Unique Accommodations

When students include any of the following accommodations on their letters, their letter automatically gets pulled into the explicit approval queue, requiring further action from DSS Staff:

• Group work modification

• Class participation/Presentation Modification 

• Private Room Testing (note: if the class is online, approve and send without faculty contact since the class is accessible by design)

• Remote Attendance (note: if the class is online, approve and send without faculty contact since the class is accessible by design)

These accommodations have a higher risk of creating fundamental alterations, so we need to be diligent about communicating with faculty on how these can be provided to the student. Use the following email templates to begin the interactive process with faculty to determine if and how these accommodations can be implemented:

• Group work modification

• Class participation/Presentation Modification

• Remote Attendance

• Private Room Testing - only send if this is something that cannot be accommodated on the Denton campus (ie., evening class, Dallas campus, etc.) 

After you email faculty, approve the accommodation request to send out the letter. 

After faculty reply: 

• If they say that there is no presentation/group work, no action needs to be taken. 

• If they say that presentations/group work has to happen, negotiate how that will look & send the final details to faculty & student. 

Tip: use mail merge to contact faculty. 

In myDSS, open the Accommodations app:

1. List student classes

2. Filter out to “students with accommodation requests (registration current with school)” & select the eligibility (presentation or group work)

3. Open Handy Tools: Export course data & contacting instructors

4. Select “by student & course”; spreadsheet will download.

5. Save the spreadsheet in the shared drive under "Explicit Approvals" and create a new folder for the current term. 

Students who need certain types of chairs or tables in the classroom require us to coordinate with facilities to ensure the furniture is present. Faculty do not have a role in this accommodation. 

ASB is where we will see the most issues with tables & chairs for students. Nearly all of the classrooms in ASB have old school chairs attached to desks (think high school) that are inaccessible to students in wheelchairs, students with back injuries, etc. 

If and when identified by the student or the faculty that accessible furniture is needed:

1. Go and view the room. See what is already available. We may need to negotiate with faculty to have other students move to reserve a table or chair for the disabled student. 

2. If furniture is not already available in the room for the student to use, put in a work order with the movers to select the necessary furniture to be placed in the classroom. You may have to go to surplus to pick out what would work. 

3. Work with facilities movers to place the furniture in the classroom. Ultimately, it is our responsibility to ensure that it is made available to the student in a timely manner. 

4. At the end of the term, contact facilities again to have the furniture removed from the space and returned to surplus. 

Students approved for these two accommodations will need custom documents generated within myDSS to give to faculty. It is the student's responsbility to provide the form to their faculty member for reference. 

Tip: If the student has an injury that should recover within a specific timeframe, set up the accommodation as temporary AND add the end date on the custom document. 

How to set up the custom document for Physcial Demand Limitations & Allergen Notification