 Welcome to Mary Gates Hall, Advocates for Equal Access. Hi, I'm Dan Comden. I'm manager of the Access Technology Center, and in this space in the basement of Mary Gates Hall, we provide consulting services for accessible design of web pages and online applications. We also do accommodations for students, faculty, and staff who have disabilities, who need some help using computing technology. We've got a showroom behind me that has all kinds of technology that can help people with various disabilities have access to computers. Also located in the basement is the Disability Resources for Students Office. They provide academic accommodations for students with disabilities. They provide accessible academic materials in alternate digital format. They provide for extended exam times, and they actually have a testing center that's located here as well, very active during finals and midterms. This is the counseling part of Disability Resources for Students, where the counselors who meet with individual students to discuss accommodations are located. And in here, we have John McGough, who's the associate director of Disability Resources for Students. Hi, John. Hey, Dan. We work with over 2,000 students a year, ensuring that they have equal access to university programs and classes. In DRS, we work with students in every program across the university. That's undergraduate students, graduate students, students in professional programs like medicine or law. In working with our counseling staff, our counseling staff works to ensure that the students can access the classroom. That means that lectures are accessible to them. This could include sign language interpreters or closed captioned videos. We work to ensure that their books are accessible to them. This could be textbooks in Braille or audio or many other digital formats. We work to ensure that clinical experiences and field trips are also accessible. These accommodations are designed to level the playing field, not to give preferential access. Leveling the playing field means that a student with a disability has the same right to succeed or fail as any other student. One important thing to keep in mind is that the term disability is really broad under the law. Many people may hear the term disability and think of individuals who are blind, low vision or in a wheelchair. That actually makes up probably less than 10% of the students our office works with. Common diagnoses that students have in working with our office can be things like anxiety or depression, attention deficit disorder, chronic health conditions. Here we have the D-Center, the Disability and Deaf Culture Center. This is a student-run organization that provides a space for students to hang out, study or meet. So my name is Leslie Ellis. I'm the advisor here at the D-Center. Hey, how's it going with the website? We feel really strongly that there should be a center for disabled students to come together and be able to share space to maybe unwind from the day, maybe take a break between classes. Oh, you're applying for new jobs now? Yeah. The transition from the K-12 system into higher education can be a bit of a shock for some students. They come from a very supportive environment to an environment that is supportive but requires that the student really be their own best advocate. They have to seek out the services. So it's really nice to have these different units co-located in the same building. See you soon. For more information about the Access Technology Center, visit itconnect.uw.edu slash learn slash accessible slash atc. For more information about disability resources for students, visit depts.washington.edu slash uwdrs. And for more information about the D-Center, visit depts.washington.edu slash D-Center. This video is funded by Accessible Technology Services of UW-IT, Copyright 2017, University of Washington. Permission is granted to copy these materials for educational, non-commercial purposes provided the source is acknowledged.