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Departmental Accessibility Resource Coordinators

Position Description

General Description

DARC’s are appointed liaisons to bring universal design in education (UDE) ideas and resources to their respective departments or units. The federally funded ACCESS-ed Project developed the DARC system as a best practice for the dissemination of UDE resources to faculty, staff, and students. Primary responsibilities focus on facilitating a systems approach toward more accessible instruction, information and campus service delivery and toward a more inclusive climate for students with disabilities while simultaneously improving the campus climate and instructional accessibility for all students. As information brokers, DARC’s meet their responsibilities through informal interactions with other faculty and staff, as well as through formal venues such as department meetings.  

Specific Duties

  1. Promote an accessible campus climate environment through implementing departmental approaches to UDE.
  2. Participate in annual DARC universal design in education training sessions.
  3. Use the ACCESS-ed website and materials to become familiar with UDE tools.
  4. Provide specific tips for UDE in departmental meetings. (Get on the agenda!)
  5. Be a vigilant observer for other UDE training opportunities or strategies to incorporate in departmentally.
  6. Serve as a “hallway” information resource on UDE. (Run into your colleagues – literally!)
  7. Help obtain program evaluation data, as requested, e.g. number of faculty that have implemented UDE strategies, student success in universally designed courses, decrease in cost of accommodations from disability student service office.
  8. Provide feedback on ACCESS-ed materials.
  9. Suggest new ACCESS-ed resources and needs identified by department.
  10. Identify departmental or “nearby” exemplars and recognize achievers.

 

 

Last updated May 17, 2008 

It took me several years of struggling with the heavy door to my building, sometimes having to wait until a person stronger came along, to realize that the door was an accessibility problem, not only for me, but for others as well. And I did not notice, until one of my students pointed it out, that the lack of signs that could be read from a distance at my university forced people with mobility impairments to expend a lot of energy unnecessarily, searching for rooms and offices. Although I have encountered this difficulty myself on days when walking was exhausting to me, I interpreted it, automatically, as a problem arising from my illness (as I did with the door), rather than as a problem arising from the built environment having been created for too narrow a range of people and situations.

Susan Wendell, author of
The Rejected Body: Feminist Philosophical Reflections on Disability