The Accommodation Process

Disability Services provides a Quick Reference Guide on faculty responsibilities to students with disabilities. Part of this Quick Reference Guide is a description of the accommodation process. To summarize the process:

1. Students attend an orientation session to understand the accommodation process.
2. The student works with a Disability Counselor to determine an accommodation or set of accommodations that are appropriate for that particular student.
3. The student signs up for courses during the normal registration process.
4. The student's Disability Counselor will send an Approved Academic Accommodations (AAA) Form to the course instructor. This form will include the specifics of the accommodations that the student will need to succeed in the course.
5. Before the course starts, Accessibility Technicians and Alternate Media Specialists will review the course materials and create or acquire alternate formats of those materials which provide equal access to the student. In some cases, the creation of new materials may overlap the delivery of the course.
6. Throughout the course, the student may work with an Accessibility Specialist. The specialist can facilitate the accommodation process and work with the student to build technology skills.
7. If the student needs help to overcome an accessibility issue in the course, they may rely on the help of an Assistive Aid, or the course instructor.

There are two potential pitfalls in this process:

• The time between when a student signs up for a course and when the course begins is usually short. If alternate formats for significant amounts of course materials are required, it may be difficult to create or acquire these materials in time. If substantially all of the course materials are accessible, then this will not be an issue. So, it is extremely important to understand accessibility issues when designing new course materials or revising existing materials.
• Accessibility Technicians and Alternate Media Specialists may not also be subject matter experts in the particular area of study. They may require significant guidance from the course instructor on what materials will present accessibility issues to the student, and how to best provide effective alternatives to these materials.

Two key purposes of this document are to address these issues by providing information to instructors on how to create accessible materials in CAS, CS, and CIS, and to provide guidance to Disability Services and Distance Learning on determining whether course materials in those disciplines will cause accessibility issues, and how to best address those issues. We have addressed these issues by providing information on making programming labs accessible.