What Are Accommodations in College?
Accommodations in the college setting are adjustments to policies, procedures, and practices that serve to remove barriers and allow students with disabilities to have equal access to participate in their academic programs.
How are Accommodations in College Different from Accommodations in High School?
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Amendments Act (IDEAA) governs disability rights and access in the United States for students in school from kindergarten through high school. In short, the IDEAA guarantees disabled students a free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment. In this setting, “appropriate” is the curriculum that a planning team determines is right to support the academic growth and success of the disabled student, even if this curriculum has different standards and requirements than the general education curriculum in the school.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) governs disability rights and access in the United States for students in post-secondary (college) settings. The ADA does not require student success, like the IDEAA does, but does require that disabled students have equal access to participate in the academic programs offered by postsecondary schools that accept federal funding.
In short, the IDEAA is designed to promote student success, and the ADA is designed to promote student access. The IDEAA allows for program goals and standards to be modified if necessary for disabled students to successfully meet their individualized goals; the ADA requires program goals and standards to be maintained in the same way for all students, and for schools to make adjustments that do not impact program goals and standards when needed to allow for the equal access to participate for qualified disabled students.
How Are Accommodations Determined in College?
The accommodations students are approved for at UC Berkeley may be different than those that students were approved for in high school. To determine appropriate accommodations at UC Berkeley, we ask students to attend an hour-long intake appointment with a Disability Specialist. In the appointment, the student and Disability Specialist will discuss the student’s medical documentation, accommodation history (if any), and experience of their disability impacts across different academic settings. The Disability Specialist will seek to identify barriers that a student may encounter based on the impact of their disabilities in the academic context of UC Berkeley and will recommend accommodations to remove or mitigate the barriers that are identified. After the intake appointment, students can use the AIM data management system to send out Letters of Accommodation (LOAs) to their instructors verifying any accommodations that were approved in the intake appointment.
Revisions to accommodations may be made throughout students' enrollment at Berkeley, as the impact and nature of students' disability identities may change. The requirements of students' academic programs may also change over time. To make changes, students need to contact their assigned Disability Specialists and discuss their concerns. Disability Specialists may request new or additional documentation in order to determine whether new or different accommodations are appropriate.
Accommodations are individualized, and students who have the same disability identity may find that they are using different accommodations in accordance with their own disability experience and academic program of study.
What Are Some of the More Common Accommodations Utilized by Berkeley’s Disabled Student Community?
Priority Registration
Students approved for Priority Registration receive a registration time during the first days of registration, which are held aside for priority groups before registration opens for the wider UC Berkeley student community.
Priority Registration is an appropriate accommodation for many disabled students. For example, if students with physical disabilities require more time to navigate from the location of one class to another, Priority Registration makes it easier to create a schedule that allows for sufficient time to transition between class sites.
In addition, a number of auxiliary services accommodations take time for DSP to implement. These include
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Alternative Media requests to convert texts
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Accessible furniture requests and placement of approved furniture
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Realtime Captioning/Sign Language requests and scheduling captioners and interpreters
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Lab assistant, Scribe, and Reader requests and hiring and scheduling these assistants.
Priority Registration allows students to finalize their schedules as quickly as possible, so appropriate auxiliary services can be requested and arranged in a timely manner, so as to be available to students from the very first day of their classes.
Priority Registration is also an important tool in supporting the provision of exam accommodations. Students who have accommodations involving extended time for in-class exams should utilize the Priority Registration accommodation to choose a schedule that avoids scheduling conflicts for exam accommodations (that is, schedules in which there is enough space between classes to allow for extended exam time without missing any time from the prior or following class).
In short, if you are approved for the accommodation of Priority Registration, be sure to register as soon as you are eligible and to request any approved auxiliary services as soon as your enrollment is confirmed.
Reduced Course Load (RCL)
The accommodation of a reduced course load is a request that a student’s College allow for a modification to the College’s policy of the number of units required to be in good standing. Having a DSP-approved reduced course load does not mean that the student is still full-time with fewer than 12-13 units (depending on the College); it simply means that the student is approved to drop below the College’s minimum unit requirement without academic penalty as an accommodation.
Many disabled students find that taking a reduced course load allows them to address the impact of their disabilities while remaining enrolled in and progressing in their academic programs. For instance, students who have disabilities that impact their executive functioning may find that taking a reduced course load results in fewer deadlines to manage, and that the reduced course load allows them to fully engage in their course requirements without falling behind. In addition, students who have disabilities that require them to have frequent meetings with medical providers may find that taking a reduced course load allows them to balance their courses and medical appointments without missing classes and falling behind. Too, students whose disabilities impact their information processing speed or reading ability may find that a reduced course load allows them to fully engage in their studies while completing their work in a timely manner by reducing the number of texts they need to work with during the semester.
If a student is interested in requesting a reduced course load, they should also consider the following:
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If they have financial aid, they should contact the Financial Aid Office to discuss whether a reduced course load will impact their awards.
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If they have private scholarships, they should contact the sponsors of the scholarships to see if a DSP-approved reduced course load will still fulfill the terms of the scholarship award.
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If they are scholar athletes, they should consult with their Athletic Study Center advisor to determine whether a reduced course load would have any impact on their ability to play their sport.
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If they are international students, they should consult with a Berkeley International Office Advisor to discuss the process of receiving BIO approval for a reduced course load, and to ensure that the reduced course load will not have a negative impact on their visa.
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All students should consult with their academic advisors, to discuss the course load they are requesting, as well as the specific courses that they will be taking, to determine whether the combination of courses is appropriate and supports the student’s progress toward their degree.
Reduced course loads must be approved by, and students’ schedules must be adjusted by, the add/drop deadline. Having a reduced course load does not change the requirement that students’ schedules need to be finalized by the deadline posted on the Registrar’s Office website
To request approval of a reduced course load accommodation, students need to send an email their assigned Disability Specialist with the subject REDUCED COURSE LOAD, and with content that includes:
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Student’s name
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Student’s ID
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Student’s College
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Student’s major (if declared)
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The number of units the student is requesting to enroll in
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A brief explanation of how the reduced course load would accommodate the specific impacts of the student’s disability
In some cases, students approved for a Reduced Course Load of 6-8 units may wish to be considered for reduced tuition. A student’s assigned Disability Specialist can discuss the pros and cons of reduced tuition with the student and can assist the student with their decision-making process.
Reduced Tuition is only an option available to be considered when the reduced course load is approved by DSP due to disability accommodation needs. All students can request reduced course loads for parenting, work, enrolling in their final required classes, and other reasons approved by their colleges, but these other approvals do not make a student eligible to request reduced tuition. The ability to request reduced tuition is only provided if a student is approved for half-time enrollment as a disability accommodation, to help to ensure that students are not made financially responsible for the implementation of the accommodations they require for ADA-mandated equal access to UC Berkeley.
Audio Recording
Audio Recording may be approved as a stand-alone accommodation, or as part of the approval for the use of note-taking technology that uses audio recording as one component.
When students have disabilities that impact their ability to take class notes, DSP seeks to support students in being as independent as possible in their note taking. If the primary barrier to effective note taking is that the student is unable to consistently sustain attention or process information at the speed at which it is being relayed, technology that integrates audio recording can be provided to allow the student to easily re-experience the auditory information in the class to fill in gaps in their own real-time processing.
If students are unable to independently take their notes because of the impact of their disability, they may also be approved to audio record class sessions so those recordings can be submitted to a service that creates peer notes from audio recordings.
Any time a student is approved for the accommodation of audio recording, the student is required to sign an agreement that they will not share the recording with anyone else in any way (other than submitting it to the DSP-contracted note taking service, if needed), and that the recordings will only be used for their own personal study. Using or distributing the recordings in any other way can result in a violation of the Student Code of Conduct.
Disability-Related Absences
The accommodation of Disability-Related Absences helps to ensure that students whose disabilities impact class attendance are not unduly penalized because of this impact. This accommodation must be balanced with the legal requirement that accommodations cannot result in a fundamental alteration of a course’s goals or standards.
Students who are approved for this accommodation are encouraged to meet with their instructors at the beginning of the semester to discuss the role of attendance in the specific course, and the time at which course absences would become a concern in regard to meeting the course goals or standards. If the student or instructor have any concern about engaging in this conversation, the student and/or the instructor should reach out to the student’s Disability Specialist directly, so that the Disability Specialist can work with the instructor and the student to confirm how the accommodation can be appropriately provided, and when the accommodation would result in a fundamental alteration of the course.
In short, when class attendance is tracked for purposes of the final course grade, allowances for occasional disability-related absences can be made. However, when class participation and/or group projects are an essential element of the course, faculty are not required to fundamentally alter the nature of their course. For example, there may be course requirements for which there are no comparable alternative assignments that can be independently completed by the student.
It is the student’s responsibility to meet with faculty at the beginning of the semester to discuss class attendance, participation expectations, and course requirements, and it is the responsibility both of the student and the instructor to reach out immediately to the student’s assigned Disability Specialist if there are any concerns or questions about the implementation of this accommodation that arise.
In the event a make-up exam/quiz is required due to a disability-related absence, such a request must be made promptly and completed in a timely manner. Students and Faculty should contact the student’s assigned Disability Specialist who signed the letter of accommodation if they have any questions.
Tests/Make-up Exams
Students whose disability may cause them to be unable to take an exam at its assigned time may be approved for the accommodation of scheduling a make-up exam.
At the beginning of the semester (or immediately after they become eligible for DSP test accommodations), students need to provide faculty a copy of their letter of accommodation, which will verify any needed test accommodations. Make-up exams are to be offered only when there are disability-related extenuating circumstances preventing the student's ability to take the exam as scheduled, and the make-up exam request must be made in a timely manner.
If a student is approved to take a make-up exam, the student should not engage with the exam that was administered that they did not take, and they must not discuss the content of the exam that was given with their classmates or others or participate in post-exam review sessions or with post-exam solutions and review materials. If a student engages with the exam that they missed or related materials prior to formally making up the exam, they may be subject to the Student Code of Conduct for an academic integrity violation.
Instructors are not required to write a new exam for a student who requires a make-up exam, but instructors may choose to do so if they would prefer. If instructors do write a new exam, that exam should be of the same difficulty and address the same instructoinal goals as the exam that the student missed.
Assignment Extensions
Students whose disabilities may flare unpredictably and students whose disabilities may cause them to require more time than has been allocated for work that is assigned with a short turn-around time may be approved for an accommodation allowing them to request extensions on assignments.
Extensions are appropriate when a student has an unexpected flare of the impact of their disability that prevents them from engaging in work for an extended period of time and interferes with their meeting a course deadline. Extensions are typically approved for a 2, 4, or 7-day period to address the student’s typical experience of an unanticipated flare, and for up to 7 days for students who may need additional time to complete assignments with short turn-around times (for instance, students who may need to schedule and work with an assistant to utilize an otherwise inaccessible computerized database, or students who may need newly-provided course materials converted into an accessible format to use them for the assignment).
Extensions are not meant to reflect a blanket approval for students to modify course deadlines, and are only meant to be utilized to address disability-related impacts that could not have been reasonably planned for and addressed in advance of the deadline.
If students have difficulty meeting course deadlines due to predictable disability impacts, such as difficulty with executive functioning and schedule planning, alternative accommodations, such as approval for a reduced course load, may be more appropriate. Disabled students are also encouraged to utilize the campus resources available for all students, such as the Strategic Learning Program resources and tutoring support available at the Student Learning Center and the group counseling available at Counseling and Psychological Services that addresses a number of topics relevant to disability management. Students active in DSP may also be eligible to apply to participate in Spectrum Connect or DSP Scholars, both of which have additional academic coaching available for approved participants.