Disabilities Advisory CommitteeDecember 9, 2008

Illinois Board of Higher Education

Established in February 2004 by Board Chair, Jim Kaplan to provide advise on how to improve educational outcomes for students with disabilities

Operated informally for a few years, then appointed a chair and set specific goals annually

Endorsed new reporting requirements for web accessibility as part of the Underrepresented Groups report in Winter 2006

Expanded the membership from 2006 – 2008 to include more colleges: privates, for-profit, etc.

Made first presentation to the IBHE Board in December 2007

Formally organized with a chair, co-chair and minutes recorded from each meeting starting July 2008

Participated actively in the development of the Public Agenda for Illinois higher education

To improve reporting and data collection/analysis about students with disabilities in Illinois institutions

To promote improvements in web accessibility at all Illinois colleges Encouraging the development of training &

consortia To study the funding of Disability

Services and advocate for stability Build the capacity of Disability Services

providers

Students with disabilities (registered with DSS) make up from 2 – 4 % of Illinois enrolled students.

Studies by the American Council on Education show 9% of freshman self disclose a disability

More students with psychological disabilities are enrolling nationwide

More students with developmental disabilities are enrolling at community colleges

Students are using more time-intensive assistive tech resources, i.e. books in digital format

Support for high cost interpreting and captioning services, previously subsidized by Department of Rehabilitation Services is ending

Growth in the use of audio files, YouTube & other on line video and course management systems pose increased barriers to access

Concluded a multi-year HECA grant project on Disability Metrics in Higher Education University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign lead the

project, with three other pilot colleges involved Evaluated data gathering on students with

disabilities and piloted a systemic method of gathering comprehensive data: five surveys

Collaborated with other national survey projects: NSSE, CCSSE and CIRP

Recommending the following: see slides that follow and resolution regarding the Underrepresented Groups report

Project Recommendations Seven recommendations

follow

1. IBHE member institutions use the ISEG disability data submission protocol to incorporate MDPE primary, secondary and tertiary disability demographic items in the Illinois Shared Enrollment and Graduation Database. MDPE disability data should be reported at the same time and in the same manner that such institutional data are typically submitted to the ISEG.

ISEG – continuing funding is needed

2. IBHE member institutions that do not collect and store disability data in a centralized student data warehouse and whose disability offices have insufficient resources to effectively collect and store person-level data electronically evaluate the feasibility of using AccessTrak once available. This software will be provided free of charge to IBHE members.

Access Trak is being developed at UIUC

3. The IBHE Disability Advisory Committee review the MDPE Administrative Report, and make recommendations for AR item inclusion in the annual Underrepresented Groups Report submitted by member institutions.

The Administrative Review report is one of the survey tools developed in the Metrics project – a detailed annual report

4. The IBHE Disability Advisory Committee review the MDPE Disabled Student/Registered Student Survey, and make recommendations for DSRS item inclusion in the annual Underrepresented Groups Report submitted by member institutions.

The DSRS survey was one of the tools developed as part of the Metrics project.

5. MDPE disability demographic variables be included in all entering student surveys, student experience and learning outcome surveys, and graduate/completer surveys that are reported to IBHE, and report findings for students/alumni/completers with disabilities

This is an approach that has great utility and low cost.

6. IBHE member institutions that participate in the ISEG Consortium, in collaboration with the IBHE Disability Advisory Committee, submit an annual statewide aggregated report to IBHE on the overall performance of the IBHE system with regard to the critical MDPE questions that have been identified as answerable by the ISEG database.

7. IBHE member institutions advocate for the inclusion of the MDPE disability demographic items (see recommendation 5a) in all national surveys to which their institution subscribes (e.g., CCSSE, NSSE, CIRP) of which they are contemplating use.

Modifying the existing web accessibility reporting requirements in the Underrepresented Groups report to the new proposed requirements (document dated 12-08-08): produced by the Illinois Consortium on Web Accessibility

These requirements will have an impact on community colleges and universities and serve to create mechanisms for improving access

That the IBHE Board form a working group of IBHE staff and DAC members to review the findings and recommendations of the Metrics HECA grant The primary intention and expected outcome

is to create a systematic means of gathering data on students with disabilities progress and success in higher education

The DAC recommends adoption of the seven recommendations from the Metrics project.

The DAC plans to survey member institutions in Illinois to find out about their practices regarding: Production of E-text materials for students Services provided to students with

psychological disabilities A task force is being created to create

guidelines for disability documentation in Illinois Will review work completed in Iowa & Virginia Will review national guidelines from AHEAD