Emily Carr Accessibility Services provides students with a very specific type of resource, which is a formalized system that helps the student communicate to faculty about their personalized needs for learning. After fulfilling the series of steps that they identify, they can generate what's called an Accommodations Notice for that student. The student can then send this to each teacher that they will have a course with, and wish to have accommodations for their learning experience.

From the Accessibility Services website page: 

Accessibility Services provides accommodations to the learning environment for students with speech, hearing, visual, physical, mental health and neurological disabilities as well as chronic health conditions, acquired brain injury and temporary disabilities. Carefully review their information to see how you can apply for this type of support.


The official Accessibility Accommodations Notice

Obtaining an official Accommodations Notice requires taking specific steps and engaging with the Emily Carr Accessibilities Services Coordinator. It includes paying a medical doctor for an assessment and for them to produce an official letter that you deliver to the Coordinator. The Coordinator reviews the letter, talks with you, and then creates an Accessibility form that lists topics they believe best suits your learning needs and current situation. It doesn't contain any personalized background, or your psychological or medical information. If your needs change at some point, you need to re-establish this form with new information.

An Accommodations Form lasts for the semester. The student must request it's re-activation each subsequent semester. Even if you have the same teacher again, you should re-deliver the new version of the form.

Here's an example of the type of accommodation requests that an accessibility form might contain. You'll see that it's a basic bullet point list of general accessibility accommodation requests.

CLASSROOM ACCOMODATIONS

  • Flexibility in meeting deadlines (up to 1 week)
  • Step-by-step instructions: For assignments/projects that require multi-steps, provide written, concrete, step-by-step instruction. Also, provide time to process and respond to step-by-step verbal instructions.
  • allow breaks to move around and/or sit down, as needed.
  • provide written instructions when making changes to established schedules.


Speaking Up and Communicating Your Needs

Letting faculty know that you have accessibility needs is encouraged. You don't need to reveal personal information. If you have some accommodation requests, the goal is to communicate that clearly in a personal conversation or by email with your teacher. Faculty are not required to accommodate requests by Emily Carr University, but you should feel confident that they will do their best.


Ongoing Labour

People that have established needs have often learned how to be self-supporting and proactive at an early age. But not everyone has, and that's for their own reasons, while some have only recently learned that they have an accessibility need and are still figuring things out. The important thing to know is that making sure that your own needs are met and supported takes extra work and intentional focus.

If you secure a form, or if you create your own, you'll find that the work does not end there. You need to deliver it to each faculty and course that you want to have it be applied to. There is no university or life system that automatically delivers it for you.

An Accommodations Form lasts for the semester. The student must request it's re-activation each subsequent semester. Even if you have the same teacher again, you should re-deliver the new version of the form.

You might consider also having a personal conversation with the faculty person. That kind oif activity would become tiring to do every semester across every course, so you could instead focus that effort on courses that present more challenges to your accomodation needs. 


Faculty Can't Ask

Did you know that faculty can't ask you if you have any accessibility needs, or a mental or physical health situation that relates to your learning? This is to protect your privacy, and there are very strong rules and guidelines around protecting you in this regard. Faculty might notice that you're struggling with something, and find a way to ask you something like "how do you best learn", or "what creates the best learning environment for you"? This is a way to help them figure out how to support the student that seems to be struggling in certain situations and types of activities.


Being Unable to Pursue an Accommodations Notice

The form a doctor provides costs money. Not everyone is in a financial or insurance situation to be able to do this. A student may be on their parent's insurance, and don't have access to this type of visit. They may not even want to bother their parents with this request. If this is your situation, you can instead write up your own needs requests and request a personal conversation with your teachers. Present this to them, and explain that you'd appreciate it if they could support you in this way. Most, if not all, faculty would be willing to recognize and support you. Our goal is to help provide you with the best learning environment and experience possible.


It Might be Hard to Consider

Not everyone feels comfortable about thinking of themselves as needing accessibility accommodations. Accessibility does not mean failure, or something to think of as different or strange. Difference is essential to all of us as a diverse population, because it what makes us who we are. That's all that counts. "You do you", as the saying goes. We should be able to feel confident in embracing this attitude. 


Hidden and Evolved Needs

Some people may have lived with their accessibility challenge for so long that they have just learned how to adapt and get along as best as they can. They might not realize that their long-term situation has evolved into being a substantial compensation effort, and just "live with it". They might not even think that things could be better for them.

It's good for us to think of ourselves as all having some personal needs that help to support us in our learning and working lives. Maybe you can only concentrate when it's quiet or when the lights are low? Fluorescent lights might buzz and hum and flicker, causing headaches or mental distress. The point is, that there are many things that might not appear as accessibility issues, but they affect us in the ways we succeed and are supported in any situation.


// This content is generated by faculty Lorelei Pepi. If you would like to communicate about any issues or editorial adjustments to the content, you can contact her directly, either in person or by email at lpepi@ecuad.ca 

Last modified: Wednesday, 31 January 2024, 7:56 AM