The Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) office is responsible for ensuring that all students, regardless of their disability, have the opportunity to fulfill their educational goals. We do so by offering support and accommodations, be it academic or housing related, to fully support students with disabilities throughout their educational careers. We offer a wide variety of accommodations and support outlined through the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) which present highly detailed and specific accommodations based on individuals’ disabilities.
Some of the common types of accommodations that our office provides includes (but is not limited to): testing accommodations (extended test time and reduced distraction environment), note takers and electronic textbooks. Additionally, students with certain types of mobility, hearing, and visual impairments, may also qualify for housing accommodations which are coordinated through University Housing.
The Important component for students to remember when requesting services from SSD is that students need to ADVOCATE for themselves. Students should have a good understanding of the types of services and accommodations that they need to be successful. Remember, services that students receive in high school are NOT automatically transferred to college. The student must schedule an appointment with either our Director or Assistant Director in order to receive the necessary accommodations. The first step to receiving accommodations is to fax, email, or drop off documentation at our office (contact information will be provided at the end of the article). Documentation is essentially a written or typed document by your physician or other certified diagnostician which officially states the student’s disability as well as any treatment being provided. Once documentation is received by our office, a staff member will be in contact with the student to set up an appointment with either our Director or Assistant Director to develop an appropriate accommodation plan. Once an accommodation plan has been created, it is in effect for the remainder of the student’s collegiate career. Remember, this process takes time; if the student knows that he/she will be needing accommodations prior to coming to the University, it is in the student’s best interest to start the process early. By doing so, it alleviates the stress and worry of requesting accommodations with limited time to have them implemented.
For those students who have not been diagnosed with a disability, SSD works closely with our University’s Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS), an on-campus department which can provide diagnostic assessment. For those interested in a referral, call the SSD office to set up an appointment to be referred to the CAPS office.
Once the entire process of becoming a registered student within our office is complete, the student is then responsible for making requests for accommodations on a semester-by-semester basis. Simply because the student has become registered with our office does not mean that he or she will automatically have accommodations for every class they take. It is up to the student to request accommodations at the beginning of each semester. For some of our more frequent accommodations (i.e. test accommodations and note takers) we do recommend that a student attends class at least once before requesting these accommodations. We find that by doing so, some students find that they may not need accommodations for certain classes, based on the professor’s teaching style or by the way that a class is graded.
For more information regarding our office as well as questions on how to receive accommodations from our office, please stop by room 132 of the Canfield Administration Building to schedule an appointment or call us at (402) 472-3787.
More details at: http://go.unl.edu/xjy