Word: forded
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...Ford was born with mixed quadriplegic cerebral palsy and has been in a wheelchair since he was 18 months old. The youngest of eight children, he attended Denver West High School, a public school Ford says was highly responsive to his needs. So he was surprised by his experience at Harvard. “I had expected that Harvard would be at least as effective as my inner-city high school,” he says...
Entering public school during the 1990s, Ford was part of the first wave of disabled students who received any protection at all. Legislation promising accommodations and services to people in his situation was first drafted less than 30 years ago. Today that first group of disabled students makes up an increasingly large portion of undergraduates attending regular four-year colleges...
...We’ve just really had little over a generation and a half of students who went through public schools, had the right to access public schools and increasingly those people are coming to universities and seeking equal access,” Hehir says. Disabled students like Ford are no longer willing to completely adapt themselves to college systems. They believe that the college system should work harder to adapt to them...
...when Ford and the roughly two hundred and fifty other disabled students who matriculate to Harvard each year arrive on campus, they may be surprised to find that the access here is not what they have been used to. As a private university, Harvard has fewer legal obligations to disabled students than a public high school. The only guideline is the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which prevents Harvard and other colleges that receive federal funds from discriminating against otherwise-qualified disabled students. The open-ended protection leaves universities with far fewer legal obligations than public schools...
...Ford, however, finds the site’s tone off-putting. “I think that the fact that people have more responsibility [at college] is true for everyone. It is necessary to explain to disabled people what they have to do here. But word it in a nicer...