‘I feel betrayed’: Blind UW-Madison prof denied request to teach online

By KELLY MEYERHOFER

Click here for updates on this story

    MADISON, Wisconsin (madison.com/Wisconsin State Journal) — A blind UW-Madison professor requested to teach online this fall semester. She had the support of her department, documentation from her doctor and a long history of receiving disability accommodations from the university.

UW-Madison instead offered English professor Elizabeth Bearden an N95 mask to wear while teaching.

“It was just so heartbreaking,” she said. “I feel betrayed by my institution.”

The accommodation, she said, didn’t address her concerns about being unable to tell whether students were following the campus mask mandate nor alleviate her fears about an infection leading to a loss of taste or smell, which the blind rely on more than those with all five senses.

Declining to risk her health, Bearden spent the semester on medical leave, earning 60% of her salary. She also filed a discrimination complaint last month with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, alleging UW-Madison violated her rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Bearden and at least two others who sought online teaching flexibility said they were told by their disability representative this summer that UW-Madison is denying most online teaching requests because of a need to offer as many in-person classes as possible. The university offered the same explanation in its initial denial letter to Bearden.

UW-Madison spokesperson John Lucas said he is unable to discuss the details of individual cases, including Bearden’s, but said the university values the contributions of its employees with disabilities and remains committed to careful and thoughtful review of each accommodation request. He also noted the low number of COVID-19 cases on campus this fall due to a vaccination rate of more than 95%.

A recently concluded internal review of how UW-Madison handled the three dozen accommodation requests made under the ADA, including Bearden’s, drew no broad conclusions about whether the university did right by some of its most vulnerable instructors who remain at particularly high risk during the pandemic.

Conducted by the university’s Office of Strategic Consulting and released to the Wisconsin State Journal under the state’s open records law, the review, which came in the form of a 13-slide PowerPoint presentation, seemed to blame staff in the Employee Disability Resources office for misinterpreting messages from university leadership.

Disability representatives “heard the message, perceived to be from the Chancellor and Provost, that fall semester teaching was to be in person,” the review noted. “This was interpreted in an inflexible way.”

At the same time, the review also found that while administrators “desired to be flexible, the reluctance to offer changes in course modality led to perceptions of inflexibility.”

Many ‘modified approvals’ Of the 36 ADA accommodation requests for the fall semester, the review found:

Two cases in which the instructor was moved to a course already designated to be online; Seven cases where a course was moved online as requested; 10 cases that were withdrawn; One case that was denied; 14 cases designated as a “modified approval,” examples of which included offering an N95 mask, larger classroom or temporary online instruction that transitioned to in-person after the instructor received a booster shot; Two cases listed as “in progress” as of Sept. 22. The accommodations process was executed consistently across campus, the review found, with additional resources devoted in the second half of the summer. That’s when the majority of requests seeking workplace flexibility, including many that did not fall under the ADA, poured into department chairs as the delta variant of the coronavirus swept across the country.

The unique nature of many requests, such as having an immunocompromised family member or unvaccinated child at home, were “complex scenarios” that UW-Madison lawyers and others hadn’t previously dealt with under the ADA process, leading to longer processing times, the review said.

“Messaging on campus that attempted to educate people about the limits of the ADA process was interpreted (incorrectly) by some as a rejection of requests for flexibility,” read one bullet point.

No instructor interviews While Bearden submitted her request in May, four months before classes began in September, Lucas said nearly three-fourths of the requests to move classes online were submitted in August or later, leaving staff less time to respond.

The unnamed employees who conducted the review interviewed 13 disability representatives, four associate deans, several individuals who work in human resources, someone in the Office of Compliance and the vice provost for teaching and learning. But they did not speak with Bearden or any other instructors who requested workplace flexibility.

The omission stood out to Michael Bernard-Donals, who is president of a faculty advocacy group known as PROFS, one of several groups that raised concerns to administrators this summer about their handling of accommodation requests.

“You cannot get at what the failures are unless you talk to the people who feel they were failed,” he said. “This sounds like a rationalization more than any kind of critical study.”

The ADA accommodations process involves medical records, so the identity of employees making a request is protected under the federal medical privacy law, Lucas said. For that reason, the Office of Strategic Consulting did not request access to the identity of nor documentation related to individual requests. But the reviewers “did attempt to understand” the faculty requests by looking at data and interviewing a professor who leads a committee that regularly meets with administrators to discuss faculty concerns.

‘Terribly eroding’ Bearden, too, took issue with the university’s review.

“Where are the voices of the people who actually experienced this?” she asked. “This document says very little, mostly in the passive voice. It does not in any way demand accountability for what in my experience was and continues to be at minimum a dreadfully unfair accommodations process.”

She remains troubled by UW-Madison’s argument that allowing her to teach online presents the school with an “undue hardship,” considering she taught all of last year online and several students wrote in evaluations that her class was the best they had ever taken.

Bearden asked to teach her two classes for the upcoming spring semester online, including one course that focuses on disability studies. UW-Madison, she said, again denied her request.

“I feel like I’ve been treated like I’m trash,” she said. “Like I’m disposable. This experience has been terribly eroding.”

Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.