College Education Essentials

Advice From Accessibility Specialists to Offices of Accessibility Services

Move into an ADVOCACY role on behalf of the student who has IH so the student can succeed.

• Create a partnership among the accessibility services office, the student, and the faculty.
• Take the lead on navigating accommodations with the faculty.
• Caution faculty to avoid thinking “I can’t do that for this student because I didn’t do that for others.”

Acquaint yourself with knowledge of this condition.

• IH is often an invisible disability:
  • Try not to misinterpret symptoms as character flaws.
  • IH exists. The diagnosis is real; the symptoms are real.
• Symptoms are often uncontrollable and unpredictable.
• The student does not intend to be disrespectful when symptoms are evident, such as being sleepy or falling asleep in class or having difficulty waking in class after sleeping in class, arriving late, missing deadlines, etc.
• Flexibility is key.

Advice From Faculty With IH to Faculty Colleagues

IH can negatively impact cognitive functioning, which is a serious impediment to academic performance:

• Students with IH often have many fewer available hours in their day than their peers because they need so many hours of sleep (and/or have so many hours when their cognition is poorly functional);
• Students with IH are likely to need flexibility with regard to deadlines;
• The student may look completely disinterested and/or bored during class, even if that’s not the case;
• Students may inadvertanly yawn or fall asleep during class.

Advice From Professional Staff With IH to the College Community

Please try not to pass judgment or assume.

• IH is a complicated and often misunderstood neurologic disorder. No two students are the same.
• If the student yawns or appears sleepy or sleep-deprived, keep in mind this is not your typical “sleepy.” Not only are their brains often consumed by a desire to sleep, but they may also be experiencing brain fog and/or microsleeps. If they have fallen asleep, as they awaken they may also experience sleep drunkenness, i.e., severe sleep inertia, an extreme and prolonged difficulty fully awakening, associated with an uncontrollable desire to go back to sleep, which can be accompanied by automatic behavior (performing tasks without conscious self-control and with partial or total loss of memory), disorientation, confusion, irritability, and poor coordination. All of these symptoms can create interruptions in the processes of thinking and doing.
• If the student fidgets, sighs, is easily distracted, or struggles to concentrate, it’s often because the student’s brain is constantly in varying degrees of fighting to stay awake and focused.
• If the student is late, please understand that time management is complicated for students with IH.
• Familiarity with Spoon Theory may be helpful because many students use it to describe how they experience their ability to function on a given day. For more information, see https://www.webmd.com/multiple-sclerosis/features/spoon-theory.