Why I Dread the Accommodations Talk
This article showcases one instructor’s opinion of the process of a student presenting an accommodations letter. While the byline only shows her name, Gail A. Hornstein, she does seem to have her own website. The website lists her as a professor and author. She speaks about a specific student while making generalizations about many students. This is clearly her opinion because she makes subjective comments about the student’s appearance and demeanor. She also makes comments about her own demeanor which seem to shed herself in a much more positive light than the student. She goes on to pat herself on the back for being dismissive of the student and for essentially disregarding the accommodations letter that more than likely took immense courage for a student (who suffered from panic attacks) to admit to needing, obtain documentation for, request, and present to their instructor. While this one experience is anecdotal, she uses it to comment on every accommodations letter that she receives, and even publishes an article hoping to shape the experience of every instructor who receives these letters.
OPINION: It’s the cheating that’s the problem, not the accommodations
This article is also an opinion piece. This is made obvious by the word OPINION in the title. This article is written by a college student, Donnie Denome, for a college publication. Denome’s profile is linked in the byline and from his profile it is pretty clear that Denome writes almost exclusively opinion pieces for this publication. This article shows the unfortunate ramifications of the so-called “Varsity Blues” college admissions scandal which not only involved the wealthy paying for admission into college, but also paying for diagnoses to obtain accommodations which they did not qualify for, and then using those accommodations to cheat on tests. Aside from the journalist making it clear in the headline that this is an opinion piece, he also uses an anecdote from his own experiences as a college student receiving testing accommodations. He even quotes himself and refers to himself as I and us in the article. While he does reference facts in this article, he peppers them with his own opinions and experiences.
The Section 508 Refresh and What It Means for Higher Education
This article, by contrast to the others, is written by Martin LaGrow, an arguable subject matter expert, evidenced by the fact that his byline is a direct link to his biography which lists a large number of qualifications. Experts still have opinions and often write about them of course, but this adds quite a bit to LaGrow’s credibility. This article also links directly to multiple sections of accessibility law and other articles which it references, such as the General Service Administration’s Section 508 page, United States Access Board, and the Department of Justice ADA information page. LaGrow states the legal facts and backs them up with evidence, without injecting his own opinions. Because this article came out shortly before the new Section 508 standards were to go into effect, this article was also particularly newsworthy at the time of publication.
ADA Compliance for Online Course Design
This article is also an EduCause article and it is written by Sheryl Burgstahler, who also has a biography page byline link and has written or presented several times about online course accessibility for EduCause. Burgstahler also references many of the same pages that LaGrow references, strengthening the validity of both of their articles. Burgstahler’s articles focuses more on actionable items than LaGrow’s article, but it still pulls these items directly from the written laws and standards and expands on them a bit. This article is also newsworthy as it comes on the tail of a string of lawsuits and civil rights complaints against many institutions of higher learning.
