Student Groups Report Negative Experiences with Students with Disabilities Office

Long wait times for accommodation, difficulty obtaining documentation among complaints

Unless you’ve gone through the Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) office, you might believe that if you have a disability, all you need is a doctor’s note and an appointment. It turns out it’s much more complicated than that.

“With DAMN (Disability Action Movement Now), we’re working to solve that a little more,” says Kimberley McMartin, board organizer for the Kwantlen Public Interest Research Group and DAMN advocate. “We’re hoping to move [SSD] towards a different sort of model where you get more of a say in your accommodations. Like some people really need a quiet room when they’re taking a test. It’s part of their learning disability, it’s part of their anxiety.”

There have been several criticisms of the office as of late, coming mostly from DAMN and the Kwantlen Student Association. Some students who seek accommodation feel that there are too many hoops to jump though.

“There’s not a lot of transparency, I would say. You can’t find a lot of their stuff online. You can find some, but it’s kind of hard to find it, and kind of hard to understand it, especially if you’re a new student.”

The SSD website offers forms for students to fill out, should they seek accommodation, such as an instructor letter and a consent form. They also have a long FAQ. However, McMartin says they lack a different sort of documentation.

“Any operating procedures, bylaws, or anything that showed how they operated, made decisions.  Most of the forms they did have were vague.”

“You have to book an appointment with an advisor,” says Landon Charney, Students with Disabilities Rep for the KSA. “Bring in a form from a doctor which proves you have a disability. I had to bring in a lot of stuff for mine to prove it.”

Charney says he has heard claims that the SSD office, particularly the one on the Surrey campus, is having problems. He believes that KPU should make it easier for students with registered disabilities to get accommodation, and that new students should be made aware of the office when applying to KPU.

“I would say that they are substandard in their ability to get services to students with disabilities,” says Tanvir Singh, KSA Vice President of Student Services. “The office only deals with students with permanent disabilities, which is really up for debate. What does it mean to have a permanent disability?”

Singh also mentions that whether or not a student is frequently seeing a doctor could be considered a factor in getting accommodation. “Some individuals with arthritis or visual problems might not be regularly seeing a doctor because they have that issue and deal with it their entire lives. They might not have documentation readily available.”

According to Singh, SSD requires about six months to request accommodation, meaning that a student who’s coming to KPU right after high school might need to delay their arrival, or study for two semesters without any accommodation. He says that the office is vague about what their documentation standards are, and that documentation gathered from a family doctor might not be considered sufficient for SSD.

In theory, a student with arthritis might have been happy with their family doctor, but would need to get referred to a rheumatologist to get the needed documentation. It could take months to make the appointment to get the documentation, which is needed before the accommodation process can even begin.

Singh mentions further that students cannot bring an advocate with them to the disabilities office past the first interview. An advocate could be a parent, guardian, caregiver, therapist or doctor. The SSD website’s FAQ says that this is due to privacy concerns.

“I would say they are performing inadequately,” says Singh.

Joshua Mitchell is the temporary director for the SSD, and has met with DAMN, the KSA and sat on the President’s Diversity and Equity Committee.

“There’s no set minimum threshold for students, each student is dealt with on a case-by-case basis,” says Mitchell, regarding the criteria required for accommodation. “There are certainly situations where a student is presenting a report of some kind, usually a medical report, which may have a number of things laid out within it, but the report may be quite old. So there are instances where the student is asked to get a more up to date assessment.”

Mitchell says that sometimes students will bring in documents from their K-12 days, but could be a young adult by the time they get to KPU. “Sometimes we can work with that student to provide temporary accommodation, based on an initial quick review, but in order to provide ongoing support, sometimes we need more up to date information.” The SSD website suggests that documents from within the past three to five years are preferred.

When asked if there were legal reasons for the standard of documentation required, Mitchell said that he didn’t have the expertise required to answer the question. The B.C. Human Rights Code says that students should not be discriminated against based on physical or mental disability.

“It is KPU’s responsibility to make its courses and programs accessible to students with disabilities in accordance with the Human Rights Code of B.C. and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” says Mitchell. “This is at the core of Services for Students With Disabilities’ mandate and we are proud to comply.”

In an email response from Oct. 7, Mitchell confirmed that a new director has been found, and will be starting their role in late November.

“We’ve been in the process of restructuring for the past two years now,” says Mitchell. “Their first priority will be reviewing KPU’s policies on supporting students with disabilities.”

While many student groups are critical of the Services for Students with Disabilities office, it can be said that the office is aware of these criticisms. Whether or not there’ll be a productive change is yet to be seen.