Serving Adult Learners with Disabilities

Abstract

The Challenge Many adult basic education centers have and continue to face significant challenges in meeting the mandates established by the Americans with Disabilities Act. In the not too recent past, staff may not have been even aware of the mandates outlined in this act. Today, adult basic education providers have come to realize that they have both an ethical and a legal responsibility to serve adults with disabilities. The challenge of doing so can appear overwhelming given the potential number of students who may be entitled to these mandates. A recent national study found adult basic education providers estimated that approximately one-third of their learners have some type of disability, with less than one fourth of these being verified disabilities (White & Polson, 1999a). Learning disabilities were the most frequently reported, followed by mental retardation, multiple disabilities and health disabilities. Programs located in the inner city and urban locations reported having a significantly higher number of people with disabilities. Literacy providers are experiencing an urgent to identify effective ways of serving adults with disabilities but are, by their own reports, falling short. Their dilemma often begins with identifying the learner who has a disability. Many serve adult learners whose undetected disability has led to frustration and endless unsuccessful attempts to meet their educational goals. These adults enter adult basic education centers with the desire to succeed but, unless their disability is diagnosed, are likely to fail once again. Limited available resources to assist in disability identification, often a result of financial constraints, have left adult education providers at a disadvantage when working with these learners. In many instances, adult basic educators have had to rely on student observation and voluntary disclosure of previous experience in special education as their primary methods for discovering if a learner has a disability. Others seek to identify those with disabilities through physical appearance, elicited self-report, and center created assessment/ intake forms. Providers are less likely to depend on receiving disability verification through written reports provided by Vocational Rehabilitation, social services or other formal verification avenues such as psychological and medical reports (White & Poison, 1999b). Even when a disability has been verified there is no guarantee that appropriate recommendations for assisting the learner will accompany the diagnosis. As a result, the responsibility for identifying ways to help the adult with a disability learn must often be assumed by the adult basic education provider. Remediation Versus Accommodation It has been suggested that the remediation model often utilized in the public school system may not be appropriate or realistic for adults with disabilities. This is because some adults, despite their willingness and commitment to devoting the time required by the remediation model may never experience success due to the nature of their disabilities. For example, it may not be realistic to establish a goal of reading proficiency for an adult with a serious reading disability. Still, such an adult needs access to information in print format. Instruction might more realistically be directed toward this goal rather than the more ambitious goal of learning how to read. The accommodations model has been proposed as a way to help adults reach their goals more quickly and with less frustration than the remedial model. Accommodation has been defined as a legally mandated change that creates an equitable opportunity for task completion or environmental access. Further, an accommodation is an individually determined adjustment to a functional need (Horton & Hall, 1998, p. 54). Such an accommodation is required across settings for the same types of tasks. …