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For many students, the COVID-19 pandemic has been an obstacle to achieving the university experience they hoped for. But for Taryn Goodwin it presented an opportunity.

The fourth-year Critical + Cultural Practice Major had taken several years off from her degree, having dropped out in 2016, after starting her �鶹��Ƶ studies as a second-year transfer student in Fall 2013. While working through physical rehabilitation during her second term at �鶹��Ƶ, Taryn knew the pace of education had to be altered.

In 2015, she took a year off through a formal leave of absence to focus on her recovery and to prioritize her mental and emotional health outside of the demands of academia. “I had a couple of exhibitions and worked on a goat farm for a month,” she said, “along with other spontaneous, fun things in continuing to heal and receive support for my mental and physical health. I needed the time. I needed a break. Then I came back for Fall 2016.”

But Taryn quickly found that the pace was not compatible with her recovery or mental health. “I was downright exhausted. My pain was flaring up all the time, it just wasn’t sustainable,” she recalls. “Getting to campus, being in a really stimulating environment— there was a lot that made it really hard to focus and to be in a position where I could say that I was thriving as a student.”

In many organizations, including �鶹��Ƶ, the needs of disabled individuals are often addressed through a formal process of accommodations, something Taryn sees as fundamentally limited. “It’s a practice of getting ‘back to the norm’ that suggests, if you can fit in like everyone else, then the accommodation is working,” she explains. “It misses out on so much of the embodied knowledge that people who identify with disabilities have. So I think accommodations for me are sticky because it’s like, ‘we can offer you this and this,’ but it’s still based on able-bodied, normalized, colonial practices of attending a place and a time and a space. I think if accommodations were really created around care, access, wellness, and active listening, it wouldn’t be, what can we give you, but what do y