The Decibel - The growing demand for disability accommodations in universities

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

At universities across Canada, requests for disability accommodations are on the rise. Since the 2013-2014 school year – the number of students requesting accommodations – has doubled to 12 per cent. And at Queen’s University in Kingston, about one in four students now access accommodations. This aid is often a lifeline for students but schools are now struggling to keep up with demand.Joe Friesen is the Globe’s postsecondary reporter. He’s on the show to talk about what’s driving this increase in requests for accommodation, and how universities may need to change their approach to students.Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at [e-mail]

Universities across Canada have seen a trend over the last few years. The number of students accessing disability accommodations is up. Way up. At Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, 22% – almost 1 in 4 students – were approved for accommodations during the last school year. Five years ago, it was around one in ten students. And that increase is reflected elsewhere in Canada, too. For many students, these accommodations can be a lifeline as they move through university.

But schools are struggling to keep up with the demand. So today I'm speaking with Joe Friesen. He's the Globe's post-secondary reporter. He'll talk about what's driving this increase and what might need to change at universities in order to meet that need. I'm Maynika Ramon-Wilms and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Joe, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. I know that you spoke to professors for this story who've noticed an increase in students

with accommodations in their classes at these schools. How has that changed affecting their work? For professors, this adds a fair bit of extra time, and they have to take a lot of additional things into account that maybe they weren't doing before. So I think it's adding to their workload, and that's one of the issues that they've raised. So that can take a number of different forms. It could be in how they deliver their lectures,

that they have to make sure there's captioning, for example, or that someone is recording for students who aren't able to follow everything, if that's something that they face to make sure there's captioning, for example, or that someone is recording for students who aren't able to follow everything, if that's something that they face in their class. Or it could mean on assessments that they have to offer, say, a range of exam options, or they have students writing exams on different days. So it can take a number of different forms

that they weren't doing before. Yeah. Did anyone give you, I guess, kind of a rough estimate of how much that all adds up, like in terms of extra time that they're spending? What are we looking at? Well, one professor I spoke to said that he actually did try to calculate it for his class.

And in a class of, say, 200 plus students, one third of them need accommodations. He was figuring, so five minutes for every email on each side. He thought that for every assignment, it added up to something like 14 hours of additional time. Wow. Which is a very high estimate. And I'm sure some things can be mitigated a bit

with technology. But the 14 hours, I guess, it probably also takes into account the time the student is spending. It's a lot of additional time. It takes up a fair bit of the time that professors and instructors dedicate to assessment. And you mentioned a couple of things when you were talking about those examples. But when we use the phrase accommodations here, Joe, like what exactly does that encompass?

So an accommodation can be on either sort of the instructional side or on the assessment side. We tend to think more about on the assessment side where people can be given additional time to write their exams or hand in their assignments. They might have things to assist them in an exam setting, like a memory sheet or something that would prompt them. Can't contain the answers to questions, but it can be sort of a code that they can understand that helps them remember things. They can have special considerations, like being able to write an exam in a smaller setting, not surrounded by 300 students in a gymnasium, say,

but in a classroom of six or eight students. And then it could be things like on the instructional side, like I mentioned, you could have audio captioning, you could have a need to have someone interpreting for you. There's a whole range of things, you know, it's very wide. Okay, yeah. And I will just point out that, at least in Ontario, universities are legally obligated to offer accommodation to students with disabilities, and this is in order to comply with the Ontario Human Rights Code. What do students, though, need to do in order

to, I guess, qualify for accommodations at schools? So for a student, the process basically works like this. They need to have a diagnosis from some kind of a professional, a physician, psychologist, a nurse practitioner, that they can bring to the school and say, this gives you an indication of the difficulties I would face in a class or assessment setting. And then they work with a professional in the university's disabilities office to devise a plan that will help find the appropriate accommodations for their situation. Okay. And I guess I should ask then, when we're talking about disabilities, what does that refer to?

So disabilities can refer to both physical disabilities and those that are more on the side of sort of the mental health or the learning disability or conditions like ADHD and autism that affect how a student performs in the classroom. So there's quite a broad range of things that can encompass the invisible disabilities, as they're called, or the ones that have been growing more rapidly over the last decade, or showing up more in the statistics of students

who are seeking accommodations. Do we have a sense then on how much those have grown in the last little while? So looking at the example of one university, Queens, where they did a fairly in-depth report into the situation at their school, well, what they found is that about 75% of the conditions that they've logged at their disabilities office

over the last few years are in the sort of invisible disabilities category. 33% of them mental health, 29% ADHD, and 14% learning disabilities. Okay, so that's numbers from Queen's University. Is what we're seeing at Queen's, Joe, is that also reflected at other universities across Canada? Yeah, I believe it is.

You know, to take a few other examples, you could look at McMaster. Over the last decade, I think they've seen a tripling of the number of students there who identified as having a disability. UBC does a major survey of its undergraduates every year, and it indicates about a quarter for the last few years have identified as having a disability. And there's something called the Canadian University Survey Consortium that has done a survey of first-year students

since about 1998. And you can see the trend there going back so more than 20 years now. In 1998, I think the number of students reporting a disability was about 5%. And it stayed in that range for about a decade, then jumps to 22% in 2016 and 31% in 2022. So there is a distinction between the number of students

who report a disability and those who seek an accommodation. Many fewer students will actually seek an accommodation than have a disability. So that's looking at universities. Do we know if this trend is also reflected in the general population across Canada? Yeah, it is a similar trend across the broader population.

So Statistics Canada has a survey on disability that they have done over five-year time intervals, and in 2017 the rate in the national population was about 13% and then by 2022 it had increased to 20%. So you can see even in the broader population there's an expansion that would not necessarily be explained by just growth in the population clearly more people are identifying as having a disability over time as well. Okay, so this kind of gets into my big question here, which is what is driving this increase?

Do we know what's actually causing it? Well, PARP is, I guess, an expansion in what people understand as disability and a greater willingness to identify that way, probably. At Queen's, where the report was in some ways looking at this question, they said they couldn't discern a reason. Although when speaking to people on campus, there was this widespread sense that there'd been what they called a tsunami of accommodation requests. They didn't have a ready explanation

for why the numbers had grown so quickly. But I think it may reflect just a changing in society's attitudes toward disability, greater willingness for people to seek an accommodation perhaps, and diminishing of the stigma around questions of disability. We'll be back in a moment. So Joe, many universities across Canada are seeing this increase in students trying to access accommodations.

I guess I want to ask you, what students think of this? Did you get to talk to any of them and hear their thoughts? Yeah, well I went to Queen's because this is where the report had come out and there had been lots of discussion about the range of feelings on campus, about the implications of this increase in accommodations. And so I thought it would be difficult to find students to talk to about this. But since the ratios show about one in four students

are eligible for accommodations, I thought I would just try. And yeah, roughly the number of people I spoke to matched that ratio who said that they have accommodations. So the things I heard from students reflected a broad range of opinion. Many students who receive accommodations think it's entirely appropriate that they receive the accommodations that they do, that they help them achieve their learning goals, and without them, they would be in a much worse place.

But they also, some of them were willing to say that they weren't entirely sure that everyone who was getting accommodations is getting them appropriately so there's definitely a sense of Controversy about whether the numbers of students getting accommodations was the appropriate number Can we talk a little bit about that kind of controversy then like is there a sense that maybe some of this is unfair that some People are getting accommodations that don't really need them well, that is a question that came up in the report. And the report's authors, and this is an independent panel of outside experts at Queen's, found that most of the sentiment they were detecting among both professors and students was not necessarily backed up with evidence.

But professors, for example, would complain that they couldn't hold a seminar course. Seminars courses based around discussion, because a number of students in the class would have an accommodation that said they couldn't be called upon to speak in public. This was troubling to the professors, who said, how can I do my job? How can we have a course like this,

if these are the restrictions that I'm now working under? Some students have said they know that their classmates who are receiving accommodations don't really need them, but they're using them because they get additional time. Usually an extra 50% time on exams or on assignments that help them get better grades. Now, the report's authors conclude

that much of this is without evidence and without basis. So it's hard to know whether there's any accuracy The report's authors conclude that much of this is without evidence and without basis. So it's hard to know whether there's any accuracy to those statements, but clearly it's a sentiment that exists and people I spoke to expressed it too. So we've been talking about Queen's University in particular and they actually commissioned a report to look into this rise in accommodations. What were some of the big takeaways from that? So the Queen's report was done by an outside panel of experts and they started probably

about a year ago and delivered their report last summer. What they found was sort of a widespread willingness to get the accommodations questions right. People wanted to do the right thing they found, but there was a lot going on at the university that was troubling to instructors. They mentioned issues around workload. Some raised questions about whether the accommodations being given to students were appropriate. A wide variety of issues kind of stemming from this growth in the number of students getting accommodations. And I wonder too, does privilege play a role here in who's actually able to access accommodations?

Well, it can be expensive to get a diagnosis. So you might have to go to say a private psychologist or provider of some kind and pay for the assessment. That could run into thousands of dollars. That's not something that every family can do. And even having the wherewithal to know that something like this exists is something that tends to be more prevalent among families that have other advantages of education, income, et cetera. So definitely there is a thread that people are concerned, that accommodations are going to students

from more privileged backgrounds. Let's talk a little bit more, Joe, about how schools are dealing with this increase in accommodation requests. Because we started off talking about how much more time it took for professors, right, in just kind of administering their courses. Do we know how prepared schools are to deal with this? Universities have faced a relatively sudden increase

in demand for these accommodations. And it has been difficult for them to meet that demand with adequate resources. There was a study done in Ontario by the Higher Education Quality Council, and it found that universities basically do not have adequate funding from the province. The situation was not sustainable, as they described it. Often one caseworker would have 300 students on their list

at an Ontario university. That would not be uncommon. And that's a lot. To be able to meet with those students, to figure out what the right accommodations are for them, to tailor a learning regime for them is very difficult. There just isn't enough time. So these offices are feeling slightly overwhelmed

at the moment, I think. And at a time when universities everywhere are cutting back on their budgets, partly due to the cuts in the international student program that have hurt their revenues, partly due to a long-term tuition freeze in Ontario, budgets are stretched. And I think some of these offices aren't able to meet the demand as well as they would like. It's interesting because it's obviously it's a big issue now for schools then and I guess if there's such a large percentage of people that need accommodation I guess I wonder does this signal that something bigger needs to maybe change in the way that universities operate?

Yeah I have to wonder you know if you're getting a major university like Queens where almost one in four students are receiving accommodations that's a big proportion of the university. And so I think it's important to remember that historically universities have excluded people with disabilities to a great extent. The ratio of people who have a disability with a university degree in the greater population is much lower than one would expect. So I think roughly 20, nearly 28% of the population

has a university degree. But among those who have disabilities, it's about 17%. Certainly some things could be done better at universities. One of the things that professors have mentioned is that smaller class sizes would help. Although that is getting harder these days as budgets get tighter and there's a desire to put more bums in the lecture seats for cost

reasons. One idea that people have talked about is this notion of universal design for learning, where you institute sort of a broad program where you ensure that everybody can access them to course materials, everybody will be assessed in a way that is fair and appropriate. And that's probably a complicated thing to introduce at such a broad scale as a university. But I think there's no alternative in some ways that more of these ideas will be adopted in the years ahead. And then I guess, could that have downstream effects maybe on the workforce later on?

Because if we're talking about these universities which train people eventually for the workforce, could that have an effect on things later? Well, you have to wonder. Now, keeping in mind that society more broadly seems to be shifting too, you know, people will often say things like, well, it's one thing to get an extension on your essay while you're at university, but you won't get that extension

in the real world when you get a job. But, you know, a few years ago, workplaces were very different than they are today. And it may be that there will be, you know, a few years ago, workplaces were very different than they are today. And it may be that there will be, you know, accommodations in the workplace. Maybe people are growing more understanding of these situations as time passes. I suspect that there is greater awareness now.

You know, when I was in university, I didn't know anyone who was receiving accommodations in this way that is happening today. But for the students going through university now, almost all of them will know someone who receives extra time on their exams, just as a matter of course, and they would accept it without a second thought.

Yeah, and when you're talking about workplaces now, like of course, you know, after the pandemic, we're used to working from home, we're used to more flexibility now. So I think this is kind of what you're saying, like these things can change and they might. Yeah, so we'll have to see how these things change over time, but I think there has been a lot of change in the last few

years, so it shows us that things can shift. Just lastly here, Joe, I guess I wonder what you've heard from disability advocates and people who work in these offices at universities about what they need and also what they want to see changed. Well, I think the first thing they need is more resources. The ratio of 300 students to one staff member is probably not sustainable. I think many of them will be overworked at that rate.

I think what they would also like to see is better communication between faculty and their own offices to ease the process involved in these accommodations. So if every assignment requires a professor to confirm that the student does in fact have an accommodation registered with the university and then to another email to establish what the due date for the assignment will be or where they can write the exam and what room, how long they will have, does the professor have

to write two or three different versions of the exam so that people writing it at a different time don't have an advantage of say seeing the questions first. All those kinds of issues are the things that the details that drive an institution crazy but that are not impossible to solve. It just takes some resources. It just takes a little more ingenuity maybe. You know, the people have talked about software being a big help. They've

talked about creating a major culture shift so that these issues are considered in all the decisions a university makes. And I think that was the number one recommendation of the panel at Queen's, for example, is an overall cultural shift at the university. Put someone in charge and in a position of senior administration to ensure that these questions are looked at in every decision the university makes and then have various decision-making bodies made up of people who have disabilities themselves who can assist the university in creating a broader strategy that works for

everyone. Joe, thank you so much for taking the time to be here. My pleasure. Thank you. That's it for today. I'm Maynika Ramen-Wilms. Our producers are Madeleine White, Michal Stein, and Allie Graham. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Matt Frainer is our managing editor. You can is our senior producer and Matt Fraynor is our managing editor. You can subscribe to The Globe and Mail at globeandmail.com slash subscribe. Thanks so much for listening and I'll talk to you tomorrow.