Post-secondary Education & the Medical Model of Accommodation
In the current landscape of post-secondary education in British Columbia, curricular support for students with a disability is provided through a medical model of accommodation.
The medical model requires students to access a medical diagnosis and produce documentation that informs their institution about the functional impact of their disability, how the disability restricts the student’s studies, and proposed accommodations that would allow the student to succeed in a course. Academic accommodations are only provided to students who have medical documentation and self-disclose this very personal information to their institution; students must request these accommodations every term.
This medical model adds significantly to the cognitive load students with a disability already experience in post-secondary education. Additionally, academic accommodations are limited to a student’s courses; the medical model does not apply to disability-related challenges students have accessing the institution’s services and spaces.
Beyond the Medical Model
In January 2022, Camosun College student, Alisha Parks, began work on her capstone project for the Indigenous Studies program, with the goal of “collaborating on decolonizing accessibility at Camosun College“. This project was completed as part of the IST-204 Special Projects course, being taught that term by Hjalmer Wenstob.
For her Special Project, Alisha completed a written report, created a seminal piece of art, and developed the Heart Berry Methodology based on Indigenous methodologies and culturally-relevant frameworks. In her report, Alisha shared these influential perspectives:
Bringing in Indigenous methodology and a culturally relevant framework can trouble homogeneous lenses of disability, accessibility and Indigeneity (Kovach, 2009). By addressing the distinct needs of Indigenous students with disability we can shift accessibility from a medical model of deficit towards a social model of imposed barriers and a transformative Indigenous model of disability as a sacred gift (Schiefelbein, 2020).[1]
The ‘Gifts of the Heart Berry‘ painting is the visual representation of the Heart Berry Methodology that Alisha developed during her project.
“Many Indigenous languages across Turtle Island don’t have a word for disability, and that is because disability is really a social construct, so this really shifted my understanding and thinking around what is possible, and how we can support people. It changes your perspective.
Instead of seeing disability as a deficiency within the individual, it shifts it to saying, actually, it’s the way in which we structure our social networks, and how we structure the systems that we utilize that create that, and it doesn’t need to. We can do that differently.”[2]
[1] Alisha Parks. (April 18, 2022). Working Document Report, p.3.