After you are approved for accommodations by your Weingarten Center Disability Specialist, you submit a semester request for accommodation letters to be sent to your professors. Through the MyWeingartenCenter portal, you initiate the process to have the letters sent to your professors, a confidential way for professors to receive your letters. Each semester you are prompted to select which courses you will need to use accommodations. This gives you agency in the process and protects your right to privacy; you get to choose which professors should be notified that you require accommodations for the semester.
After you handle this step, you are strongly encouraged to meet with your professors during office hours to discuss how the accommodations will be implemented. You might want to set up an appointment with the professor to ensure that the conversation is in private and you have time to discuss the accommodations. These conversations can be crucial in helping both you and faculty members navigate the semester together successfully. Let’s say that you are a student with limited mobility in a class where the faculty member frequently asks students to move around to get into groups or stand during lab activities. A conversation about this can help the faculty member proactively accommodate your needs when preparing course materials, activities, and assessments. It is important to remember that the conversation focuses on the implementation of your approved accommodations, not your medical condition or disability. Discuss what your accommodation entails. You should carefully read the course syllabi and consider what elements of the course might be a challenge. Be open to the faculty having creative ways of handling some accommodations, especially those that may not be common in their courses. However, you should always be honest about what will and will not be helpful.
Having these conversations can be challenging, so it is important to remember that your Disability Specialist will be an invaluable resource for you. If you need help preparing for a conversation with a faculty member, already had a conversation and are feeling uncertain about it, or simply do not feel comfortable getting the conversation started, your assigned Disability Specialist is available to guide you through the process. In some cases, they may speak to faculty on your behalf, especially if the nature of the accommodation is new to the instructor or if the conversation is tricky to navigate. The Weingarten Center staff always wants to make sure that students and faculty have the necessary information and guidance for successful implementation of accommodations.
Written by Simmee Myers Abiko, Director of Instructional Design for Integrated Care, Weingarten Center and Jane Holahan, Executive Director, Weingarten Center