It’s something most students are aware of through a few lines on a syllabus or a brief mention in lecture, but for scores of other students, the McBurney Center is a lifeline to ensure academic success on the UW-Madison campus.
In accordance with the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, the McBurney Center works to determine whether students meet the legal standards for possessing a disability.
The center arranges for a vast array of accommodations, including supplying sign language interpreters, braille and note-takers, providing closed captioning of media used in classes and making arrangements for test taking.
Additionally, the center will collaborate with University Housing and other departments to arrange accommodations for students, such as modifying dorm rooms.
“We’re working with the student to figure out what they need to have reasonable accommodations and equal access in the classroom,” said McBurney Center Director Cathy Trueba. “It’s not necessarily at the front of people’s minds.”
Despite the efforts of the McBurney Center, a lack of time and financial resources can constrain faculty in providing accommodations for students.
A 2014 report from the Secretary of the Faculty highlights the need to support individual professors and departments who want to, in turn, help students.
“Not many departments are equipped to take on the responsibility of arranging an accommodation,” the report read. “There needs to be support from the Provost or central administration to help departments understand the importance of accommodations and make them feel supported in carrying out the accommodation and funding those efforts.”
Trueba credits faculty for their work with the center, stating on the whole the relationship is a positive one.
“We’ve really refined our process to make it easy for faculty to work with us,” Trueba said. “We do training ahead of time, we contact them ahead of time … For the most part, once they understand the need, they make time for it.”
Despite the activism of the McBurney Center and numerous student organizations on campus, barriers are still present for disabled students on campus.
The replacement of free disabled parking spots around campus with parking that requires a permit has received attention in recent months.
Students with a disability who need to utilize those spaces must pay upwards of $650 to obtain a permit from the UW-Madison Transportation Services, according to the department’s website.
For students without the means to obtain a parking pass, getting around campus is difficult.
UW-Madison Transportation Services Director Patrick Kass said the free handicapped spots were not adequately servicing users and noted the university is experimenting with a free circulating shuttle bus for disabled students.
“The program was not keeping up with what was needed for campus,” Kass told The Capitol Times in 2015. “We charge fees to we can build and maintain parking and run the bus and shuttle system.”
According to Trueba, the overall climate on campus is mostly positive amid massive shifts in attitude towards people with disabilities.
Such change is a standard for activists on campus, as the emergence of different populations require that the effort to provide equal access, guaranteed by the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, is available to all Badgers.
“When I started out in this field 30 years ago, we were really thinking about wheelchair users, vision and hearing and [learning disabilities],” Trueba noted. “Then we added ADHD. Then we added mental health. Then we added people with chronic medical conditions, now we have students with autism and traumatic brain injury. We now have whole new groups of people who are part of the community. It keeps the work really interesting.”
The McBurney Center aims to continue to improve standards for people with disabilities on campus to the point where accommodations could be built into the academic experience.
“We’re really building towards this future of a more complete kind of access,” Trueba said. “We always joke that our ultimate job is to build ourselves out of a job ... That’s the goal.”
