Accessibility at BTC with Mary Gerard 
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Matt: Welcome to Bellingham Technical College’s Money$marts Podcast. I’m your host, Matt Benoit. And each episode we’ll talk to BTC students, staff community professionals and financial experts about financial literacy and wellness all to help listeners navigate resources in the community and empower themselves financially. Today we’re here with Mary Gerard the Director of Accessibility Resources at Bellingham Technical College. Mary, how are you?
Mary: I’m great, thanks! 
Matt: Excellent, excellent. So, yeah, tell us about your position with accessibility resources here at BTC. 
Mary: Okay, well, we’re a small department of only two folks and we work with about 350 students. My position as Director of Accessibility Resources is three fold. First and foremost, is I ensure access for students with disabilities to everything BTC has to offer from courses to programs to extracurricular activities. Sometimes students with disabilities have a hard time engaging in those because they need accommodation. Another thing that I do is that I help faculty and staff understand their legal obligation under the Americans with Disabilities Act and section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act to provide accommodation and accessibility for individuals with disabilities. And thirdly, I keep an eye out for possible legal ramification of folks who maybe are not understanding their responsibility to provide appropriate accommodation as decided by the Accessibility Resources Office. So, it is a large job and it’s also a really important job to get students to that finish line.
Matt: Now, what accessibility resources can students at BTC access? 
Mary: Accommodations are incredibly case-by-case. Some of the accommodations that we do provide students would be extended time on their testing, if they do have timed tests. We provide quiet spaces for students to actually take tests so that they’re not feeling distracted by others in the classroom environment. We also provide ergonomic equipment for those we work with who are retraining through labor and industries who may have physical disabilities or any individual who wishes to pursue education, they may struggle with sitting for long periods of time, so we will provide adjustable height tables, ergonomic chairs, specialized computer equipment such as track balls, ergonomic keyboards, those sorts of things. But, it really is case-by-case. So, I’ve had students who only use extended time for their two years and that’s perfectly okay. And I’ve had other students with a great deal intersectionality of disabilities who require many many accommodations. 
Matt: So, the resources you just mentioned, the accommodations you just mentioned, how do you think those things make a student’s education more equitable. 
Mary: Well, at BTC, and any organization that receives federal financial aid, we have a legal obligation to provide accommodation. There is a shift though, from this legal obligation of accommodation to the idea of accessibility or inclusive design. Meaning, on the front end we can have faculty members who are thinking about a ways to make their programs and courses more accessible. That sort of takes the accommodation piece out of it. So, making accessible courses is really better for everybody because the students who receive accommodations get what they need but other individuals such as English Language Learners or somebody that might be a little bit older, not able to process as quickly, other folks who may need just a little bit more accessible environment for learning also reap the benefit of what they’re doing in an accessible classroom. So, that’s sort of the difference between accessibility and accommodation. So, accommodation tends to be more expensive and more of a one-off. Accessibility that we are moving towards more with the social justice model of disability really benefits everyone in the learning environment. 
Matt: How would you say disability effects a student’s financial wellness?
Mary: Well, it’s so very interrelated. Somebody’s disability status and their ability to earn over a lifetime. So, our president recently told me that we retain students and we graduate students at the same rate as their nondisabled peers. However, where people with disabilities are really not succeeding is obtaining employment, having a living wage, and competing with everyone else in the workforce. So, it really does effects their financial wellness overall and their ability to earn. So, some of the things we do in my office with students with disabilities is we coach them on how to get a job, whether or not to disclose that they have disabilities, how that will work out if something happens later in the job process that they didn’t disclose and they are unable to do the job because of their disability. So, we talk about very real things. I just worked with a student recently who had a tremor and was going to a program where he was required to draw. And the instructor had suggested that the student just says “I have a tremor.” What I said was rather than of say “I have a tremor”, why don’t we just say “I can’t draw a straight line to save my life, is it okay if I use some form of software to do my drawings?” Because at the end of the day, many people can’t draw a straight line. So, I was giving the student the option to not disclose a disability because unfortunately, in our society, there’s still a huge stigma around people with disability. And, I didn’t want him to have to disclose that right out the gate if he was able to do every other piece of that job effectively. 
Matt: So, when we talk about employment and earning potential, what kind of employment advice do you often give the students you work with?
Mary: Well, I think the employment question starts at the very beginning. From the first time I meet with a student, we talk about what their skills are, what their aptitudes are, and also where they might be lacking in skills and aptitudes moving forward. So, for instance, just like any other student, if a student with disabilities isn’t very good at math, I’m not going to suggest they go into a program that has high level math, it isn’t fair. I mean, I would do that with any student, I don’t want to set them up for failure at the very beginning. So, we have frank discussions about their specific disability and how that’s going to play into the courses and ultimately the job. I also work collaboratively with advisors, with programs, having conversations with students that kind of hit home. 
Matt: how do you help your students set and attain employment goals for after they graduate?
Mary: Well, the best way to do that, is when a student is working with the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation because they’re assigned a vocational counselor or if they’re working with labor and industries and they have an L&I vocational counselor and then there’s a team who all have different specialties and were able to direct the student towards a possibility at the end of their education. The harder job is when a student has it set in their head, they have a disability, but “I’m going to overcome it and I’m going to become…” let’s just say a nurse. But, their disability intersects with their academic goals at times. Quite often I find that students with disabilities require quite a bit of external support. My job is to ensure that they’re not experiencing discrimination at BTC. But, it’s very difficult to be everything to everybody so I work with teams to talk about the employment outlook, what that will look like, how do I apply.
Matt: What do you advise students with disabilities when it comes to navigating the job interview process?
Mary: When it comes to the job interview process, it’s really the student’s choice. They can disclose or not disclose that they have a disability. When it’s a visible disability is a little harder that they’re going to see that when they get there. So I talk with them about what are your strengths, what is your aptitude? How can you best meet the knowledge, skills, and abilities you need to meet in the job that you’re going for and focus on that. Also, I refer students sometimes to the job accommodations network, which is an online site that helps students understand their rights under disability law in the job search. And also, we have the ADA Center the NorthWest ADA Center that students can access and understand what their rights are. As, far as the job search though, what I tell students is, they’re like any other students, the important thing at BTC is that they have met the same outcomes as every other student in order to graduate. So they do have the knowledge, skills, and abilities or they would not be able to get a diploma and more forward. So, I try to focus on that positive piece yet still stay realistic about that stigma that exists in our society around people with disabilities and their own abilities.
Matt: Why do you think representation of people with disabilities is so important in the workforce? 
Mary: Our philosophy, here at BTC is that disability is a part of diversity, we’re so lucky that we enjoy diverse individuals in our schools, in our society, in our jobs. And folks with disabilities, rather than create some sort of negative around that what I say to them is that they are perfect, actually, just the way they are the problem is our society has not caught up yet. So, across the country about 20% of our population in the Untied States are disabled. They’ve reported some sort of a disability. At BTC about 13% of our student body has self-disclosed disability so the 7% are probably out there who either don’t know accessibility resources exists or there’s still some shame and stigma around talking about disability, particularly, mental health disorders. And we’re trying to change that here so that they can be represented in the workforce. It’s important because the more representation folks with disabilities have in the workforce the more  we’re going to be able to wipe away the stigma associated with it because we’ll be focusing more on what they can do than what they can’t do.
Matt: So, for those with disabilities how can BTC be a path towards employment and financial wellness?
Mary: Well, we know that there is evidence that the more education someone receives, the greater their earning potential. At BTC, students are incredibly fortunate in that there’s a wide array of programs that they can choose from that fit a need in our community. So, we’re very responsive to community need and what jobs are available. Students who do have disability challenges may or may not be successful in their program. I’ve had to sit with a lot of students who maybe the outcome wasn’t what they had hoped. However, if students are willing to be realistic, choose a program that is within their aptitudes and they’re able to complete, then getting a job is more possible and earning a living wage is more possible. I work with several students who are receiving SSI benefits and they’re held to some limitations around earning caps. So, we can talk about part-time employment, we can just talk about augmenting their income if they’re getting SSI.
Matt: So, for those who don’t know, what does SSI stand for?
Mary: SSI stands for Supplemental Security Income. So, for individuals with pervasive disability challenges it may have been decided that working or earning a living wage and being self-supportive was not going to be in the cards for them. So, our society provides supplemental income for those individuals. Yet, everyone that I meet at our school wants to give back in some way to our community. If I can at all, I like to help them choose a program or a career that will offer them flexibility to stay within the SSI guidelines but still be able to give back and have a purpose every day. To get out there in their community to make a difference. 
Matt: What resources are out there for employment opportunities for people with disabilities? 
Mary: Well, the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation is a great resource for people with – who want to look for work who have disability challenges. That’s their entire focus they work with people individually to engage in the job search, what’s the job search like, identify strengths and challenges, figure out what would be best. And sometimes, what would be best is to have a two-year degree or some form of certificate in order to be marketable. That’s the point that DVR and BTC start working together. So, I have great connection with our DVR counselors in Whatcom County and we work very closely to ensure students are choosing the right path. Now, students with disabilities have to do all the work, like I said before, and meet all the outcomes of students without disabilities so the DVR counselor is careful to make sure that we have documentation of disability that supports retraining. So that we don’t have somebody coming in to the college and setting them up for failure because they aren’t prepared for the rigors of education. So, education is a really good path toward higher paying jobs but for people with disabilities who want to go to work but maybe not retrain, DVR is a great option.
Matt: Excellent. So, is there anything else you want to add, Mary, about accessibility here at BTC or in the community?
Mary: Well, we’ve made great strides at BTC, like I said, to make disability a piece of diversity. We truly believe that and the instructors, and the staff and the students at BTC have a unified idea of what disability is. And that everyone has a place here in order to get their education and achieve academic goals. It used to be, before the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities act of 1990, that people with disabilities weren’t afforded these opportunities. And now, it is legally mandated that we do afford folks with disabilities opportunities to enjoy education and other life function that everyone else gets to enjoy. And the movement from a medical model of disability to a social justice model has been incredibly wonderful for this field because now rather than say there’s something wrong with a student, like “you need to go get documentation from a physician to prove that you have disabilities.” We still look at documentation because it helps us with the accommodation process; however, when a student tells me that they have a disability my job is to believe them and encounter the barriers that they may encounter at Bellingham Technical College based on the disability that they personally are experiencing. And it’s very different, there is as many barriers out there as there are individuals so it’s very case-by- case it’s an interactive process, and it really involves all of the campus community here to ensure students are achieving their goals with or without accommodation. 
Matt: Well, Mary, thank you so much for being here and thank you so much for informing us all about accessibility.   
Mary: My pleasure.
Matt: Thanks for listening to this episode of the BTC Money$marts podcast, be sure to check out all our episodes on the BTC website. They’re loaded with stories, tips, tricks and strategies for financial literacy. This podcast is produced by Cheryl Kennedy with music courtesy of Bensound.com. I’m Matt Benoit, see you next time!