UW System Accessibility Resources Fail to Meet Growing Student Need

Ronan Carpenter’s first-semester chemistry class required students to write down every single direction for the lab, by hand. Copying verbatim was supposed to prove students had read through the instructions. For Carpenter, who has fibromyalgia and chronic migraines, writing by hand causes pain. 

“It just made me feel like trash,” he said.  

Carpenter has a set of accommodations from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Accessibility Resource Center. These tools include alternative testing, assignment due date flexibility, attendance consideration, an audio notetaker and preferential seating. But regardless of official documentation, some professors remain unwilling to shift expectations for students with disabilities. Carpenter said sometimes professors get the impression a student is lazy or taking advantage of their diagnosis.  

“I have to commit a lot of my time to accommodating myself, to going to doctor’s appointments, to doing all these other things to take care of myself and I’m still not operating well,” he said. 

For Carpenter, facing these physical challenges without helpful professors became unmanageable. 

“By then I was in so much pain from the semester before, and that class was difficult physically, that I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s enough,’” he said. 

Now a junior, he switched to a double major in French and Psychology. 

From 2017 to 2022, there was a jump in the number of students with disabilities on UWM’s campus. During the 2017-18 academic year, a total of 8,737 students with disabilities filed with these offices across UW System campuses. In 2021-22, the total grew to 13,095, according to the Services for Students with Disabilities 2021-22 Annual Report.

In 2021-22, the caseload of the average access coordinator or caseworker increased from 368 to 372.  This is considerably higher than caseloads nationally, according to the annual report. Campuses with a flood of cases are unable to provide services beyond what is required by law, the report said. 

“We have not been able to meet that demand with the staff that we have,” said UWM’s Accessibility Services Director Shannon Aylesworth. “We had only three access specialists when I took the position less than a year ago in fall 2021. They were already feeling somewhat burnt out, tapped out emotionally as a very difficult job. Students have a lot of needs, and there are a lot of students and not being able to meet the needs of the students has taken a toll on our staff.” 

The Accessibility Resource Center brings in new staff just for them to get burned out and likely leave again in a year or two, according to Aylesworth. Students have suffered as a result.  

“We’re not able to meet with them in a timely manner to get their accommodations set up,” she said. “If we meet with them, it’s only once or twice. They don’t have a relationship. If things are not going well with them in the classroom, they’re not inclined to come to talk to us about it.”  

As a result, UWM students with disabilities often depend on self-advocacy and the good will of professors to level the playing field.