by Gail Conrad
July 26, 2010 marks the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Disability Support Programs and Services (DSPS) would like to share our many accomplishments for students with disabilities with the rest of our SDCCD family! We couldn’t have done it without you! Did you know that SDCCD served 4,552 students with disabilities in 2008-2009! We will have more facts to share with you each morning leading up to the celebration on July 26th! Thanks for being a part of the success of our students with disabilities!
SDCCD provided over 20,500 hours of sign language interpreting and real-time captioning in the classroom this past year for over 175 students that are Deaf and Hard-of-hearing. American Sign Language (ASL) is the 4th most common language used in the United States. Many other students in our district learn ASL to meet their foreign language requirement for their degree.
These are indeed difficult economic times, but 32 students with disabilities were placed in jobs locally with the assistance of the WorkAbility III cooperative grant that SDCCD has with Department of Rehabilitation. The ADA protects job discrimination for qualified candidates, those that can perform the essential functions of the job with or without reasonable accommodations. 56% of job accommodations are free or cost less than $600 for the employer with many tax incentives to cover the business accessiblity expenses.
Our students with disabilities are in college mainstream classes helping to generate over 1,232 FTES for the colleges, valued at approximately $4 million for the colleges general funds, with over 30% of students with disabilities attempting 12 or more units each semester and completion rates equal to or higher than all college students.
Approximately 500 students with disabilities enroll in online classes each semester at SDCCD. The 508 regulations provide guidance in the accessiblity of those online classes for students with visual disabilities and hearing disabilities. Faculty are making sure that courses have “screen reader” capabilities and captioning of audio information. The most requested accommodation for online classes is extended time for exams!
Students with disabilities requested over 1000 books to be converted to alternate media in order to access printed materials needed for classes this past year. These alternate formats take a variety of shapes, including Braille, embossed diagrams, large print, and the most requested form…electronic files. The electronic files allow students to “read” their textbooks with the use of a screenreader software, such as Kurzweil, TextAloud, and Window-Eyes. This format is vital for students that are blind or have visual processing difficulties and is also used by students that cannot carry books or turn pages independantly.
Did you know that SDCCD has provided over 9,000 hours of training to students needing to use adapted hardware and software in order to successfully complete their college goals? We often refer to the labs as our High Tech Centers where students can master the use of these technologies. One example would be the voice activated software, Dragon Naturally Speaking.
Our Colleges and Continuing Education campuses serve approximately 500 students with learning disabilities(LD) every year. Throughout California, over 51% of students with LD received no services prior to attending community college. All persons with LD have average to above average intelligence, but the LD creates gaps between ability and performance. Reasonable accommodations and Universal Design in curriculum provide the success that these students experience in higher education.
This is the final email sharing facts about SDCCD students with disabilities and why we celebrate with the rest of the nation on this the 20th Anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)!
Of the over 8000 enrollments in college classes, students with disabilities display 66% success, 85% retention and a GPA of 2.51. This is similar to all students in SDCCD that display 69% success, 85% retention and a GPA of 2.72.
When reviewing the enrollments in career and technical programs, students with disabilities are participants in all the areas. The top 10 fields are: Computer Business Technology, Business, Accounting, Child Development, Nursing Education, Alcohol and other drug studies, Radiologic Technology, Photography, Legal Assisting and Radio & Television.
Last year numerous awards conferred to students with disabilities included: 23 GED & CE Certificates of Completion in Continuing Education and 88 AA/AS degrees and 27 certificates in our three colleges. The student speaker at the CE graduation this year was a student with DSPS and will matriculate to Mesa College in the fall!
DSPS serves about 3% of the total enrollments in SDCCD. This is much lower that the US Census Bureau’s estimates that 10% of our total population are persons with disabilities. There are predictably a number of students with disabilities that never request services as they are available on a voluntary basis. Referrals from the classroom faculty help students to seek services appropriate to their needs.
DSPS serves many students with varying disabilities. They include 26% with disabilities that can be seen, 47% with disabilities that are invisible and 23% in the category “other” which includes many emerging disability areas. Mental health issues for college students have grown rapidly in the past 10 years with suicide being the second leading cause of death for all college age students. The development of proper services for all students in the area of mental health and awareness of what we can do as faculty, staff and administrators to identify the warning signs and make referrals is a statewide concern that community colleges are trying to address.
I want to thank many of you for your kind words for the services that DSPS personnel perform in your colleges. It has been very gratifying to know how much we are appreciated. I want to again extend the thanks of all of our DSPS departments in the support that you have provided to us. With the success of students as our goal, we cannot go wrong!