UW-River Falls

Procedures For Activating Academic Adjustments

Students receive verbal explanations and written (or recorded) outlines about the procedures that are used to request and arrange common types of academic adjustments. Click on the following links for more information:

How adujsted tests occur.

How copies of notes occur.

How alternative text occur.

Most adjustments include circumstances that professors don’t normally allow. For adjustments to occur professors usually need to know who the students are that have an option to academic adjustments on the basis of a disability. If professors don’t know who the students are they can’t be expected to cooperate. We’ve found it works best when students are the ones to approach professors about this. To help them do that Disability Services provides the students Adjustment Notification Memos on its office stationary. Click here for an example of an Adjustment Notification Memo. They are individualized memos that list the types of adjustments to allow, without identifying the nature of the students’ disability circumstances. Students then give the memos directly to their professors. It’s rare that professors ask students about the disability. If they do ask, students can either choose to explain the circumstances or decline to discuss it and still have the adjustment. Disability Services does not explain the circumstances to professors.

Professors may elect to arrange a requested adjustment without involving Disability Services, or they can ask the students to approach the office for making the arrangements. Usually when Disability Services has been selected to arrange an adjustment the office can’t effectively do that until it knows certain details about the course. In those situations students are expected to obtain the necessary details from their professors. They then use the details to fill out simple adjustment request forms. Click on the links below to see examples of the forms:

Test Request Form

Late Test Request Form

Lecture Note Request Form

Alternative Text Request Form

The completed forms provide the office all the information it needs to arrange an adjustment. Assistance for filling out the forms is readily available.

These methods of putting students “in the middle” (between the office and professors) ensure students are the ones who get to make adjustment use decisions, help foster stronger learning relationships between students and professors, and encourage students to know what there courses require.