Work-In-Progress Investigation on Academic Accommodations: Needs and Barriers for Support

Adopting an inductive, exploratory approach, a study is being conducted for all students at the University of Prince Edward Island to document the met and unmet academic accommodation needs of the student body, as well as the barriers to receiving support.Four participant groups are of interest: (1) students without accessibility needs, students with accessibility needs who: (2) are registered with the university's Accessibility Services office, (3) are in the process of registering, and (4) have not tried to register.In particular, this study aims to identify the population of students who would benefit from academic accommodation but who have not been registered for support.Many reasons could cause this: stigma surrounding disability either from peers or instructors, lack of previous documentation for their disability, high financial or time requirements for acquiring formal documentation, or the perception that offered academic accommodations are not sufficient for fulfilling needs, among others.Much of the current literature on academic accommodations for invisible disabilities focuses on the need for Universal Design in curriculum creation, as well as the stigma surrounding self-declaration of said disabilities.This work-in-progress paper provides literature on academic accommodations to document the need for such a study.Additionally, using mixed-method quantitative and qualitative analyses, preliminary results indicate 25% of participants do not feel they have an advocate, 62% believe there is a negative perception towards those who receive academic accommodations from teachers and instructors, and on the whole, needs are being met.Barriers include the necessity for diagnosis or psychological evaluation for certain conditions, unsupportive instructors, and test accommodations requiring a week's notice.