Disability on Campus: ‘We do not practise best practice, and it is high time that we did’

Some very familair points in here - the assumption that disability only applies to students is frustrating, not least because, as pointed out here, some students believe that academia is only for the "perfect" and so they have no role models. I have a visual impairment and constantly find myself in bizarre situations where I am being asked to look at papers, that are too small for me to read, sometimes relating to approaches to reasonable adjustments! I was once told off by someone with a visually obvious disability from centralised student support services that I was not being sufficiently supportive to a student "because invisible disability is just ignored and trivialised by those who don't understand" - she was horrified when I told her that she was somewhat blurred because her need to sit in a dimly lit office conflicted with mine to have bright (some describe as painful) lighting - we became good colleagues after that and, I believe were able to actually help devise pragmatic student support approaches that were consistent with aiding the students in minimising the impact of their disability on their achievements but also not pretending that any disadvantage could always be abolished - sometimes you have to accept that something is beyond you or find innovative, though sub-optimal, workarounds. I sometimes think that a reasonable adjustment I would like to see would be feeling that we are able to be open about our disability to students and colleagues without the fear of being labelled "difficult" or underachieving.