Tristan Jagiello, ArtSci ’28, was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis shortly before his first year at Queen’s.
On top of navigating the daunting transition from high school to university, Jagiello had to learn how to navigate life with his new diagnosis—a digestive autoimmune disease with no cure.
Jagiello learned about Queen’s Student Accessibility Services (QSAS) at Summer Orientation to Academics and Resources, a one-day program offered to incoming undergraduate students. Now approaching the end of his first year, Jagiello feels QSAS has been an integral part of his educational experience.
QSAS connects students with disabilities to advisors who create individualized accommodation plans based on each student’s unique needs. Students ed with the service are able to their advisors for and are given access to Ventus, an online accommodation management system.
“[QSAS] seemed like a really valuable resource,” Jagiello said in an interview with The Journal. “If something were to go really wrong and I needed some form of , it would be a lot easier to have something pre-set up that I could take advantage of without the stress of trying to get a doctor’s note.”
Recurring flare-ups that involve a sudden and drastic increase in symptoms are often unpredictable, but some are triggered by stress—a quintessential aspect of post-secondary education. Flare-ups may arise during critical academic periods, including midterm and final exam seasons, and can require hospitalization.
Experiencing a prolonged flare-up became a reality for Jagiello during his first midterm season last fall.
“I ended up hospitalized for two and a half weeks and pretty much bedridden for another week after that,” Jagiello said. “I wasn’t able to get to classes, and I had complications with my hands.”
Jagiello’s flare-up of ulcerative colitis was accompanied by severe inflammatory arthritis. Because of his t pain and other symptoms, Jagiello couldn’t attend class to take notes. With QSAS, however, he was given access to NoteQ, a peer note-taking service.
“Just having access to [NoteQ] meant I wasn’t totally in the dark and totally behind,” Jagiello said. “I was able to keep up to the best of my ability and not be a month behind and have to recover with no real way of doing so.”
In addition to providing for students during flare-ups, QSAS offers personalized accommodations to help disabled students cope with their everyday symptoms. Some accommodations include access to NoteQ and Glean, an audio note-taking application, extra time on assessments, up to seven-day extensions on assignments, private and semi-private test-taking rooms, and more.
“There are days where I can only hold a pen for 10 or 15 minutes at a time, and that’s where the peer notetaking and the audio note-taking program really come in handy,” Jagiello said.
“[Having this accommodation] means I can go back and take the notes when my hand is feeling better, or I can just take them in 10 to 15 minute increments after the class is over and pay full attention without pain in my hands,” he added.
Having access to accommodations alleviates a lot of stress for students like Jagiello.
“Being in first year, I was pretty nervous going into things and not knowing how the university system worked,” Jagiello said.
QSAS advisors assist students in communicating about their accommodations with professors, without having to disclose personal medical information. This is especially important in cases where students’ accommodations are disregarded, misunderstood, or questioned by professors or TAs.
Jagiello, who has an accommodation for excused absences, was reprimanded by a professor after explaining he would be missing class for medical reasons and would make sure to catch up on any missed content independently. Concerned that his accommodations weren’t being taken seriously, he reached out to QSAS for assistance.
“I explained [to my professor] that it wasn’t something I was doing just because I can, it’s because I had to—I didn’t really have a choice,” Jagiello said. “I ended up asking my QSAS advisor if I was going about it correctly or if I needed to do something more official, and he ended up reaching out and clearing it up.”
Jagiello has benefitted significantly from his accommodations, but ing with QSAS was no easy feat. Given the long waitlist for registration, his initial intake appointment was scheduled for December 2024, after his flare-up. It was only because of his hospitalization that he was able to have his intake appointment moved up, granting him access to accommodations during his flare-up.
“I definitely know that was very lucky, and most people won’t be able to get that,” Jagiello said.
“Being able to get those accommodations so quickly was the reason I was able to stay at Queen’s and finish out my first year. If I had to go an extra month without accommodations, I wouldn’t have been able to manage that, and I would have had to come home and restart next year.”
***
Kiera Barton, ConEd ’28, was born with Chiari malformation—a neurological condition that’s typically detected in adolescence—and has received academic accommodations for her symptoms since middle school.
Barton, who experiences muscle weakness and vision impairment because of her disability, has found accommodations like NoteQ and extra time on assessments extremely beneficial to her academic performance.
However, she, like Jagiello, has experienced challenges due to delays within QSAS.
“I’ve often e-mailed my QSAS advisor only to get a response like four weeks later,” Barton said in an interview with The Journal. “Usually by that point I’ve had to find another solution, rather than actually getting the answer I needed from her.”
Barton believes this issue stems from QSAS being understaffed and underfunded.
“I just feel like they need more staff, because right now there’s not enough and that’s why sometimes, for example, I’ve experienced people not getting back to me in time when I have a question,” Barton said.
“I feel like it’s not their fault, and it’s more so that they have something like 150 students under one advisor,” she added.
According to a report by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario, disability offices at post-secondary institutions have an average of one staff member for every 300 students. At Queen’s, QSAS has fourteen full-time employees managing roughly 6,000 students approved for accommodations.
Given each academic advisor’s substantial caseload, Barton feels it’s understandable for there to be delays in communication. However, she believes Queen’s has the responsibility to increase funding for QSAS to both students and staff.
In recent years, the number of students with disabilities has increased across Canada. Barton feels Queen’s has been unable to keep up with this growth, with per student funding dropping by 23 per cent between 2016 and 2021. Students with disabilities like Barton have felt the tangible effects of the shift in resource allocation.
“Often when I go to write a test, there’s confusion about what accommodations someone is supposed to have,” Barton said. “[The test centre] seems a bit disorganized, and that’s not going to help you focus on the test if you’re upset about that.”
Barton is entitled to write assessments on a laptop due to challenges she faces with vision and fine motor skills. However, she has at times been denied access to a laptop and forced to write on paper instead, being simply told laptops weren’t permitted.
“Just little things like that I feel like could be avoided,” Barton said. “It was fine for me to do it [in that case] since it was only multiple choice, but it was more of a nuisance that it wasn’t clear to everyone there that I was meant to get a laptop.”
Barton has also reached out to QSAS for help communicating with professors about her accommodations, but these attempts were to no avail. Since Barton has experienced persistent delays when communicating with QSAS, she has learned to strategically advocate for her own needs.
“Now, if I do have a question or something I need help with, I’ll just try to figure it out myself—I kind of have the idea that they’re just going to take too long to respond and it’s not going to work out anyways,” Barton said.
In her time at Queen’s, Barton has learned to be proactive when it comes to informing professors about her accommodations. She approaches professors at the beginning of the semester to inform them she’s ed with QSAS to avoid misunderstandings in the future. While her strategy isn’t always effective, it has made it much easier for Barton to navigate university life with her disability.
Compared to high school, Barton has also noticed decreased levels of stigma around using accommodations. She believes accommodations have become increasingly normalized among the student body.
“In high school, I felt like there was always a really judgmental stigma around using accommodations, and anyone using accommodations was seen as ‘the dumb kid,’” Barton said.
“At Queen’s, I’ve found that there’s none of that [stigma]. It’s something that a lot of people very openly and freely talk about.”
***
Angelina Martin, ArtSci ’27, believes professors need to do more for students with disabilities in their classes.
“I think QSAS does a good job on their end,” Martin said in an interview with The Journal. “Where my concerns and issues have come from is when professors don’t listen to my accommodations.”
Last semester, Martin, who is diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, attempted to apply her accommodation for a seven-day extension to the culminating assignment in one of her required courses. She informed her professor prior to the deadline, but her professor refused to accommodate her since the assignment was due later that day.
Martin explained over e-mail that her accommodations permitted her to receive an extension under those circumstances. She also attempted to visit her professor’s in-person office hours to further explain her situation, but her professor was nowhere to be found.
“I e-mailed [my professor] a bunch of times, and I ended up just having to drop the course because she wouldn’t let me submit it, even though I had those accommodations,” Martin said. “[Having to drop the course] is really weighing on me because now I have to redo all of the units that I had already done, just because of one task and one professor who wouldn’t listen.”
Martin believes her experience reflects a greater need for a cultural shift surrounding accommodations among Queen’s faculty .
“I think on the professor’s end, from what I’m seeing, her unwillingness to listen to my accommodations comes from a lack of education,” Martin said.
Martin believes this issue is exacerbated by a lack of resources, as well as by professors being overworked. She believes that having more teaching assistants per class would benefit disabled students, which she its is a tricky situation given the ongoing PSAC 901 graduate student worker strike.
READ MORE: 2,000 graduate student workers walk off the job
“I definitely think that more TAs would probably be helpful, as long as they’re getting a living wage,” Martin said in an interview with The Journal. “I think TAs better understand accommodations because they’re currently students themselves […] Because we work in smaller class sizes, there’s also that personal relationship with TAs, so I feel more comfortable telling them the details of why I might need an accommodation.”
Martin’s concerns were echoed by an independent report on Queen’s accommodations policies in June 2024. The report was commissioned by Queen’s University to address the demand for increased accessibility across Canadian universities.
The report’s top recommendation was a change in “culture, attitude, and method” surrounding academic accommodations for disabled students, coupled with an increase in for QSAS staff.
“The number of students ing for academic accommodations has grown steadily in recent years, reflecting a broader trend in postsecondary education,” Queen’s University said in a statement to The Journal.
“To this, Queen’s has improved systems for students, faculty, and staff. In 2022, the university introduced the Ventus system to simplify communication about accommodations and provide better reporting,” the University said.
Ventus allows students to manage their academic accommodations online, without the help of a QSAS advisor. Through Ventus, students can opt in and out of accommodations for each course and its relevant assessments. However, not all assessments can be managed through Ventus—students are responsible for communicating directly with their instructors when this is the case.
The report states many faculty expressed suspicions that QSAS is “being exploited to make university ‘easier’ for those able to secure documentation by illegitimately reporting the correct cluster of symptoms.” The report stated while these suspicions were “largely anecdotal and unproven,” this perception makes life more difficult for students with disabilities at Queen’s.
Martin shared she’s often hesitant to tell others about her accommodations, out of fear of being accused of “cheating.” In fact, she initially didn’t with QSAS due to this very fear.
“I didn’t want to have to tell people that I had accommodations,” Martin said. “I didn’t want to personally be on accommodations because I guess there was this underlying stigma in my own mind about it.”
Martin has now come to with her accommodations and feels her academic experience has substantially improved since ing with QSAS.
“If you have an accommodation, there’s a reason that you have it, and someone has determined that this is what you need to level the playing field,” Martin said. “That means that a whole group of people said, ‘yes, this person needs [accommodations] so they can do their best,’ which is what we’re all just trying to do as students.”
Tags
All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s) in Chief and/or the Managing Editor. Authors should not be ed, targeted, or harassed under any circumstances. If you have any grievances with this article, please direct your comments to [email protected].