Development Process
The Accessibility Forums
The first phase of the development of the Accessibility Plan involved collecting feedback from campus stakeholders to identify areas of greatest need and improvement. This process began with a series of four virtual forums, followed by a campus-wide survey.
During these virtual forums, attendees were given opportunities to participate in large-group activities using a virtual participation tool called Mentimeter and a series of small-group breakout conversations, with notes taken by volunteers.
While much of the feedback received was fairly narrowly focused on specific locations or challenges that individuals might face, a broader theme surrounding Vassar’s culture emerged over the course of the first three forums. As an academically-competitive college, many participants noted high expectations of all learners. In many cases, this can lead to a lack of self-care and a deprioritization of one’s own needs to continue to achieve high marks in class and extracurricular activities. It can also lead to individuals feeling uncomfortable “outing” themselves as needing assistance/accommodation, or not being able to receive the assistance they need when they do come forward.
There were also significant concerns about how inclusive the approach to accessibility truly is. There is disparate access to healthcare and testing services for learning disabilities among different communities and backgrounds attending Vassar, and implicit and unconscious biases that can impact how different groups receive support even once diagnosed.
One way suggested to address this is through emphasizing universal design, both in terms of physical spaces and policies, to reduce the need for people to request an accommodation in the first place. Others included increasing the transparency in the decision-making process, increasing the resources made available for accessibility efforts, and shaping our policies to be more inclusive.
In a closing survey, participants were asked to also share any blind spots or areas of growth in the guiding principles and areas of focus shared in the presentation. Key feedback from this section included calling more attention to “neurological and/or non-physical” disabilities and more strongly emphasizing social justice and inclusion as our top priorities.
A deeper summary of the information gleaned from the Accessibility Forums is available as Appendix A.
The Accessibility Survey
Informed by the feedback from the accessibility forums, two similar surveys of demographic and free-response questions were developed for campus-wide distribution: one for students, and another for faculty, staff, administrators, and emeritae/i. The full text of the survey is available in Appendix B. Respondent demographics are available in Appendix C.
Answers to free-response questions from the survey were broken into individual statements and assigned different codes in the following categories:
- A disability, identity, or trait impacted by the barrier to accessibility faced (e.g. mobility, gender identity, or chronic health conditions)
- The type of barrier to accessibility faced (e.g. “hard to open doors” or “PDFs that aren’t screen-readable”)
- In the case of physical barriers to accessibility, the specific location (if stated) (e.g. “Bridge” or “all the residence halls”)
- Services or opportunities that could or currently do make the College more accessible (e.g. “AEO” or “Shuttle services”)
- Overarching concepts that didn’t fit neatly into the other categories above (e.g. “transparency” or “funding for new programs”)
445 free-response answers were broken down into 1,180 unique statements and were tagged with one or more codes from a list of 92. A full list of all codes, and the frequency they were referenced in the survey, is available in Appendix D.
Even with this breadth of feedback, a number of key trends emerged. The first was that mobility challenges are seen as the single highest-visibility accessibility barrier on campus. Within this category, elevators and stairs were mentioned most frequently as posing challenges; building entrances, ramps, and wheelchair access were all also frequently referenced.
Mental health challenges and cognitive/learning disabilities were among the next-highest-reported barriers, reinforcing the importance of recognizing neurodiversity as a guiding principle for the plan.
Concerns about the learning environment were mixed based on the perspective of the respondent. Student concerns tended to be about accommodations being available/respected, while faculty were generally looking for more professional development to help them better meet the needs of their learners.
These all tie into a recurring theme throughout the survey responses of the role that Vassar’s culture plays in creating—or overcoming—barriers to access.
Recommendation Criteria
The Accessibility Committee spent the rest of the spring 2021 semester and the summer of 2021 reviewing the results and drafting preliminary recommendations for the campus. These recommendations, adapted into the Action Steps in the next section, adhered to three key criteria:
- Taken together, the recommendations in the Accessibility Plan meaningfully and holistically address needs identified during the feedback process across numerous types of barriers.
While no single plan can address every single accessibility barrier present on campus, the recommendations contained in the Accessibility Plan jointly address different dimensions of accessibility and address challenges faced by a wide variety of stakeholders.
- All recommendations in the Accessibility Plan are appropriate for a 2-year implementation timeline.
The Accessibility Plan needs to balance short- and mid-term projects that can have their impact noticed during the next two years with studies and plans that can set the College up for longer-term impacts. This includes smaller steps with immediate and noticeable impacts within the first six months of the plan, larger steps to make a substantial impact on higher-priority issues, and frameworks for efforts in future plans. Our intended implementation timeline is included in the Action Steps section of this document.
- All recommendations are achievable, with a clear path to implementation
In order to be included in the plan, all recommendations are things we can reasonably expect to do in a two-year timeframe. This means that they do not result in an overwhelming/undue burden on staff, faculty, or administrators on top of existing workloads, or require resources for which there is no current clear path to being able to receive.