Helping Students with Disabilities Succeed in College

Located in a corner of the Victory Center, the new Center for Student Accessibility Services offers a welcoming presence for students who come to visit. They can enter the office through the lobby by following a set of decals on the floor that guide students with low vision. Or they can enter through a new door located off the building courtyard. Either way, they will be greeted by staff who want to help students with disabilities at San Antonio College.

“As soon as students walk in here, we want them to be comfortable,” said Ben Romo Director of Student Accessibility Services. “We want students to know education is hope. It is power. It is independence.”

Along with a new home, the office has a new name. Once known as Disability Support Services, the change to Student Accessibility Services signals an expanded focus on its mission. For a very long time, the office worked on providing students with disabilities with the resources they need to learn in the classroom. It is still a primary goal of the office.

“We have accommodations, but the accommodations do not change the standards,” explained Romo. “What it does is to allow the student with a disability to be on the same level as any other student. The accommodation mitigates the disability creating an equal playing field.”

Now, the office wants to spread the message that SAC is accessible to anyone who wants to go to college.

The disabled community is significant. According to Romo, 28 percent of adult Texans have a disability. The number in Bexar and surrounding counties is more than 300,000. Yet the number of students with disabilities who graduate from high school and continue to college is no higher than 30 percent. 

“Students with disabilities have been marginalized for a long time. They are told what they can’t do. They don’t come to college because they think it is unobtainable. We are changing that philosophy. We are telling them that you can accomplish college,” said Romo.

Members of the Student Accessibility Services office are now visiting schools to let students know SAC offers opportunities for them to get a college education. Last spring, they visited the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired to meet with students and educators. Plans are underway to visit the Texas School for the Deaf to reach out to their students.

The office is also forging relationships inside the local disability community. This semester they were approached by Joint Base San Antonio (JBSA), which was organizing a college fair for high school students attending schools at military bases. 

“We have never done this before. We have never done enrollment and recruitment,” said Romo. But so far he is encouraged by early results. Usually, SAC has about 450 to 500 students who self-identify as disabled. This fall semester the number was 600. He expects that number will skyrocket next fall.

The office also wants to make sure students with disabilities have jobs available to them once they complete college. They are partnering with Workforce Solutions, and Vocational Rehabilitation Services to provide job placement opportunities.

This wouldn’t be possible without the help of everyone from SAC. Romo said the office has a good relationship with Academic Success. He pointed to an example of blind students who were having trouble in a math course because their adaptive equipment did not work with the software being used in the class.

The instructor alerted the department chair, who reached out to Romo. By working together, they realized they needed the vendor to turn on part of the software to fix the problem. Since the problem was caught early in the semester, the students did not miss too much coursework.

For the Student Accessibility Office, the mindset is making education accessible, and their work comes down to three ambitious goals: providing people with disabilities entry into college, a credential to open opportunities, and competitive employment for self-reliance.

“If we can do that, then we did a great job,” said Romo.

-SAC-