Implementing Academic Accommodations
After a student has followed the steps for Disclosing and Documenting a Disability and is determined to be eligible for academic accommodations, here are the steps necessary to setting up those accommodations.
1. Engage in an interactive intake conversation with a member of the ADS staff.
You will be contacted about scheduling a time to discuss your potential accommodations. (For incoming first-year or transfer students, this conversation should take place in June or July to ensure that accommodations are in place at the start of the fall semester).
2. Participate in an Accommodations Set-Up Guidance Session
About two weeks before the semester starts, ADS will provide you with information about participating in a necessary orientation session. Be sure to RSVP to this important session during which you'll learn the full process for disclosing your eligibility for accommodations to your professors, scheduling meetings with them to discuss the implementation of your accommodations, and setting up any specific accommodations, such as those related to test-taking.
3. Follow these Access Plan guidelines to inform your professors of your accommodation intentions for each class.
The key associated steps for each class are:
- Indicate whether or not you intend to use each accommodation for which you are eligible
- If you have test-taking accommodations, enter the dates of any tests for which you intend to use your accommodations
- Click the "Disclose to Faculty" button to share your Access Plan intentions with your professors
- Click the "Schedule a meeting" button to pull up a pre-written email to your professors that you'll customize about identifying a time to discuss your accommodations.
You may find it useful to refer to this Guidance on Emailing and Meeting with Professors.
4. Meet with each of your professors to go over your Access Plan and the accommodations you intend to use for that class, including any test-taking needs, if relevant.
Here are some tips for discussing accommodations with professors.
5. Reach out if you need to!
If you ever have questions or concerns about your accommodations, speak up! ADS is here to support you and your accommodation needs.
Note: ADS does not notify professors of students' eligibility for accommodations -- all disclosures to faculty are made by students, should they so choose. Access Plans created for eligible students only contain information about accommodations (but not the basis on which they were granted).
ACCESS GRIEVANCES AND APPEALS
Dickinson strives to create an accessible higher-learning community where students, regardless of a disability, have an equal opportunity to participate in all aspects of the college experience. Reasonable accommodations are accessible to qualifying students with disabilities. Dickinson abides by the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act of 2008 and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 -- laws that prohibit discrimination against qualified individuals based on disability. We are committed to upholding the principles contained in both the spirit as well as the letter of law.
If you experience a disability-based bias incident, you can report this by going to www.dickinson.edu/BIAS or by conveying what happened to any member of the ADS staff in person or via email. If you believe you have been denied equal access in the form of appropriate accommodations, if you wish to report inequity related to disability, or if you have suffered disability-related discriminatory harassment, Access and Disability Services will support you in your right to appeal an accommodation decision or to file a grievance.
If you request an academic accommodation that is not granted, you have the right to ask for an explanation during your intake meeting with ADS or in a follow-up email. If the explanation provided is not satisfactory to you and you would like for your request to be reconsidered, you should email access@dickinson.edu with an explanation as to why you believe your accommodation request to be reasonable and necessitated on the basis of a disability, how your substantial disability-based limitations cannot be assuaged through reasonable alternative options, and how such an accommodation would not constitute a fundamental alteration to the requirements for the course. If you are dissatisfied with the results of your informal appeal, or if you wish to forgo the informal appeals process, you can find information regarding the formal appeals process in this Disability-Related Complaints Policy.