DSP does not have a deadline by which students can apply for services. Students can be diagnosed with or acquire disabilities at any time, and the process of obtaining disability documentation can also take time. Sometimes students who already have a disability identity will wait to seek services until they have first tried participating at Berkeley without formal accommodations. Students may also find that the impact of their disability has changed during the semester and that they need additional support in accessing their program of study due to this change.
Once students are approved for disability accommodations by their DSP Disability Specialist, students are responsible for logging into AIM and for requesting that their letters are sent to the instructors of each class in which they are seeking to utilize their approved accommodations. The Disability Specialist does not send out the letter; each student is responsible for determining the classes in which they will request to utilize accommodations and the accommodations for which they have been approved that they will request to utilize in each class.
To comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, DSP must conduct intakes and assessments and initiate reasonable accommodations and services for students with disabilities whenever they apply for initial services or request new accommodations. UC Berkeley cannot set limits for when students can request disability accommodations. That said, instructors and DSP are entitled to a reasonable amount of time in order to implement disability accommodations, and sometimes it is difficult to accommodate last-minute requests, particularly for exam accommodations and for converting complicated texts into alternative formats. If an instructor has difficulty accommodating a last-minute request, they can reach out to the student’s assigned Disability Specialist, and DSP will provide guidance and assist whenever possible.