Disability and the Student Population at UMaine/UMM
Accessibility is usability for everyone. It is work done ahead of time to make content and platforms available to the widest audience possible.
Students Accommodations at UMaine - Academic year 2021-2022
8% of the student population at UMaine documented having one or more disabilities in the academic year 2021-2022. The fastest growing reasons for accommodations are psychiatric or mental health disabilities and medical or health related disabilities.
Notes about the data:
Students can have several reasons for accommodation. The data represented in the embedded Google sheets below presents the number of reasons for accommodation, not the number of students who benefit from accommodation.
Students who have a documented need for accommodation were able to provide the paperwork that allows them to qualify for a reasonable accommodation. The non-documented students are students who met with Student Accessibility Services but were not able to provide paperwork to qualify for a reasonable accommodation. Students can be non-documented for a variety of reasons, ranging from financial barriers to time and administrative constraints as getting a disability legally recognized can be a lengthy and difficult process.
The embedded Google sheets below gives you access to a graph (tab 1) and data sheet (tab 2) with the detailed data on accommodations at UMaine for academic year 2021-2022.
The proportion of UMaine students who have disclosed their need for accommodations has doubled in the last 10 years and it is expected to continue to rise.
The embedded Google sheets below gives you access to a graph (tab 1) and data sheet (tab 2) comparing the number of students enrolled at UMaine who have documented disabilities with the total student enrollment at UMaine from 2012 to 2022.
Many more students who need one or more accommodations chose not to disclose or were not able to advocate for their needs.
When you are proactive in making your courses accessible, you are helping countless of students succeed in your class.
Interested in digging deeper into course accessibility?
Learn about the different types of disabilities, how barriers to access impact students on campus, and what assistive technology students use at UMaine/UMM.
Learn about the difference between people-first language and identity first language, and about resources to help you navigate disability etiquette with your students.