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Randy Borst is director of the Office of Disability Services. He is president of the Association on Higher Education and Disability (ahead), an international, multicultural association of professionals working to improve opportunities for people with disabilities in every aspect of higher education.
What is the mission of the Office of Disability Services?
The mission of the Office of Disability Services is to support the educational, career, social and recreational choices of campus-community members with disabilities through coordination of services and reasonable accommodations, consultation and advocacy.
What approach to disability inclusion does ODS take?
First let us look at the word "inclusion" and its implications. In the field of special education, for primary and secondary school, inclusion refers to the presence of students with disabilities in the mainstream classroom. This use of the word is so prevalent that at the post secondary level we are cautious about even using the word, inclusion. But when we do speak of inclusion, we mean inclusion in the sense of integration. The Section 504 regulations that implement the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 speak of equality of opportunity to participate in and benefit from all programs, services and activities of federal funds recipients on the part of qualified individuals with disabilities. This gets closer to what we mean by inclusion. However, the state of being included also implies being welcomed; that is what we ultimately seek. Our approach to inclusion we refer to as supported self-advocacy. If people with disabilities are going to make their own choices, then their best advocate for inclusion in the programs, services and activities they choose is themselves. ODS's role is to verify for them that the reasonable accommodations they seek in order to exercise their choices and their rights is, in fact, legitimate, as documented by the known limitations of their disabilities and the various regulations implementing their civil right of equality of opportunity. Finally, when appropriate, we consult with students with disabilities one-on-one to acquire skills of self-advocacy. When their efforts in these regards fail, we consult with all involved members of the campus community to advocate for a concerned understanding that leads to a reasonable, effective outcome. In short, individuals with disabilities at UB advocate for themselves, with the individualized full support of ODS as needed.
What services do you provide?
This by far is the most common question brought to our office. And there is no laundry list of services we can use to answer it. On any given day, we may provide a service we never have provided before and may never be called upon to provide again. Very nearly all of the direct services we do provide for individuals with disabilities, however, are done through a case-management approach. This begins with the individual with a disability requesting a service or reasonable accommodation. Using medical or psychological records, as well as information gathered from the service applicant about the way in which the mental or physical impairment substantially limits a major life activity, we provide a rationale to justify the request when appropriate. Obviously, such a bureaucratic procedure does not apply to a visitor to campus wanting to borrow a wheelchair for a few hours. But when a qualified person with a disability is asking the university to make even minor alterations of its policies, practices and procedures so that the person with the disability can be included on par with those who do not have disabilities, it is incumbent upon ODS to make an objective and informed determination for the university whether the request is valid and to collaborate with the faculty to be sure that meeting the request is educationally practicable. Not all such requests are answered in the affirmative. The vast majority of the services our office provides and reasonable accommodations we advocate for on the part of other faculty and staff of the university have to do with accessing classroom activities and teaching materials by students with disabilities. Services and accommodations are made to aid reading, writing, benefiting from lectures, taking tests, etc. We assist university employees and their supervisors with arranging reasonable accommodations (here used in the more technical sense of the term as denoted by federal regulations concerning the rights of qualified employees with disabilities). While accommodating employment is often more complicated than accommodating learning, essentially it involves the same approach as taken with students, which is the individualized analysis and consideration of the accommodation request vis-à-vis its documented appropriateness.
Does your office monitor UB's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act? How has that law affected your office and members of the UB community with disabilities?
No. ADA compliance coordination for the campus as a whole is done by the Equity, Diversity and Affirmative Action Administration (EDAAA). University Facilities is responsible for architectural code compliance. How the ADA has affected the UB community varies greatly, depending upon whom you talk to. My point of view is that, more than anything, the law and its implementing guidance and regulations provide a heuristic vocabulary we can bring to enlighten a willing dialogue. The act, however, has not been nearly so heuristic for those who are determined to disagree over disability issues. You really can't have the hard and fast "do" and "do not" disability law that some folks seem to crave because the disability challenge may come to bear on any event in a thousand unknown or unforeseen ways. We need a law that requires and invites the use of reason and reasoned dialogue in which people with disabilities can participate.
What is the single most significant challenge for your office?
The single greatest challenge to our office is the same single greatest challenge to every disability services office in higher education in the United States, and it cannot be met through individualized services, reasonable accommodations and enhancements to student life and development. Indeed, it is a challenge to higher education itself. The words of John Hockenberry stick with me that Americans with disabilities live in the first world but live like third worlders in that they cannot count on the infrastructure to support their needs or on their government to defend their rights. As the greatest of all manufacturers of American culture, higher education is challenged to train its graduates to design and live in a disability-inclusionary world. No sector of society has the greater potential to change how disability is viewed in society and responded to by society than has higher education. Higher education has brought unparalleled forces to bear on attempting to cure disability, but has yet to do much that can justifiably be called significant toward educating people with disabilities or educating society about the true nature of disability as a fundamental feature of life, affecting everyone, rather than as a personal tragedy affecting primarily those whom it afflicts and their loved ones. One professional and three clericals in a tiny Office of Disability Services cannot meet that challenge for the university or for the greater community in the university's behalf.