Because Joshua Zeller lives with chronic conditions that cause dizziness, snowy vision, and tinnitus, he asked UNC Charlotte’s Office of Disability Services for help last year.
Zeller hoped the office would allow him extra absences when his conditions were too severe to attend class. UNC Charlotte typically allows professors to determine their own absence policies; most of Zeller’s professors wrote in their syllabi that four absences would be excused each semester. Zeller hoped the disability office would allow him to miss as many classes as needed, as long as he communicated with his professors.
Instead, he was given two additional absences per class. Zeller didn’t think that would be sufficient.
“They were not willing to do anything for me,” Zeller said.
After several months of back-and-forth with the disabilities office and later with UNC Charlotte’s legal office, Zeller wasn’t able to secure any more excused absences. He graduated from UNC Charlotte in May with a degree in computer science.
Zeller and seven other students The Assembly interviewed said they felt that the disabilities office has been too restrictive with accommodations and that their interactions with the office felt adversarial at times. Most students asked to speak anonymously out of fear that they might lose their existing accommodations.
The accommodations these students requested included access to text-to-speech and speech-to-text technology, deadline extensions, and additional excused absences. Of the eight students interviewed, five said their accommodation requests were denied because the office said they did not need them, while other requests were granted in part. Their disabilities included severe anxiety and depression, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and dyslexia.
UNC Charlotte and other UNC System schools must follow the Americans with Disabilities Act, which requires universities to provide reasonable accommodations to students with documented disabilities so that they can access the same educational experience as their peers.
Maya Weinstein, a Raleigh attorney with Brooks Pierce Law Firm who specializes in education law, said the ADA is not prescriptive, so schools have to determine what accommodations are necessary to ensure equal access.
“I don’t think there’s a spectrum of the sufficiency of accommodations. It’s either sufficient or it’s not,” said Weinstein.
Colleges across the country are dealing with a spike in students requesting accommodations, at the same time that diagnoses for conditions like autism and attention disorders have increased. Some experts argue that students could abuse the system to get extra time on tests or other assistance they don’t need. The students interviewed for this article said they thought UNC Charlotte might be trying to prevent abuse or overuse, but university officials said that wasn’t the case.
In an email to The Assembly, Office of Disability Services Director Gena Smith wrote that the school’s approach centers on providing equal access and individualized, thoughtful review of requests. For the past five years, Smith’s office has seen a 39% increase in the number of students using accommodations, from 1,195 in the 2021-22 academic year to 1,663 last year—roughly 5% of the student body.
“Accommodations are a pathway to access, and with that access comes the same expectation of academic integrity placed on every student at the University,” wrote Smith. “We focus on maintaining a structured environment where the integrity of the accommodation process is protected.”
Smith said her office has dealt with turnover and is currently four full-time employees short of a full staff of 11, although she said an additional person is joining the office this month. “Our priority remains meeting student needs without interruption,” she wrote.
Smith declined to discuss Zeller’s case due to privacy laws, but she said the attendance policy aims to provide “a framework for limited flexibility within the bounds of the course syllabus.”
“It may be that the university is taking the position that additional absences alter the program in some way, and that’s why they can’t offer more,” said Weinstein. “Universities are not required to grant accommodations that would create a fundamental alteration to the program, so if there is a required standard and the accommodation would require lowering the standard, the university does not have to provide that accommodation.”
A social work major at UNC Charlotte said she requested extensions on assignments due to ADHD, post-traumatic stress disorder, an auditory processing disorder, and depression. She said that after her doctor wrote to the office to confirm her symptoms are chronic, the office granted her request but limited the extensions to “flare-ups” and suggested her problems were more about time management.
She recalled being told in face-to-face meetings that if she didn’t use the accommodation enough, it could be removed—a message she took to mean that periods of relative stability could be used to justify withdrawing support. The student said she left meetings feeling as if using accommodations too often might look like abuse, but not using them enough might be reason to question whether she needed them at all.
“It’s essentially punishing people who are sick for having better days,” she said.
Weinstein, though, said the process isn’t as straightforward as students may think.
“It’s not the case that just because a student walks in with a letter from a doctor that says this student requires xyz accommodations that the university necessarily needs to grant all of those accommodations,” said Weinstein. “The university reviews on an individual basis for each student.”
Weinstein said that there will always be cases where students request more than offices provide, but if universities determine that they have met their legal obligations, the only way to resolve the discrepancy could be to go to court.
UNC Charlotte Deputy Chief Communications Officer Christy Jackson said the university could not comment directly on the social work major’s case due to federal privacy laws, but she said the Office of Disabilities Services recently updated its extension request processes to improve clarity for students and faculty. It does not remove accommodations simply because they go unused.
“Implementing new processes always requires a period of ongoing evaluation,” Jackson said.
Smith wrote that students who feel their accommodation requests have been treated improperly can contact the appropriate supervisor within the office.
