adapts news

Welcome to ADAPTS at Georgia Tech. This site has recently been redesigned to accommodate your needs. Please feel free to browse the many programs we offer here. We also ask for feedback so we can further serve you.

• Updated Website
• Job Opportunities
• Extensive Programs

important stuff

Brand new opportunities to work with ADAPTS have opened up and are usually available one month after the fall semester.

GuidesGuides > Student Guide > Faculty Guide

Faculty Guide

• Attitudinal Barriers
• Rehabilitation Act of 1973
• Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990
• Faculty Procedures
• Teaching Students with Disabilities
• Sample Accommodation Letter
• Student Responsibility
• Institutional Policies
• Defining Disabilities
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Interview with Jeanne Kincaid
• Phone Index
• Recommendations for all Courses

---

This guide was created to help faculty/staff better understand the accommodation process in working with Georgia Tech students with disabilities. We appreciate all the hard work and assistance you provide in working with our students and hope this guide will provide the resources to ensure the best possible learning environment for all parties involved.

For a printer friendly version of our FACULTY & ADMINISTRATIVE GUIDE: To Effective and Reasonable Accommodations (Teaching and Working with Students with Disabilities), try our pdf version of the handbook.

In addition, we have provided a graduate teaching assistant guide as well. This is a condensed version of the FACULTY & ADMINISTRATIVE GUIDE that is geared towards the teaching assistant.

---

Attitudinal Barriers

As members of the academic community, you are very much aware of the impact language has on the reader or listener. Therefore, it is very important to be aware of and apply the appropriate terminology when describing people with disabilities.

Defining a person by the disability, not the person's humanness, leads us to isolate and segregate people with disabilities. It also hurts their pride and damages their confidence. Unfounded or inappropriate attitudes can be more disabling than any diagnosed disability.

Stereotyping prevails on campus, as it does in the larger society. In college, though, it not only perpetuates the prejudicial treatment encountered by people with disabilities elsewhere, but it may undermine scholastic performance or access to educational opportunities. Stereotyping also reinforces barriers that students with disabilities are trying to overcome at critical junctures in their lives.

Revising our perceptions and attitudes is the first step in accommodating students with disabilities. It is vital to remember that similarities among all students are much more significant than their differences: they are all, first and foremost, students.

The most important thing to remember is to put the person before the disability. This puts the emphasis on the person and not his or her particular functional limitation. If you must be succinct, give an accurate and positive portrayal of the person. Crippled, deformed, suffers from, victim of, the retarded, etc. are never acceptable terms.

Disability groups also strongly object to euphemisms to describe disabilities. Terms such as handicapable, mentally different, physically inconvenienced, and physically challenged are considered condescending. They reinforce the idea that disabilities cannot be dealt with up front.

Correct Terminology	Inorrect Terminology
Person who is deaf	The deaf person
People who are visually impaired	The blind person
Person with a disability	A disabled Person
Had/has polio	Polio victim
A person who is nondisabled	Normal, able-bodied
Person who has a mental illness	A mentally ill person, crazy