Strengthening support for students with disabilities

This week marks the anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act but since long before the civil rights law was signed on July 26, 1990, CUNY has been guided by the principle that everyone deserves a fair shot at education and opportunity. That includes 10,000 CUNY students with disabilities.

In April, we announced a new University-wide policy that will remove academic barriers and strengthen our disability support system across CUNY’s 25 campuses. Centralizing the policy is an important step in our efforts to ensure that all CUNY students with disabilities have the same opportunity to succeed.

The new policy will have an immediate impact on students by instituting a user-friendly system called CUNY Accommodate to simplify and monitor the process for requesting academic accommodations and other resources. And in the long-term, the policy will open our doors wider to students with disabilities by ensuring that every decision we make about the academic life of the University considers its implications for inclusion, equity and accessibility.

We’ve known for many years that equity isn’t only about race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status. There is a significant and long-standing employment gap for people with disabilities, and CUNY’s culture of inclusion demands that we address it as we do any inequity.

To make good on that promise, we have an excellent program called CUNY LEADS, which provides academic, internship and career counseling to students with disabilities. Our growing program of inclusive and adaptive athletics is a national trailblazer – not only in sports but in preparing student-athletes with disabilities for life after college. I’m proud that our efforts are part of why 70% of CUNY students with disabilities are employed after graduation – double the national average.

But there is more to be done.

CUNY has long embraced the spirit of the ADA but with our new policy, we are strengthening the support for all students with disabilities in our classrooms to facilitate full participation and ensure that every student has an equal opportunity to succeed.

The new policy strengthens and simplifies access to a wide range of accommodations that students with disabilities may need: from accessible course materials and assistive technology to extended time on exams and the help of a qualified learning assistant who can take notes in class, serve as a tutor or provide other supports.

The CUNY Accommodate platform being launched this fall will allow students with disabilities to easily initiate the process of requesting accommodations. The new policy gives campus disability services offices two weeks to act on accommodation requests.

For CUNY’s students with disabilities, the advances promise real benefits.

“I’m proud that the University has taken steps to put us ahead of the current ADA law,” said Lennyn Jacob, a disabilities studies major at CUNY School of Professional Studies and former chairperson of the CUNY Coalition for Students with Disabilities.

“This policy provides clear guidelines to meet the needs of disabled students while supporting staff to ensure their success. Not only am I disabled and proud, but I am disabled and supported here at CUNY.”

Matos Rodríguez is the chancellor of The City University of New York (CUNY), the largest urban public university system in the United States.