Online Education for Students With Disabilities

Author: Online Schools Center
Published: 16 Jun 2016 - Updated: 9 Nov 2020

Contents: Synopsis - Introduction - Main - Related Publications

Synopsis: Online Schools Center guide to navigating an online education for students with disabilities.

Introduction

Online Schools Center is Proud to Release Their Informative Guide to "Navigating an Online Education for Students With Disabilities"

Main Content

Online Schools Center, a publication that evaluates distance higher education, has published their guide to Navigating an Online Education for Students with Disabilities.

This resource guide has a ranking of top ten disability friendly schools, with Ball State University (Muncie, Indiana) leading the rankings. The top ten schools were evaluated and chosen based on their accessibility to disabled students and their willingness to be more accommodating than other schools to students with disabilities. University of Arizona (Tucson, Arizona) and University of California (Berkeley, California) also made this list, in rankings two and three respectively. Other schools in the ranking are (in order of ranking):

• Cleveland State University (Cleveland, Ohio)
• University of Connecticut (Mansfield, Connecticut)
• Edinboro University of Pennsylvania (Edinboro, Pennsylvania)
• University of Houston (Houston, Texas)
• University of Illinois (Champaign, Illinois)
• University of Southern Illinois (Carbondale, Illinois)
• Michigan State University (East Lansing, Michigan)

According to Online Schools Center's chief editor, Linda Weems,

"An online education might be preferable to an 'in-person' education for a student with disabilities for many reasons. One of the main reasons being that the school will be able to accommodate the student better. From a more suitable student/faculty ratio, so they can get more one-on-one help, to the fact that the student will have to do less traveling, there are a large number of factors that can make an online education a better choice for these students. Another thing that the guide explores is what a student's rights are as a disabled person seeking to obtain a higher education. The guide explains how and why these students are protected under American laws."

"This informational guide was designed to cover as many topics as possible to help ensure that disabled students seeking a higher education have as strong of a chance as possible to succeed. We included topics such as scholarships for disabled students and online studying applications designed to be disabled friendly. Our goal was to make this guide as comprehensive and helpful as it could be because, as our lead researcher found, 'Only 13% of people with a disability above the age of 25 had a bachelor's degree' and we would like to see that number increase."

Attribution/Source(s): This quality-reviewed publication was selected for publishing by the editors of Disabled World (DW) due to its relevance to the disability community. Originally authored by Online Schools Center and published on 16 Jun 2016, this content may have been edited for style, clarity, or brevity.