San Jose City College hosted a number of events to provide information about access and accommodations and to educate the college regarding the rights of individuals with disabilities for (Dis)Ability Awareness or Accessibility Awareness month.

57 million people in the United States have been diagnosed with some kind of disability and here at San Jose City College 31% of the student population has a learning disability. The month of October is about promoting awareness of the difficulties people with disabilities face and ensuring that every student has the same access to services and tools on campus.

The Student Accessibility Services department offers specialized counseling and guidance for students with educational limitations which is often essential to their academic and vocational success. Services include an initial intake interview, registration assistance, authorization of accommodations based on verified limitations, and academic follow-up in each semester.

Rowena Tomaneng, SJCC president, believes in the importance of these programs.

“SJCC’s Student Accessibility Services (SAS) Program is such an amazing resource for our Jaguars who need specialized support services and instruction. The SAS team, led by Dr. Edina Rutland, coordinates a number of student support services: academic, personal, and career counseling, tutoring, assistive technology, sign language interpreting, and others,” Tomaneng said.

There are services available for deaf and hard of hearing students such as interpreters, captioners, and assistive listening devices. For students with learning differences SAS also offers an assortment of diagnostic or assessment programs to determine a student’s weaknesses and strengths. There are educational assistance courses, adapted physical education classes, high tech computer units and alternate media specialists available to students.

To help promote awareness the SAS and the committees for Diversity Advisory and Accessibility are also launching a series of (Dis)Ability trivia as well. Each week they will send out a set of questions related to these issues and five winners will each receive $20 gift cards from various retailers. Interested parties are asked to visit the SJCC SAS website for more information.
The City College Times attempted several times to contact the SAS office and multiple employees who all refused to comment on this story.