor can provide in the classroom are 1) inclusion of an accessibility syllabus statement, 2) making explicit reference to that statement and thereby acknowledging and welcoming students with disabilities into your course, and 3) openness to technology that students with disabilities may require for equal access to their courses:
- Use of laptop/tablet for notetaking and in-class assignments
- Permission for student to audio-record course, even when recordings are provided, as some notetaking technologies require the student to make their own recording
- A peer note-taker does not provide equivalent access to a student taking their own, supplemented-by-technology notes. Moreover, diversity of thought is curbed when one student is taking notes for multiple students.
Allowing students to bring articles/texts in their preferred formats, recognizing that some students use text-to-speech software to read electronic text