Control Mechanism

Okay; you know that thing that controld the wipers, blinkers, brights and all that good stuff. Well Its all messed up on my car. Blinkers work but wipers only have one speed and its slow. Also the brights dont work. Brights being my main concern. Guy at the part strore says I need to order the mechanism inside. The manual can tell me how to do it but It would be really helpful to get some tips from someone who has done something like it before. Or at least has had the steering collum apart cuz just looking at it I cant see how it would come off. And while we're in the area my headlight switch broke off or something somewhere in the dash do I gotta take the whole dash off to get to it?