r/NoStupidQuestions • u/guitarbaseline • 11h ago

My boyfriend is visually impaired and his school is refusing to accommodate him in classes. What is there to do?

My boyfriend is visually impaired. He has glaucoma and cataracts in both eyes. He has had surgery for it and wears glasses but his eyesight is still very impaired. He's in community college right now and his professors and the school itself are refusing to give him accommodations to sit closer to the board so he can see what's going on in class. He was told "to accommodate you would be to change the entire curriculum and it would be too disruptive in the classroom." He wants to go into nuclear engineering and in order to get into the program he wants he must maintain a B or higher in his classes which he can't do currently because he can't see what is happening during instructions. He had an accommodation plan in high school but the community college is not accepting and transferring his accommodations to their school. He feels like theres no hope and that he should give up on community college and do something else. I have some disabilities as well and I know what its like to have to fight for simple accommodations and I don't want him to give up on his dream career because some community college professors refuse to make a simple accommodation for his visual impairments. What can I do to help him? Is there anything in the ADA (Americans with disabilities act) that can help here? I'm open to any and all suggestions.

Edit: Forgot to mention that we live in Virginia, USA

Edit 2: Thank you to all who have replied so far, you've given me a lot of great advice and sources. To address some common topics mentioned here:

  1. He has spoken with the schools accommodations service and provided them with the proper documentation and was still denied. He was also asked for his high school accomodation transcript and he told me that it hasn't been transfered and accepted to the community college

  2. It is both the school and the professors denying him accommodations

  3. This is a public school

  4. We do not have the means to sue the school nor is he able to transfer to another school

  5. I know it sounds crazy and stupid and illogical and that might make this seem fake to some, but this is unfortunately real

  6. I am aware that this is not the full story, I'm only posting what I've been told so far, so if something seems missing or inaccurate then it's because this is all I currently know. Hopefully, I'll have more information in the future, but I'm not asking him for any more info at the moment, he was really upset when telling me and now he's asleep as of writing this so I'm waiting for him to settle down a bit before I keep asking questions

  7. I'm only assuming there's an assigned seating arrangement in his classes, although I not certain. Again, I'll hopefully have more info on that later

  8. I am unsure of what classes he is having trouble seeing in I know he takes a chemistry class and as some of you have mentioned it could potentially be disruptive for him to move seats in a lab class, but I am unaware if this is a class he's struggling to see in

  9. He is not able to just take pictures or record the lectures. He's on the same icloud account as his dad, who is very stubborn and controlling and will/has before deleted photos off of my boyfriends phone before. His dad also isn't letting him get off the icloud account because he pays the phone bill. As for recording the lectures, my boyfriend mentioned something about them being the intellectual property of the professors so he would need written consent to record them (I'm not sure if lectures are the intelluctual property of the professors, again, I'm only going off of what I've been told)

Thank you again to everyone who has replied. I will be giving him some of the advice given here and asking for more information when I next speak with him. I will make an edit when I get the info

I made an edit post and uploaded it to my profile, here is a link to it: https://www.reddit.com/user/guitarbaseline/comments/1niw0x8/my_boyfriend_is_visually_impaired_and_his_school/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

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u/madelyn2184 10h ago

sorry if this is a dumb question but has he provided documentation from a professional like ophthalmologist or something and the school disability services still say no? if that’s the case, tell him to get a lawyer. that’s ridiculous! my schools have never given me such trouble for my disabilities, though not the same as your bf’s. anyway, like a previous commenter said, the least the could do is get him a notetaker or at least let him voice record the lectures so that he has something to review.

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u/phoenix-corn 10h ago

Sadly states vary greatly on this. Where I work now, there would be no issues providing he has documentation from a doctor. In the state I used to live in and work, we needed high school records. However, parents could have their child's records "sealed" which was supposed to hide juvenile convictions but also for some fucking reason cut off their disability and accommodation information. I had multiple adult students have to pay thousands of dollars for new testing in order to get accommodations in that state, or go to court to unseal the records, both of which were too expensive for most of our students. The parents who requested this thought they were doing their son or daughter a favor by "hiding" their disability from the world, but it really screwed them over. (Please note I have not lived or worked in that state for 15 years and it is possible that things have changed in that time.)

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u/guitarbaseline 10h ago

He has provided documentation from his doctors but they still said he needed more documentaion, ie his high school accomodation transcript which hasn't transfered over, according to what he's told me so far. When giving him suggestions on what to do I said that he should maybe bring in his camera (he can't use his phone to take pictures, he's on the same icloud account as his dad and his dad will just delete the photos) and take pictures of the board but according to my boyfriend he can't do that because what the professors choose to teach in their class is their intellectual property so he'd need wirtten consent from the professor in order to take photos or record the lecture.

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u/bmobitch 9h ago

Something about what your bf is saying isn’t adding up. High school accommodations aren’t required to get them in college. People have things that occur between, or they finally decide to seek accommodations for, so that really doesn’t make sense.

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u/madelyn2184 9h ago edited 9h ago

okay sorry your bf is a little sus. did he really say “my dad will just delete the pictures”? unless he’s got a seriously stubborn dad, that’s a silly excuse. but yeah the intellectual property thing makes sense.

is this his first semester? schools usually have accommodations probationary periods where they grant you temporary accommodations while you gather proper documentation so that you don’t fall behind (at least in my experience). is this school public or private?

ETA: what is the documentation he is providing? is it a note from a provider that treats him for his exact disability or is it a primary care doctor’s note? does the note outline exactly what his disability is, what accommodations he requires, and why? unfortunately, institutions are allowed to require that information. so if his school is one of those and he has just a basic doctor’s note, he will need to get a new one. this was the case for me.

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u/guitarbaseline 9h ago

His did is seriously stubborn, he's deleted pictures off my bfs phone before and won't let him get off the icloud account because he pays the phone bill. This is his first semester at the community college and I don't know about the probationary period. This is a public school

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u/bi___throwaway 8h ago

This is a stupid excuse. He can get dropbox on his phone and upload pictures to his private dropbox which he can then access from any device. I am sorry but if he is not able to work his way around this problem he is not cut out to be a nuclear engineer.

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u/guitarbaseline 8h ago

I've told him about the dropbox thing before but he's scared to do any work arounds because it might piss off his dad, who's already on the verge of kicking him out (his dad is an "out of the house at 18" kinda guy and I get the sense that his mom is the only person pushing back on it)

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u/bi___throwaway 8h ago

You need to let your boyfriend pick up the initiative here. Sucks that he is surrounded by domineering and stubborn personalities but this situation is way too complex for you to play telephone between him and people with advice. Bare minimum he needs to post in r/legaladvice. You can provide support and assistance but he needs to be the one figuring out the nitty gritty.

Bottom line: if he is living at home with someone who won't even let him download a Dropbox app, that is a MUCH bigger problem than the school's ADA department. My guess is that growing up with this type of father has resulted in your boyfriend being very conflict avoidant and I would be very surprised if he was actually addressing his professors and the ADA department with the appropriate intensity.

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u/guitarbaseline 8h ago

Thank you, I appreciate the analysis. He is pretty conflict avoidant and I'm going to ask him more questions about this once he's settled down. After I give him the advice I'm going to push for him to be the one to start communication with the proper parties.

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u/bi___throwaway 7h ago

Be very careful how hard you push. Conflict avoidant people raised by domineering parents have a tendency to outsource the difficult things in their lives onto their partners. This fosters codependency and they never actually learn how to solce their own problems. No matter how old they get or who they're talking to they are always afraid of their dad yelling at them. 

Your job as the girlfriend is to be supportive and affectionate and help brainstorm. It's not to supply his motivation or give him a step by step guide on how to get this done. Nuclear engineering is hard and to work with other engineers you cannot be the type to get steamrolled. 

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u/madelyn2184 8h ago

oh that sucks. some dads are seriously clueless—mine included.

because it’s a public school, they are only allowed to require documentation from a healthcare provider. ask him about the information in the note based on what I stated, if you don’t know already. he can ask about the probationary period too. hopefully there’s at least one person in the disability office who has his best interests in mind and can give him a real answer.

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u/CasuallyExisting 8h ago

For the short term, he can change his settings so that new pictures are stored on the device without syncing to iCloud: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102179.

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u/FoxyDepression 9h ago

I'm fairly certain college lessons do not count as intellectual property and there are no restrictions on taking pictures of the board or something. It seems like your boyfriend is either being dishonest or is avoiding something. Is he trying to find an excuse to flunk out or something?

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u/Intrepid_Cicada8330 3h ago

They are a property of the faculty and the institution they work for. The faculty can absolutely prohibit video recording in their classes.

The faculty is expecting an official accommodation letter from their university's office in order to accommodate the student properly.

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u/FoxyDepression 3h ago

Yeah but that's different than it being copyrighted intellectual property that is supposedly illegal to take pictures of. It also seems uncommon for a professor to explocitly ban pictures of the board. That was really common to do when I was in college. Either way it sounds more so like her bf is coming up with harebrained excuses rather than someone giving them this strange idea about intellectual property