In light of October being Disability Awareness Month, several student groups at the UW will be taking extra measures to inform the community of disability-related issues and to empower those who these issues affect the most.

Next Tuesday, the Student Disability Commission is hosting a three-person discussion panel from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. in HUB 204N.

“Each of the panel leaders will give short presentations on the work they do in the community and ways of educating people about disability issues, such as lack of accessibility and social attitudes that exclude people with disabilities,” the commission’s director, Holly Siegrist said. “The last hour will be open for people to ask questions or bring any other disability-related issues up to the panel, and then to have an open discussion about goals for the year.”

Siegrist is a UW senior minoring in Disability Studies. She works largely as a resource for students, communicating between them and the Disability Resources for Students (DRS) office.

One of her central goals for the commission is to shift the UW’s philosophy on disabilities from a medical model, which focuses on “fixing” a person’s disability, to a social model, which sees disabled people’s primary disadvantage as discrimination from society, rather than the disability itself.

“The medical model is the philosophy of the University right now, and we’re trying to change that,” Siegrist said. “One way it affects the school is in how professors teach students, or talk about disabilities as being a misfortune. A teacher I had once said, ‘If you don’t pay attention you could end up in a wheelchair,’ as if that were the worst thing in the world. Doctors, also, sometimes assume that a person needs to be out of a wheelchair, or that they can’t be happy otherwise. While this is sometimes true, it is wrong to assume that.”

One of the panel leaders, a pharmacy student, will be talking about the ways different departments can improve conditions for the disabled. Though the UW strives to provide adequate accommodations, there are still many areas that frustrate students with disabilities, and which they feel the school could improve upon.

Ryan Benson, president of the Disability Advocacy Student Alliance, utilizes the UW’s disabilities services while advocating for other students. He and Siegrist both expressed the need for note-takers in classes as a common frustration among the people they work with.

Recently, Benson needed a note-taker in an upper level class with 25 students.

“After e-mailing all of the students and asking the professor to make an announcement, there was still no one who had volunteered to take notes,” Benson said. “Finally, a DRS staff member came in to ask the class again, saying how important it was, and for five minutes nobody responded. The notes I ended up getting were not very complete or helpful.”

Benson and Siegrist are also frustrated by how difficult it is for students to earn accommodations from the school.

“In order to receive accommodations, they have to get a test that costs $3,000, from a licensed psychologist,” Siegrist said. “We are trying to change policies on campus.”

Benson pointed out a link between poor accommodations and higher dropout rates.

“I have had friends that had year-long struggles trying to get accommodations,” he said. “It’s one thing if you have individuals that know how to advocate for themselves, but other people aren’t so used to speaking out, and that’s unfortunate because it leads to higher dropout rates, lower academic performance, and so forth.”

Reach reporter Annie Atherton at news@dailyuw.com.