When Barbara Jean Fairbairn started as the first full time director of Binghamton University’s Services for Students with Disabilities in 1977, there were 18 students who sought help from her office.

Today, there are about 300.

And while 30 years ago most of the disabilities were physical, Fairbairn estimates that as many as two-thirds of today’s disabled students at BU are coping with learning disabilities, traumatic brain injuries, autism and attention deficit disorders.

These disabilities ‘ sometimes called ‘invisible disabilities’ ‘ cannot be easily detected by their peers, and coping academically can often be more difficult for students who process the material differently.

ASKING FOR HELP

SSD has two foci to help students, said Bethany Beecher, the learning disabilities specialist. They offer classroom accommodations, like extra test time and note taking. They also offer workshops and support services to build organization, studying and time management skills to help students cope with their disabilities.

Dr. Linda Tessler, a licensed psychologist who advocates for awareness about learning disabilities, encourages students to thoroughly understand their conditions and discuss them with professors.

‘You never want to appear like you’re using your disability as an excuse,’ Tessler said. ‘People resent that, and they should.’

Faculty are understanding, Fairbairn said, and at times even refer students they see struggling to SSD. Professors also work to keep the student and their disability confidential from the rest of the class.

Fairbairn’s office arranges for accommodations like note takers. The office hires about 90 note takers every semester, a different one for every class a student needs.

They also provide specialized software and are working on manually recording.

‘We’re not creating differential standards, we’re just creating equal access,’ Fairbairn said. ‘Some students may need books on tape because they have difficulty with the visual reading, not necessarily because of a vision impairment, but visual processing. But they can understand it fine if they’re hearing it.’

This semester has been the most difficult, Fairbairn said, as more students need taped book services ‘ a labor intensive process that requires permission from a publisher and a signed agreement of use.

First, Beecher said, SSD takes books from students and removes their bindings. The pages are then fed through a high speed scanner. SSD staff then edit the work so that it reads properly.

‘For some of the students, if the word is just slightly off from what its supposed to be, it’s going to throw off the whole context of the sentence and not make any sense to them,’ Beecher said.

The recordings and the newly-bound books are given back to students.

New York State law requires that publishers provide textbooks to disability offices in alternative electronic formats if they are available, Beecher said. But the law does not cover many of the books covered in literature classes, and the software publishers have is often in formats that cannot be reproduced or converted.

‘We have seen a huge increase in that service need, and the labor that it takes ‘ is very manually intense, and staff intense,’ Fairbairn said.

But for some students, books on tape are simply not helpful.

Michael, who graduated in May 2007, has Central Auditory Processing Disorder and hyperlexia. The unusual combination means he has difficulty processing what is said, ‘like a slow hard drive on a computer,’ and also anticipates words in reading, a condition nearly the opposite of dyslexia.

‘It’s like your mind plays tricks on you,’ Michael said. ‘You hear something and it’s like free association until you get on so many tangents you don’t follow what the professor is saying.’

While Michael did get note takers through SSD, books on tape would bore him, so he began to use other techniques.

‘When I read a novel or a play, I visualize it,’ he said. ‘If my strengths are to visualize it. I direct a movie in my head.’

To keep track of his classwork as well as his extracurricular activities, Michael has used a notebook to track what he was doing in class and in his extracurriculars.

‘The little details get lost in my head,’ he said. ‘After a while I realized, you know what, there’s no shame in writing it down.’

GET SUPPORT

Tessler also recommends that students use a notebook ‘ but a different kind.

Setting and tracking goals in a notebook is a way for students to monitor success and progress, she said.

‘Schools do a lot of good work, but there’s an internal maintenance that they [students with disabilities] have to do that nobody else can do,’ Tessler said. ‘It’s important to notice what they have accomplished.’

It’s essential to set goals that are within your control, she noted. Grades are not healthy milestones because they are up to an instructor, but goals of time management and studying are.

‘Grades are going to come and you’re going to have self-respect,’ she said.

Tessler, who is a member of the American Psychological Association, the International Dyslexia Association and the Learning Disabilities Association of America, was not diagnosed as dyslexic until she was 33 years old.

Growing up there was very little understanding about learning disabilities and even fewer accommodations for her.

Goals and pacing are so important because they boost self-esteem, she said.

‘We all say things to ourselves that are crueler than anything you could ever say to yourself,’ Tessler said. ‘Clean up that conversation.’