Dolores Santos, acting manager for Deaf services at George Brown College (GBC) describes her hope for the coming year: to provide ”information that facilitates communication, increases understanding, and ensures that teaching faculty and service providers work effectively together to provide an accessible learning environment for students.”
Located left of the main doors at St. James campus and up a set of stairs, Deaf and hard of hearing services at George Brown seems at first to be an unassuming little office, remarkable only because of the receptionist, who is always smiling and extraordinarily patient to the hearing people who come through the door.
However, this small space is actually only the visible tentacle of an octopus that extends to cover Centennial, GBC, Humber, Seneca and Sheridan—the five Greater Toronto Area (GTA) colleges.
For over four decades, this service area has been operating out of the college, scheduling interpreters, intervenors, computerized note taking accommodations, and other services to Deaf, deafened and hard of hearing students at George Brown and other GTA colleges.
According to Santos, there were 68,000 service hours provided to more than 280 students across the twenty-four campuses of these colleges last year and the numbers are projected to increase.
The success of the service is due to how they view the people they serve.
“Students are experts in terms of their own needs,” explains Santos. “We encourage students to provide their service providers with feedback or any concerns they have to ensure that the services they are receiving meet their expectations.”
Recognizing the commitment of GBC to inclusivity, rather than being a passive provider of services, Deaf and hard of hearing services is actively turning this expectation for inclusivity into a reality.
Some of the initiatives Santos describes that are being used to establish equity at the college include the creation of useful information hand-outs for faculty and providing professional development sessions for faculty on how to create an inclusive classroom experience for Deaf and hard of hearing students.
To ensure that students have an inclusive experience at college, students are “matched” with a consultant the first time they register with this service.
Because so many students have additional disabilities on top of being Deaf, deafened or hard of hearing, the department works collaboratively with disability services.
Both services are part of the student affairs division and some individuals have “two hats”, one in each service area. However, in practice these two departments work together.
The Deaf and hard of hearing services office is on the ground floor and disability services is on the fifth floor. Perhaps this is why it is common to see students going up five flights of stairs then descending them again moments later.
Fortunately, first year students only have to endure this routine once because students do not need to re-register every academic year. Returning students only need to connect with the disability consultant to whom they were initially assigned, pick up accommodation forms for their new classes, and send their timetable to the schedulers.
In order to streamline this stressful process for first year students, the two departments are in the process of merging their webpages.
Currently, first year students should take comfort in the fact that Deaf and hard of hearing services is doing more than “hoping” that students will find attending the college an inclusive experience.
