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Access Center

General Overview of Accommodation Procedures

  • Students apply for accommodations through an online application. They are also required to supply documentation from a qualified professional. This process usually takes less than 20 minutes.
  • Once both application and documentation are received, they are reviewed by an Access Advisor and the student is invited to schedule an intake appointment to discuss their needs with an Access Advisor. This step takes between 3-5 business days.
  • During this intake meeting, after a student’s environmental barriers to learning are fully discussed, a comprehensive accommodation plan is finalized and put into place. This process takes between 1 and 2 hours.
  • After the student’s initial appointment, they will be guided through the process of requesting accommodations. This involves logging into their MyAccess Student portal, selecting classes where they need accommodations, and selecting the accommodations they need for each class. An email notification (Faculty Notification Letter) will be sent to the instructor and the student. Accommodations can be requested 24 hours after initial appointment and must be done each semester afterwards.
  • Students are then instructed to reach out to schedule a brief meeting with their instructor to discuss the logistics of their accommodations for that course. This may take between 1-2 weeks depending on scheduling availability.
    • If instructors or students have questions or concerns about how best to implement accommodations, they are encouraged to reach out to the students Access Advisor right away.
  • Changes to a student’s accommodations should be discussed with the student’s Access Advisor unless determined to be reasonable by the instructor.

Alternative Testing Accommodations Procedures

  • Once a student has requested alternative testing accommodations for a class, the Faculty Notification email that instructors receive will include a link to the Alternative Testing Agreement. This link will take faculty to a page where they can submit the appropriate agreement for their campus/course.
  • This Agreement must be submitted by faculty before a student will be able to schedule to take their course exams with the Access Center proctoring office.
  • This agreement will be applied to all students in the course who have Alternative Testing accommodations, and only needs to be filled out once per course (courses with multiple sections will need a separate agreement for each section).
  • This agreement can also be filled out in the Faculty Portal.
  • Changes to the ATA can be submitted through the Faculty Portal or by emailing access.testing@wsu.edu
  • Once an instructor has submitted the ATA, the student will then be able to login to their MyAccess portal and schedule their exams for the term. Students are required to schedule their exams 5 business day prior to the date that the class is taking the midterm/quiz and 10 business days prior to finals week.
  • Faculty will receive a reminder 5 business days in advance. If the student schedules their exam late, faculty may receive this reminder less than 5 business days’ notice.
  • The reminder email includes a secure link that instructors can use to upload their exam. Exams can also be uploaded in the Faculty Portal.
  • Faculty will also receive a reminder email the day before an exam is scheduled to take place if we have not received the exam at that time.
  • Exams will be prepared 24 hours before the day it is scheduled to take place.
  • Please note: Exams that require remediation (font changes, recording, or digitization) take approximately 2 minutes per question to complete. Exams that are submitted less than 24 hours in advance may need to be delayed in order to give our staff time to prepare.
  • Students arrive for their exam at their scheduled time and will be provided their accommodations in our proctoring center. For more information regarding our proctoring procedures, please email testing@wsu.edu
  • Once the exam is completed, it will be returned to proctoring staff and processed for return to faculty. It may take 24 hours for an exam to be returned.

Notetaking Accommodation Procedures

  • Students who are approved for peer notetaking are asked to request this accommodation in courses where other lecture capture accommodations do not suffice.
  • Once a request is made, faculty will receive an email from our notetaking coordinator asking them to announce the need for a notetaker during class.
  • A script is provided in this email, though faculty are welcome to make the announcement in a way that fits best with their course so long as student information is kept confidential.
  • Students who identify themselves as being interested or willing to provide their notes should be directed to our website, where they can submit a short online application to begin this process.
  • Potential notetakers should not be directly connected with the student who has requested accommodations.
  • If a notetaker does not volunteer within 2 weeks of the initial request, faculty will receive an email with possible alternative solutions to ensure the student has equal access in the course.

Alternative Format Procedures

  • Students with this accommodation are approved to receive their course lecture materials in a more accessible format than provided, if it is needed
    • If the course materials provided are already accessible then there is no need for the student to continue the request process
  • Once the student has requested this accommodation for a specific class they are required to submit a receipt or other proof of purchase of the original course material they purchased
  • Once those are received our office requests an accessible PDF from the publisher or publisher databases
    • The request response time from the publisher can range from 24 hours to 3 weeks
    • In many cases where the book is available digitally, they will not provide publisher PDF files as the digital version keeps them in legal compliance
    • Please research whether or not the book you require is available digitally and if it is, please be sure to make that clear to your students
  • Once files are ready they are shared with the student through a SharePoint folder that only they and our office have access to
  • For classes in which a book is not required for purchase it is up to the student to provide us any course materials that are not accessible when given to them
    • The turn around time from request to completion can take anywhere from 48 hours to one week depending on the quality of the original document and any communication exchanges needed between us, the student, and the faculty
    • For more information on creating and providing accessible course materials please visit Access WSU's Recommendations for Faculty web page
  • Ideally a student would request their accessible course materials from us by the end of the first week of instruction to minimize the amount of time they may be without accessible course materials

Deaf/Hard of Hearing Accommodation Procedures

 We are currently updating this process.