Disabled Community College Students Fight Budget Cuts in Classroom AT and Other Academic Supports

by Henry Contreras, CFILC's Public Policy Director

“A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.”

---Late U.S. Senator Everett Dirksen”

As we’re all painfully aware, California has experienced a decade of state budget deficits.  They’ve caused massive budget cuts reducing or eliminating vital programs and services for people with disabilities. 

However, after being blasted by seemingly endless news accounts about multi-billion dollar revenue losses and cuts, the public has become weary and apathetic about the issue.  Reductions involving hundreds of thousands of dollars, or even millions or billions of dollars have become “same old, same old” news.” 

People are aware of the job losses and program closures. They also know that education and health care programs were hard hit.  But it’s merely a numbers game to them, unless they’ve been personally affected. The harm and human consequences simply do not resonate. 

Yet, the disability community has never lost sight of how budget cuts have undermined the lives and futures of people with disabilities.  It’s because they affect our daily lives.

One particularly glaring example is that disabled community college students have lost critical higher education supports from Disabled Students Programs and Services (DSPS) budget cuts.  Even though community college system-wide cuts averaged 10%, DSPS absorbed a 40% hit.

These disproportionate reductions began in 2009 after categorical programs like DSPS were targeted for massive cuts.  All budget cuts are painful, but these cuts are denying students equal educational opportunities. 

DSPS funds vital supportive services that help students keep pace with classroom demands.  It provides critical aids such as assistive technology, sign language interpreters, video captioning, readers and note takers, mobility assistance, transportation, and adapted or specialized classes.

Disabled students and their supporters are fighting back to protect their civil rights.  They know that DSPS is essential for the completion of their studies and job market entry. 

The loss of DSPS not only hurts their lives, but it leaves California with a less educated and skilled population. More importantly, they violate the hard-fought protections of the ADA and state and Federal laws.

A survey revealed some startling results.  It found that 26% of disabled students were forced to drop classes or withdraw from school.  Shamefully, 73% of students surveyed didn’t receive learning disability assessments.

Additional consequences were long delays for counseling and denial of alternative media and other accommodations. Some campuses blatantly violated Federal law by reducing or eliminating test examination accommodations.  

Students and disability advocates are mobilizing to restore DSPS funding and the filing of Federal civil rights discrimination complaints jumped by 30%.  The battle to restore DSPS funding is gaining momentum!

To put a human face on these cuts, students have testified before their community college district boards.  They also testified at the Legislature’s budget subcommittee hearings. 

At one hearing, a blind woman tearfully explained how she lost a prestigious scholarship opportunity after her GPA fell because her reader was laid off.  That classroom assistance was essential because math figures needed verbal translation. 

Another mobility-impaired student testified that losing transportation services made moving between campus buildings extremely painful.  It also affected her grades when attending some classes became impossible.

After listening to these heart-wrenching stories, the Chairs of the Senate and Assembly Education budget Subcommittees jointly authored a bill, SB 705, to restore $25 million for DSPS. 

The bill was unanimously voted out of its first policy committee.  However, the struggle isn’t over because legislative process and budget negotiation obstacles still remain. 

The student mobilization is producing successful outcomes. The fight for their civil rights is sending the Legislature the disability community’s unifying rallying cry: 

“Nothing About Us, Without Us.”

Wheelchair Accessible Baby Bathing Station

by Shannon Coe, Program Coordinator

One of my favorite activities with my 5 month-old baby is bath time.  This bonding activity would not have been possible if my husband had not built a wheelchair accessible bathing station in our bathroom.   

Before our daughter was born, we researched different types of tubs for babies. However, most of them were too difficult and/or impossible for me to use. They were all either too heavy for me to lift or required me to kneel down by the bathtub. I use a wheelchair, and none of these were viable options.     

There are smaller tubs that fit into the bathroom sink, but our daughter would only be able to use one of those for about six months.  We wanted a tub that she could use until she was at least one year old.  

 

Wheelcha

When I asked other mothers with disabilities how they bathed their babies, they shared with me that only their husbands were able to give their babies baths. They suggested that I do the same thing and just have my husband bathe our baby. Even though my husband would be happy to do this, I really wanted to share in this important task with my daughter, too. I was determined to make something work because it is important to me that I am able to do things for my daughter independently.  

Fortunately, my husband is handy; he built a bathing station in our bathroom that I can roll up to and put the baby into the tub.  He bought a faucet with a spray handle, tubes, plywood, and tile board to make a table with a back wall to keep the baby safe.  He measured the height of my wheelchair to make sure it would fit underneath the table.  We went to IKEA and found a perfect sized plastic bath tub for a baby.  

My husband cut a hole in the tub to install a drain, and another hole in the table top for the IKEA tub to fit in. Then, he installed the faucet on the table by the tub and connected the tubes to the pipes under the bathroom sink.  He also bought and installed a bendy plastic drain-pipe to put under the bathing station so the water would drain into the toilet.  Finally, we inserted a contoured foam baby tub into the IKEA tub to provide more comfort and cushion for our baby.  

Shannon in front of her wheelchair accessible bathing station

As she gets bigger, she will transition to using only the IKEA tub.  We found a mini changing pad at Buy Buy Baby to put on the table next to the tub so we can easily transfer our little one from the tub to the changing pad to dry and dress her all in one station.   

Our daughter loves bath time and I would not have wanted to miss spending those times with her.  I wish there were more accessible devices for parents with disabilities in the market but since there are not, our best resources are each other.

What device have you or has your partner created to meet the needs of your family?

AT in the Daily Lives of YO! Volunteers

by Kirk Aranda, Youth Advocate

In honor of National Volunteer Week which took place last week (April 21-27) across the country, we wanted to highlight some of our Youth Organizing! (YO!) Volunteers and the different assistive technology devices that they use.  The AT that is used varies greatly which just goes to show that Many devices we use every day can be considered AT and that you may even be using AT right now and not even know it. We hope you enjoy getting to learn a little bit more about our YO! Volunteers.  

http://www.gokeytech.com/compact_keyboard_w__keyguard.htm

Alexa, the YO! Volunteer in Sacramento and Northern Regional Leader for the Disability History Week Campaign,   is a student at Sacramento State and uses a keyguard on her computer. A keyguard is a device that fits over the computer keyboard and separates the keys from one another. This makes it easier for Alexa to type and has helped her type up documents and create power-point presentations.  She also uses a keyguard when using her computer to complete her Sac State homework.

http://sites.fcps.org/trt/livescribe-pen-demo

We are also lucky to have YO! Volunteer, Darion, from Fresno. Darion attends Willows College and is very big into assistive technology, so naturally he’s interested in all the different gadgets that are out there. There are a couple of different AT devices he uses regularly too, though. One of those is Dragon Dictation, which is a voice recognition application that turns speech into text. This makes work a lot easier for Darion and countless others. He also uses a Live Scribepen. Live Scribe can record what is being said in a room so that you can go back and listen to a lesson verbatim and get down every detail that was discussed, as well as play back any information that you may have originally missed.  Both of these devices help Darion succeed in school on a daily basis.

http://www.auto-handcontrols.com/handicaps_inc_controls.htm

Jenaro is another YO! Volunteer from Garden Grove down in Southern California who attends Cerritos College and is the Chair for the Disability History Week Campaign.  The AT that Jenaro uses is that he has had his car equipped with hand controls so that he can drive to school, to the Dayle McIntosh Center where he works, to outreach presentations on Disability History at schools  as well as anywhere else he needs to go.

http://verballyapp.com/

The last YO! Volunteer, Damary, comes from Hayward in the Bay Area. Damary uses the iPhone and iPad application “Verbally” which helps allow Damary to communicate. Damary simply types into her device what she would like to say and it repeats it back outloud. It has helped her with her college classes as well as helping her run Disability Action Network for Youth (DANY) meetings in Hayward. She has even demonstrated the Verbally app  in a AT Network video contest to show how it works and won third place! 

We are so grateful to all of our YO! volunteers and we are grateful for AT devices - we couldn't do our important work without volunteers or AT.  Three cheers for YO! VOluntteers and three cheers for the AT devices they use to accomplish their important tasks and to be independent.

AT Network Training Needs Survey 2014

Do you use devices, software, technology, or apps to live more independently or serve people who do?  Do you want to learn more about different types of assistive technology (AT), AT-related services, and AT funding sources?  Are you interested in learning more about a particular AT issue?

If you answered “Yes” to any of these questions, then we want to hear from you!

The AT Network is conducting a survey of disability community members, advocates, families, educators, and AT stakeholders to identify AT Network’s assistive technology training topics.

Responses will be used to develop the AT Network’s 2014 training topics.  Please take a moment to complete the survey no later than Friday, May 10, 2013.  There are nine (9) questions and all responses are anonymous. 

To take the survey go to http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/atn-2014-training-needs.  Please share this survey announcement with your networks or anyone who may be interested.

Thanks!