Graduation Year
2023
Document Type
Thesis
Degree
M.A.
Degree Name
Master of Arts (M.A.)
Degree Granting Department
Anthropology
Major Professor
Kevin A. Yelvington, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Heide Castañeda, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Anne Pfister, Ph.D.
Keywords
accommodations, deaf anthropology, anthropology of policy, deaf education
Abstract
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) has provided legal requirement for universities to provide accommodations for all disabled students, including deaf students. The ADA is intentionally vague to allow flexibility for how institutions implement accommodations provisions. This leads to high variability across universities. Using ethnographic data from policy analysis, semi-structured interviews and focus groups with accommodations coordinators and deaf students from a large-public university, this applied anthropological study aims to investigate the impacts of policy and policy practices on the experiences of deaf students while proposing interventions informed by the coordinators and deaf students themselves.
This study is oriented along the nexus of three frameworks: the anthropology of policy, deaf anthropology and deaf studies. Situating this research in this way is key to a holistic understanding of the intertwined experience of deaf students, the accommodations coordinators, and the disability policy of the university. In terms of a theoretical orientation, I apply Pierre Bourdieu’s (1977) theory of practice but incorporate important critiques regarding his concept of habitus. Although I incorporate his concept of practice and structure to analyze the innerworkings and relationships between the university, federal and university disability policy, and the social actors within this structure, I diverge from habitus by framing social actors as neither static and disembodied, and their position within the university structure as inescapable (McDermott and Varenne 1995; Wolfreys 2000), but as individuals with agency who implement an intertwinement of participations and resistances to the situations they face within the overall university system. University disability policy focused primarily on academic educational settings and little on academic social settings and academic non-educational settings (such as with employees and staff in other departments such as the bookstore, cafe, maintenance, and parking). This was reflective on the experiences of both Student Accessibilities Services and the accommodations coordinators that work directly with the students. With no central enforcement overseer and minimal organization among the departments responsible for accommodations and access, SAS was made the informal ADA expert, overextending themselves to provide accommodations and access awareness to all departments at the university, taking time and resources away from the students they were centrally responsible for. This was also reflective in the deaf students' experiences. Students negotiate support or lack thereof with various social actors such as instructors, peers, and administrators, and create practices according to the practices of others. In turn, students also navigate responsibility, often placing extra responsibility onto themselves to ensure academic success, increasingly so when surrounding social actors, such as instructors and staff refuse to take responsibility onto themselves for providing equitable and accessible environments.
Scholar Commons Citation
Osorio, Tailyn Marie, "The Impacts of Disability Policy and its Implementation on Deaf University Students: An Applied Anthropological Approach" (2023). USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/9992
