<< CONTENTS >>

1. THE OLDEST MOTIVE IS (STILL) **IN** THE BOOKS

2. "BE AFRAID... BE VERY AFRAID!!!"

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(Reprised and Revamped)

<< THE OLDEST MOTIVE IS (STILL) **IN** THE BOOKS: How Money Influences Decision-Making >>

I have been disturbed, in recent weeks, to note what appears to be an escalating trend among service providers to go about the task of deciding which accommodations to provide based *primarily* on the cost of the various options. I am not naive enough to think that issues of cost will not (or should not) be taken into account. I just object to the idea that cost should be considered before access.

I have been seeing statements like this:

-- We have a deaf student who is on the track team; do we have to pay for interpreters for the student when he goes on road trips with the team?

-- Is the institution responsible for providing texts in Braille? We have a system set up that will allow us to scan it into digital format for a fraction of the cost. Besides, that Nemeth Code Brailling is incredibly expensive!

-- Is it necessary to install automatic door openers if there is almost always someone close enough to the door to come and open it for somebody who needs help?

-- We provide handouts and tests in large print, but we don't provide whole texts in large print. That would be VERY expensive and would probably take a lot of staff time.

Worse, still, are the arguments that seem to arise frequently about who is going to pick up the tab for access -- with the student with a disability hanging in limbo or (worse) going without because the party eventually assigned the responsibility didn't or couldn't follow through effectively. It reminded me of an article I had written several years ago (February, 1998). I want to share that with you now, and add some comments at the end...

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(DAIS Newsletter, Volume II, No. 2, February, 1998)

Did you ever wonder how administrators make decisions -- or WHY they make the decisions they do -- regarding accommodations and services to persons with disabilities? Recently, I received new insight to this question when I was a participant in a discussion of how to provide accommodations for a given student in an unusual situation. The concern had to do with finding a means of providing access for a student to an area of campus not usually available by vehicular traffic. The 504/ADA Coordinator was very concerned that a mechanism be found NOW to resolve the problem, as the semester is ongoing and current measures have failed to provide consistent and convenient access. He was advocating for providing the student with a cellular telephone that could be used regardless of distance or weather conditions to assure that someone was available at the given location to assist the student in reaching his destination. The other option would be to install a different kind of entry mechanism that the student could independently control so that he would not need to wait for someone to provide assistance. It seemed to me that this second option was preferable because it was a more permanent solution to a problem that would most certainly arise again in the future. The cellular telephone might solve the problem for this student this semester, but it was a solution that could prove much more costly over time as this student took more classes or other students with mobility impairments were faced with the same barrier to access. Yet the Director of administrative/physical plant operations firmly supported the 504/ADA Coordinator in moving to respond to the immediate need in an immediate fashion.

That evening, I was watching a rerun of one of my favorite "cop" shows and there was some discussion about where to look for a suspect/motive to the crime under investigation. The leading man said, "When in doubt, follow the money." In the end, the guilty party was, in fact, the person who stood to gain most from the crime. It suddenly struck me that it is likely that decisions regarding accommodations and services are often a function of the same motive, but for a different reason. It is not that one party has a chance to profit from the decision more than another, but rather that it may cost one party less if someone else pays more. The Director of administrative/physical plant operations may well have been thinking, even subconsciously, that the cellular telephone would come from someone else's budget -- the equipment change came from HIS money.

I have given a number of presentations to a number of different groups during the intervening time, and I have noticed how consistently the discussion of money comes into play no matter who the participants or at what level they are functioning. When you have exhausted all the concerns about fairness and what is reasonable and what is appropriate given the circumstances, it always comes back to, "But who is going to pay for this?!" While those of us familiar with the case law and OCR findings in this area know that cost is not a viable issue to raise to the federal government when arguing about the provision of auxiliary aids and services, the cost of accommodation still remains the sticking point for the postsecondary community at large -- the last refuge for feeling vindicated in refusing accommodation/cooperation? "But if we spend money to make things accessible for the few students who need it, we won't have that money to spend on things that ALL students could use." "We don't have money in our budget to pay for _______." "This activity is supposed to be self-supporting. If we have to build the cost of accommodations into the enrollment/activity fee, we can't be competitive in what we are offering." One of the unwritten rules of institutional politics is "Whenever possible, spend someone else's money rather than your own." In these days of tight money and retrenchment, if that fails, administrators often try to find a way to spend no money at all.

I find myself advocating more frequently these days for an alternative system for funding ADA/504 accommodations. The ideal would be a pot of money set aside in the institutional budget and earmarked specifically for ADA/504 compliance. Individual units should be encouraged to construct their annual budgets to include enough moneys to cover foreseeable costs of accommodation. Personnel may have some money set aside specifically earmarked for adaptive equipment needed by staff/faculty, from special chairs to adaptive key boards to telephone amplifiers; but if there are an extraordinary number of requests in a given year, and that budgeted money has been expended, the Personnel folks can come to the administrator who controls that money and present a bill for additional expenses. The people in physical plant should build the cost of access into all new construction and renovation projects. They may also have a specific fund earmarked for changes that need to be made during a year to provide immediate access in unusual circumstances -- a curb cut here or new signage there. But if there are an unexpected number of demands and that pot of money is expended, there should be someplace to take the bill and say, "We did the work -- you need to pay for it." And the Academic side of the house should never be allowed to use concerns about money to refuse participation or deny accommodation.

I think there are three GOOD reasons for adopting some form of this funding mechanism: (1) if it is understood that the money will be there to cover costs associated with compliance, then presumably decisions about appropriateness of accommodations and services will be based on something other than the potential financial impact of that decision. Perhaps we can begin to focus on the individual circumstances instead of being distracted by the broader (presumed) philosophical issues; (2) once the issue of "who pays" has been removed from consideration, the responsibility for making accommodations and fostering inclusion CAN be pushed back to individual units. The responsibility for disability access can be a shared responsibility across campus, rather than being the sole purview (and sole responsibility!) of the disability services office. If your goal is to make the campus climate one that is welcoming to students with disabilities, then there must be broad spread acknowledgment of the existence of such students and their right to participation; and (3) following some form of this plan provides the institution with a much better handle on the actual costs of compliance than might currently be available. If you want to go back to the funding source at some point to argue the need for additional funds, or you want to seek additional funding from outside sources, you have to be able to track the cost of compliance in an organized way. Currently, most institutions know how much many is being spent by and for the direct services unit, and may have a handle on physical plant expenditures, but other costs are impossible to track because they are being subsumed in departmental and divisional budgets.

BOTTOM LINE -- Experience indicates that any time the financial responsibility for making accommodations or providing services is forced back down the line to individual units, the likelihood that individuals with disabilities will be discouraged from participating, or denied access to accommodation, increases dramatically. This may be the result of conscious decision or the unintended consequence of misunderstanding on the part of personnel involved. Institutions would do well to examine both their current policies regarding arrangements for accommodations and services, and their monitoring system of the adequacy/appropriateness of such policies, in order to assure compliance with both the spirit and the letter of the law.

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(Back to the Present)

In the years since this article was written, I have seen another money-oriented practice appear in higher education. In many cases, institutions responded to a need to insure compliance by passing an edict that all accommodations would come from the disability services office which had both the understanding of the accommodation needs and the knowledge/resources to assure that things were done right. Great! I have no problem with centralizing the delivery of service if it assures quality control. HOWEVER...

...the same offices that have now been assigned responsibility for *INSTITUTIONAL* access are still being assigned a *DEPARTMENTAL* budget. They are given a budget to work from at the beginning of the year and are expected to work within that budget. If the INSTITUTION'S demands for access exceed the funds supplied to the department, one of two things may happen: (1) they may be told there ARE no additional funds. "Make do with what you have;" or (2) somebody coughs up the necessary additional funds -- and holds a grudge against the DSS program "for not containing these costs." Somehow, we have unwittingly slipped into a mindset that supposes that it is the primary responsibility of the DSS office to control the cost of access provided by the institution, rather than the primary responsibility being the support of equal access for persons with disabilities.

I know of at least one circumstance in which a service provider received a very poor end-of-the-year evaluation because she had gone WAY over the budget allotted her. Of course, the fact that they had two new full-time deaf students enrolled who used interpreter services (thus the unanticipated overrun) was considered to be her fault as well. Did she REALLY need to provide that many hours of interpreting services at that great a cost? I know of another circumstance in which a service provider lost his job, and one in which someone was ALMOST let go because they insisted that certain services -- which cost money -- needed to be provided. Their supervisors told them not to provide the services; both folks went to their institutional legal counsel who agreed that it WAS necessary, that the access MUST be provided. The institution coughed up the funds and then tried to kill the messengers!

For years, I have been fond of repeating a quote from Joseph Califano (then Secretary of HEW) on the release of the 504 Regulations in 1977. He was asked if these regs weren't going to cost a lot of money to implement. His response --

"We have never before put a price tag on the cost of civil rights in this country. We do not intend to start now."

While that remains an excellent adage to live by, I am not sure it speaks to the realities of our situation 25 years later. It may be that this was a great slogan to get the ball rolling, but as reality sets in and people realize that this is not a one-time outlay of expense but an ongoing commitment, they are less enthusiastic about acknowledging civil rights in the face of escalating expenses for the increasing numbers of persons with disabilities who actually want to *exercise* those rights (imagine that!!!).

I have a new motto. Last Spring, there was a discussion on the DSSHE-L during which some folks suggested that when issues of cost were raised by administrators, it might be wise to remind them that LOTS of people use those elevators and that you didn't really -need- the fourth stall in the bathroom that had to be removed in put in an accessible stall and that... in general... there weren't REALLY a lot of costs associated with compliance. My friend and colleague Michael Masinter, from Nova Southeastern University, responded with this:

"...We should not be shy about admitting that compliance with the ADA costs money; our willingness to impose those costs bespeaks our commitment to a higher ideal than the bottom line."

My hero! GRIN Now if we could just sell that idea to our administrators...

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<< "BE AFRAID... BE VERY AFRAID!!!" >>

These immortal words have been the punch line in a number of classic movies over time. I think they were uttered by Yoda in the 2nd Star Wars picture, and I know they are spoken by Wednesday Addams in one of the Addams Family movies. I am fond of quoting those words at the end of my posts to various listservs, when I am playing Cassandra and am warning against the consequences of a given course of action. But recently I found a context in which this otherwise flippant attitude seems not only inappropriate, but potentially damaging to our cause.

Last weekend an article appeared in the Chicago Tribune that was widely quoted on several of the listservs I frequent. The article, entitled, "Legal tide has turned against the disabled," was penned by one Lennard Davis, Professor and Head of the Department of English at the University of Chicago. Dr. Davis abhors the trend of the courts to chip away at the underpinnings of the ADA with decisions that may erode the protections that Congress intended in passing the law. He details a number of recent legal setbacks, and suggests that the disability community would do well to rally the support of our cause among the nondisabled population by reminding them that THEY may be among the ranks of the disabled at some point in the future. My first reading of the article left me vaguely uncomfortable. It took a second and third reading before I figured out why.

As I spend more of MY time writing things for public consumption, I find I am becoming a more critical reader of the work of others, and am learning to spot mistaken or misleading statements along the way. The article in question is extremely well-written (as it should be considering the identity of the author!), and my experience is that the more eloquent the prose, the easier it is accept both the content AND the rhetoric at face value, and thus the more insidious the influence to our thinking.

Don't get me wrong -- I agree with the general concern presented in the article; the courts have, indeed, not looked favorably upon the ADA over time, and the Supreme Court seems to be out to limit the exercise of civil rights for a whole lot of people (including those with disabilities) in some of its recent decisions. I also agree that the two cases cited in the article that are currently before the court (one involving Chevron Oil, the other being Toyota v. Williams) MAY have significant impact on the practice of the ADA in employment-related situations. But that doesn't mean that the treatment given of the facts is without bias -- a bias that helps to promote the author's message, but may mislead the reader. The author states:

"Ten years (after the passage of the ADA), it has been estimated that 95 percent of the cases brought before the courts under the provisions of that act have gone against people with disabilities."

I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of the statistic given (although it is one of those impressive -- convenient -- statistics that certainly seems to make the point but which cannot be easily verified), but it leaves the impression that the law is accomplishing little on behalf of people with disabilities because the courts have failed to enforce it appropriately. The fact is that only a tiny number of the people with disabilities who need and request some kind of accommodation ever need to go to court to try and enforce their rights because, in most cases, the responsible entities are abiding by the law and making accommodations (how many students at your institution have received accommodations in the last 3 years? what percentage of those students complained about the accommodations they received? how many of those complaints do you consider to be valid?).

But that kind of "overreach" isn't the basis of my objections. The author then goes on to press his point about WHY the nondisabled community fails to perceive these decisions as a problem, and proposes a strategy for how to bring them around. It is that STRATEGY that I find disquieting...

" The lack of knowledge or interest in these developments on the part of non-disabled people is part of a larger picture. We have created a firewall between them and us. While many white people have embraced the cause of people of color, and while many straight people have taken up the cause of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people, few have taken up the cause of people with disabilities. Perhaps the reasons for this are telling. No whites will become black; few straights will become gay; but every person can become disabled. (snip).

"Although identity politics is popular these days, what people fear is that disability is the identity one may become but that one didn't want. This is the silent threat that makes folks avoid the subject, act awkwardly around people with disabilities, and consequently avoid paying attention to the backlash against disability rights. (snip)

"Most people would be better off identifying with people with disabilities than fearing them. As you begin to notice your hearing going, your hands stiffening, your eyes in need of stronger glasses, you may well want to rethink what laws are being consigned to the dustbin of history.

(snip)

"One out of 5 people now living near you has a disability. They are your uncles and aunts, grandmothers and sisters. Pretty soon they'll be you. We need to think twice before we disregard the trend of the courts in eviscerating disability rights.

"To do so we act, literally, at our own peril."

A number of years ago, the disability community spoke out about their objection to the "pity factor" as a card to play in gaining support for their causes. The "telethon mentality" (as it was dubbed) was to trot out people with disabilities in public places and in visible ways on an occasional basis to tug at the heartstrings and play on the guilt of people without disabilities, in order to get them to open their wallets. The disability community believed that this was not only demeaning to people with disabilities, but that it worked against us. We spend 364 days a year trying to convince people without disabilities that pwd are capable, competent, peers, and then flush it all down the tube on the day of the telethon when we portray people with disabilities as LESS than equal, LESS than capable, and MORE in need of help and benefit from others.

To me, the last part of this article takes us down an equally dangerous path. Instead of playing on guilt, the author suggests we play on the FEARS of people without disabilities. Yeah, I know... an old adage suggests that the way to get things done is to make YOUR problem THEIR problem. But I don't think this is the way to do it. The author may be right in his assessment. It may be that the nondisabled community has been less willing to rally to our cause because they are afraid of their own mortality, and thus of the topic of disability. That may be why they have stayed away, but I am not sure that it is the best way to win their support now. They didn't join onto the support the other causes (people of color, gender issues, so on) because they were or weren't afraid of them. Hopefully, they realized that supporting equality was the RIGHT thing to do. It still is.

To me, these last few passages shriek, "you, too, may someday be less than capable and need favors from others in order to survive." That is NOT the image I want people to have as to why this fight needs to be fought.

I would much rather see us promote a POSITIVE view of the capabilities of people with disabilities. I want the nondisabled community to see people with disabilities as PART of their lives, not a world APART. I want people to support the disability rights movement as the civil rights issue we started out to promote, rather than as an entitlement program for those less able to fend for themselves. And I want all those TABs out there (Temporarily Able-Bodied individuals) to acknowledge the possibility that they may, themselves, become disabled and that this is NOT the worst thing in the world that can happen. People with disabilities lead full, happy, productive lives and because we want that to continue, we want to protect the rights of ALL within our society.

Why do I have the feeling I should shout, "AMEN" at this juncture?

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<< A QUICK UPDATE FROM DAIS >>

1) Thanks to all who took advantage of the offer to renew your DAIS subscription for the calendar year 1/1/02-12/31/02 and to receive, free, one year's access to the DAIS Locked Files. If you have not yet sent in your renewal and you need the order form re-sent, please send your request to JaneJarrow@aol.com;

2) Those orders that HAVE come in are being processed now. This newsletter is being sent out on the OLD subscription list. If you submitted additional names to be receiving the newsletter, the files should be updated and a copy of the newsletter sent out to those folks before the close of business on Monday, December 3.

3) Watch your email late next week for the list of DAIS Academy Courses to be offered during Spring semester, 2002, including several new and surprising offerings!

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(End of Newsletter)