The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 46, No. 1 - 49

Disabled Sudents Living on Campus

of as academic, they also entail modifications
to living environments (Davidson & Bauman,
2013). Examples of housing accommodations
include specialized environments (e.g., single
living spaces), personal care assistants, emotional support animals (Evans et al., 2017),
and service animals. Under the ADAAA, accommodations are only provided to students
who disclose their disabilities to their postsecondary institutions (Orr & Hammig, 2009).
Requirements that students self-identify and
self-advocate are substantive changes from
K-12 education where the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, 2004) stipulates
that parents and educators make most of the
decisions and the school has the responsibility
to identify and implement accommodations.
Thus, disabled students may not know they
need to disclose their disability to the postsecondary institution and may have very little
prior experience self-advocating (Evans et al.,
2017). When asked why they did not use accommodations, 36.2% of students participating in a study of 17 institutions implicated
system-level factors (e.g., challenges associated
with navigating disability services) and 16.8%
said faculty or staff contributed to challenges

While accessibility is generally
considered to relate to the physical
structure of buildings, proximity

associated with using accommodations (Bolt,
Decker, Lloyd, & Morlock, 2011). Additionally, some students found the stigma associated with disability disclosure to be a barrier
to requesting accommodations (Bolt et al.,
2011). The process of accessing accommodations can be time-consuming as accommodations are determined by disability resource
officers on a case-by-case basis and then must
be communicated to officials who implement
the changes (Evans et al., 2017). To offset this
inconvenience and better ensure equity of services, some institutions use universal design
principles to modify campus facilities and programs so they are proactively accessible to all
students, with and without disabilities (Evans
et al., 2017).
Campus housing professionals play critical
roles in facilitating accommodations and fostering social integration, yet practitioners have
reported that they lack knowledge about accommodations, legal requirements, inclusive
language, and hidden forms of impairment
(Murray et al., 2008). They also articulated
that the concept of reasonable accommodations was unclear, viewing accommodations as
involving competition with the needs of nondisabled students, struggling with the "ethical
dilemma" of when a "single room was a reasonable accommodation rather than simply a
preference" (Vaccaro & Kimball, 2018, p. 7), and
seeing service and emotional support animals
as challenging.

to faculty and conditions such as

METHOD

cleanliness, room temperature,

Although it is important to understand institutional processes and practitioners' experiences
related to disability, the perspectives of disabled students regarding campus housing are

and building materials are also
important considerations.

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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 46, No. 1

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 46, No. 1
