With the recent passing of Senate Bill 769 by State Sen. Jose Menéndez, research is set to examine the state of students with disabilities at Texas universities. The Paisano sat down with representatives of Disability Rights, Education, Activism and Mentoring for Accessibility at UT San Antonio to discuss their thoughts on the bill and reflect on how accessible UT San Antonio’s Main Campus is for students with disabilities.
DREAM is a local chapter of a national nonprofit organization, and one of their main missions is to “educate against ableism in order to work with UT San Antonio’s leadership to negotiate better policies that improve accessibility and equity across campus.”
UT San Antonio is considered an accessible school according to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice. The university also has a formal policy dedicated to student disability services for the Office for ADA disability resources coordinators.
DREAM Outreach Director Andrew Dotson and Operations Director Clara Clasen shared their experience about being a part of the Neurodivergent Society as students who are neurodivergent with other impairments as well. They detailed their requests for assistance with their various disabilities, like many other students.
Clasen believes that with SB 769 passing, UT San Antonio will identify hurdles students face and be receptive to student feedback..
“I’m hoping that there will be a push to find out what barriers there are to students, because right now, a lot of the things are being decided without our input. That’s another reason we made the organization because we felt like the administration needed our input because we weren’t being asked what we needed,” Clasen mentioned.
Clasen and Dotson cited needs they felt had to be met for students with a variety of disabilities as what inspired them to establish UT San Antonio’s DREAM chapter.
“There needs to be better accessibility on campus for disabled students, so we decided to make an organization to do something about that,” Clasen explained.
The process to gain assistance for disability accommodations requires students to register with Student Disability Services and attend an intake appointment to request accommodations for classes. After going through the process, Clasen noticed that she and other students were unable to have their needs properly met.
“We have to list all of our symptoms and why that accommodation is needed for each symptom. You have to list it as something that you’re experiencing, and then have the accommodation recommended by your physician. It’s very difficult to get accommodations; the specificity is extremely strict,” said Clasen.
She further explained the difficulties students experience while registering for disability accommodations.
“A lot of the issues we’ve seen are not getting our accommodations honored, or they’re honored in a way that’s insufficient, like they’ll get the bare minimum required. We’ve seen professors be resistant to accommodations, and we have to have Student Disability Services talk to them.”
According to an article published by The Paisano on Sept. 23 regarding SB 769, 51% of high school graduates without disabilities attained a bachelor’s degree; that number dropped significantly to 16% for those with disabilities.
Commenting on this trend, Clasen mentioned how it is difficult to get students with disabilities to request necessary accommodations.
“We have trouble encouraging students to ask for the accommodations that they need, because it’s such a large task. It’s draining, time-consuming. A lot of them already have some sort of internalized ableism, where they feel like they don’t deserve accommodations,” said Clasen.
DREAM continues to try and encourage students to seek out resources and accommodations at UT San Antonio. The student organization hosts their meetings every other Tuesday from 5:30-6:30 p.m. over Zoom to ensure accessibility for all members. Currently, UT San Antonio is counting down to April 2026, when all UT San Antonio platforms and documents will comply with accessibility standards set by the DOJ.
