"From Where I Sit" Video Series

Yvette's Story — Video Transcript

I have something called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome which affects my... has affected my joints and affects other things you can't see and as a result I have sustained a lot of injuries and have walked with crutches, with cane and then with crutches and then I used a manual wheelchair and sustained other injuries because of that. So now I use a power wheel chair to get around. I went out on disability in 1997 and needed to rethink what to do with my life and thinking of the things I was interested in that I could do led me into the field of counseling.

The first challenge I have is getting into the classroom especially if there is things like last quarter I had a classroom that somebody always placed the garbage can right next to the doorway practically in the doorway, every day and every day I has to move the garbage which was always full. And then there's always moving desks. Sometimes it means moving lots of desks out of the way which I usually can push out of the way with my chair but sometimes I can't. And then there is a matter of getting to a place where I can see what's on the board and hear the teacher.

If there is any kind of an emergency, that's a problem. I was in a classroom and there was a fire drill. The alarm went off. Everybody got up, the teacher said everybody had to leave and they all left and the room was completely dark and I couldn't see where the door was and there was nobody there, the door had shut and it was one of the rooms that was very difficult to get in and out of so I sat there and hoped it wasn't anything serious.

I've taken a couple of lab classes and one of them, it was, it was very frustrating at the beginning. In the first week of class I was really discouraged because I felt like I wasn't going to be able to reach anything or do anything but the teacher really worked with me to find out what would work best and in that class I had a lab assistant also who helped me, so I managed that class fine.

Then I had another class that was a lot less accommodating. That teacher didn't think that I needed to actually do the experiments and I tried communicating with this teacher that I wanted to do the experiments, that I wanted to do my own work as much as possible, but he wasn't getting it. The teacher made it clear from the beginning that he didn't expect me to do any of the work. He didn't expect me - he wasn't going to hold me to the same standard as the other students and it made me feel like he wrote me off. But I've had some excellent teachers and I'd say most of them have really risen to the challenge of working with different students with different challenges and I make a real effort to go to their office hours.

Sometimes I contact them before the quarter starts. I email them... try and set up a time so we can meet and talk about test accommodations, classroom accommodations that sort of thing. The biggest challenge I have had is with teachers who don't use even blackboard. They don't even communicate. They don't send the syllabus out. They won't post the syllabus over blackboard, they don't use it at all and that makes things a lot more difficult for students like myself who don't write.

I use a type of voice recognition software that allows me to speak into a microphone and the computer types the text as if I were typing by hand. Sometimes I use this voice recognition software to get my text into an electronic file so that I can work with it. I use alternate format textbooks, e-text, because it's hard for me to carry the books around and it's hard for me to turn the pages. The alternative text people can't work on it until I buy the physical book. I also have to have my voucher from voc rehab and usually all the books aren't in at the same time. Sometimes we are all scrambling just to get the correct chapters that I need and it never completely gets finished. So, that causes a backup and then I don't have what I need and I get behind.

I have had teachers who have suggested that I sit in the back and that is difficult because the students who talk during class, they sit in the back, hopefully. I guess it's this uncomfortableness with disability or this presumption that people... I don't know what the presumption is... but its awkward. I haven't encountered as much awkwardness myself except for now I understand when somebody says wouldn't you rather sit in the back of the room that that's about them being uncomfortable not about me.