College Student with a Disability:
A Faculty Handbook

An acquired brain impairment (ABI) can be caused by either external (e.g. blow to the head) or internal (e.g. stroke or hemorrhage) trauma to any part of the brain after birth. Depending on which part of the brain is involved, different functions can have varying degrees of impairment.

It is imperative to remember that each student with ABI will react in a different way. Areas in which deficits can be found include:

• cognition, information processing, reasoning, abstract thinking, judgment, and/or problem solving
  
  

• language and/or speech
  
  

• memory and/or attention
  
  

• sensory, perceptual and/or motor abilities
  
  

• psycho social behavior
  
  

• physical limitations
  
  

By the time the student has arrived at the college setting, he or she should have acquired strategies to deal with the functional limitations of his/her disability. As with other disabilities, the student is the expert and your best resource for evaluating accommodations.

Some classroom accommodations for students with ABI:

• To accommodate cognitive deficits, use language that is concrete, rather than abstract; speak clearly and at a moderate pace; give the student a little longer to ask and answer questions orally in class; demonstrate a task as well as explaining it.
  
  

• Students with language or speech deficits due to acquired brain impairment can be accommodated in the same way as students with language/speech impairments caused by other means. See Speech/Language Impairments section for some suggestions.
  
  

• To accommodate memory or attention deficits, you may need to repeat yourself several times.
  
  

• Students with sensory or perceptual deficits may benefit from the same types of accommodations as students with visual or hearing impairments. See Visual Impairments and Hearing Impairments sections for some suggestions.
  
  

• If a student has a behavioral problem in class, set up a meeting and discuss it privately with the student.
  
  

• For students with physical limitations, the accommodations suggested in the section for students with mobility impairments may be helpful.