Dear Accessibility Liaisons,
Welcome to the Fall semester!
Some of you may have students who have registered with the Office of Accessibility and have accommodations that may apply to your class. If this is the case, you should have received their Letter of Accommodation during the week prior to the beginning of classes, although students can receive accommodations at any time during the semester, generating a letter. You can view the letters of all of your students in the STARS Instructor Portal. Here's how to find student's accommodation letters in STARS..
During their intake session, students are directed to contact you to discuss their accommodations and how they apply to your class. You are not expected to provide an accommodation until a student has indicated to you that they wish to use it in your class. Some students, especially freshmen or students with particular conditions, may be hesitant to reach out to you. It would benefit these students if you were to contact them to discuss their accommodations, as well as avoiding possible misunderstandings later.
Most of the accommodations assigned to students do not require any coordination on your part. Below is a brief explanation for those few accommodations that require you to take some kind of action beyond the initial discussion with the student. At this point in the semester there are four kinds of accommodations that need to be coordinated as soon as reasonably possible. Please read the explanations below that apply to the accommodations of your current students.
If your student has a testing accommodation, you will need to click on the link called “alternative testing agreement” in the red box on the student’s Letter of Accommodation. This will allow you to provide proctoring instructions for when students need to take their tests at a testing center. Here are instructions for setting up a testing accommodation.
If you’re not sure what to do, please call our office at 330-972-7928 and ask for Rachael Kosar, who is the Testing Coordinator, or email her at rkk11@uakron.edu. You will be able to see your agreement in the Instructor Portal for future reference. You will also receive an email notification any time a student requests to take a test at the testing center. Please check the information to make sure that the test day, time, and amount of testing time chosen by the student are satisfactory to you.
You only need to complete this agreement once per each class. For your convenience so that you don’t have to fill this agreement out multiple times, the agreement will be applied to all students in that section with a testing accommodation. You can also apply it to multiple sections of the same class.
Students who have attendance and assignment accommodations are directed to request to meet with you to complete an Instructor Agreement form that is housed inside our STARS software. The purpose of this form is to guide the discussion of your expectations related to this accommodation, and to record what you and the student agree upon, so that if/when situations arise the require the use of that accommodation, all parties are aware of the expectations. You can see the questions that are asked in the agreement in the student’s Letter of Accommodation, and you can at any time access the completed agreement through the STARS Instructor Portal. Students are told that this accommodation is not in effect until they have spoken to you, and that they must notify you EACH TIME they wish to use this accommodation. Accommodations are not retroactive, so if students notify you after the fact, you are not obligated to provide the accommodation.
The goal of the Office of Accessibility is to provide a notetaker to students who need a notetaker within the first two weeks of the semester. You and your class will receive an email asking for a volunteer from your class to act as a notetaker. When someone volunteers, they will come to you with an example of their notes and a form for you to sign showing your agreement that the notes are a fairly good representation of the lecture content. The students will then register with our office, and if they provide notes for the full semester, will be paid $100 on their Zip Card for their work. The Office of Accessibility handles all arrangements for payment and sharing of notes.
If a student from your class does not volunteer, then a person from the Office of Accessibility will come to your class and ask for a few moments to explain the need and ask for volunteers. It would be appreciated if you would allow them a few minutes (5 minutes or less) with your class, and if a student volunteers, a few minutes (5 minutes or less) with that student.
Information about how to find out who the notetakers in your class are, and if you wish, to view the notes they are providing any time during the semester. Find notetaking accommodation information in STARS.
For students who are deaf or hard of hearing, video captioning is sometimes assigned as accommodation so that they can access the information conveyed in a video, such as a lecture or video found online. This means that you will need to submit the video file or video link to the Office of Accessibility in advance so that captioning can be added. Instructions to request video captioning. Please be aware that auto-generated caption files supplied by YouTube and others are not considered viable according to the Department of Justice for compliance with ADA. These sources should be submitted to the Office of Accessibility for captioning.
If you have any questions or need more specific information, contact the accessibility office or reach out to the student's Disability Specialist (found on their accommodation letter). Please fill out this survey (under 5 minutes to complete) to let us know how helpful you find this information and what else you would want included. See other Accessibility Liaison Communication.
Regards,
Accessibility Committee
Faculty: Click on either of the icons below to access the Office of Accessibility's Instructor Portal and user guides, your convenient hub for accommodation management!
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