Register with Student Disability Services by providing current and appropriate medical or professional documentation and meeting with an SDS coordinator for an intake appointment.

After registering for classes, schedule an appointment with your SDS coordinator to do a Semester Plan. At this meeting, you and your coordinator will discuss your disability related needs for each class and develop a plan of services and/or accommodations to address those needs for that particular semester. If you need services that require weeks to arrange (such as books in alternate format, interpreting services, classroom captioning or relocation of a classroom), it is your responsibility to register early and to initiate your Semester Plan appointment in sufficient time for the services to be arranged. If it appears during the course of the semester that the planned accommodations are insufficient, you should promptly meet with your coordinator to discuss your concerns. When appropriate, the Semester Plan can be amended.

If the planned accommodations involve cooperation from your professors, your SDS coordinator will provide you with a memo for each professor. The memo will explain that SDS has disability documentation on file that qualifies you for the academic accommodations outlined in the memo. You will be given a choice as to whether you want your disability named in the memo. It is not required for professors to know the specific disability; however, having this information can often be beneficial for them to know how to best help you. It is your responsibility to take the memo to each professor. You should schedule an appointment with each professor or go to his/her office during scheduled office hours to deliver the memo for that class and to have a discussion about your needs and how they can be met in the event the professor has any questions. You should give the memos to your professors as early in the semester as possible, preferably within the first two weeks or earlier if you will require accommodations before then. It is against University policy for professors to provide disability accommodations to students who have not given them a memo from SDS. Professors are responsible for providing accommodations only from the time they receive notice of the disability via the memo from SDS. Students who deliver their memos late in the semester are not eligible for retroactive accommodations.

If your planned accommodations are not working out for some reason (such as a notetaker not taking adequate notes or a professor not allowing you to audio record lectures or suggesting that you try the test without extended time, etc.), notify your SDS coordinator as soon as possible so that we can develop a suitable intervention strategy to resolve the issue in a timely manner.

Sometimes there will be more than one way that a student can be effectively accommodated. In determining the accommodations you will receive, SDS staff gives first consideration to the specific accommodation you request, provided it is reasonable and does not create an undue hardship or administrative burden. The law does not require the institution to provide the specific accommodation you request, but it does require the institution to provide an effective accommodation.