Documenting a Disability 

After requesting attention to the disability topic, students should arrange for Disability Services to receive a sufficiently detailed report about the medical, physical, or brain issue. The report is called documentation. It’s largely from this paperwork that decisions are based for allowing individual students specific types accommodations. The documentation should be written by an appropriate expert and allow a reader who is not an expert to realize that a disability situation currently exists and know how it will effect the students at UWRF. There should be a summary of how the issue arose, a list of current symptoms, explanation about how the symptoms will limit the students’ ability to do important things at UWRF, and recommendations about the types of adjustments and accommodations that will be necessary. The kind of expert that’s needed for this paperwork depends on the type of issue; often it should be a doctor. UWRF does not provide the expert or pay for any related costs. Written guidelines for various types of issues are available in the links in the upper-right corner of this page. Documentation that’s received about students who haven’t outwardly requested this kind of attention will not be processed.

Unfortunately, Disability Services often receives documentation that isn’t sufficient. This is because the experts who write documentation are typically very busy people. They usually serve many patients or clients and don't automatically remember specific details about each one. They don't have a lot of time to search through their records to find the details. Usually they don't have a strong understanding of this documentation process for accommodations. And they can feel pretty cautious about sending your personal information to a college. Thus, it's pretty common that experts send letters to Disability Services (for documentation) that don't include enough information. For some kinds of disability issues you may be able to save the experts time and end up with more detailed documentation by using a convenient form called the Collaborative Documentation Form. On the front-side you can try to explain certain details that an expert often doesn't automatically remember. Then give the form to the expert and ask him or her to fill out the back-side. Unfortunately, this form may not work very well for disability issues that require numerical measurements to explain them, such as a Learning Disability. It's recommended you should contact Disability Services before attempting to use the Collaborative Documentation Form and ask if it could work for your situation.

Here are some other common problems with documentation. It might be pages copied directly from a medical file with hard to understand clinical language, but no explanation about a need for adjustments or accommodations at college. Or it could be paperwork that does explain the need for specific adjustments or accommodations but doesn’t adequately indicate the issue meets the definition of a disability. It can also be paperwork that provides information on all the necessary topics, but does so with statements that suggest the student's issue is really only a minor inconvenience. For many issues the best documentation could be a doctor’s letter composed solely for the purpose of establishing an option to have adjustments or accommodations at college while paying close attention to the documentation guidelines described in the links in the upper-right corner of this page.

Other problems are common with several types of documentation from public schools that can be called an Individual Educational Plan (IEP), a 504 Plan, or a Transition Plan. These plans often lack details about a medical, physical, or brain issue, or the author may not actually be an expert on the issue, or there isn’t enough current information. Students with such a plan should submit a copy but may also need additional documentation to verify such an issue creates a disability.

If students submit documentation that doesn’t have enough information the process of seeking adjustments and accommodations becomes dormant until they can successfully arrange additional documentation. Getting adequate documentation is often a hassle and takes considerable time to accomplish. Students who want to attempt this process should get it started as soon as possible. 

Advice about arranging adequate documentation is available from Disability Services (715-425-3531). Students who cannot successfully complete the formal process may request referrals to other potential kinds of support.