The College is committed to making reasonable modifications to its rules, policies, and practices as required by law to afford individuals with disabilities equal opportunity to access its programs, services, and activities. The College through College Operating Procedure 01-0104 assures the College’s students, staff or faculty members, or other members of the College community that it will take steps to eliminate disability harassment and discrimination, and take steps to prevent re-occurrence and to correct its discriminatory effects.
Pursuant to Titles I and II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the College provides equal employment and educational opportunities and reasonable accommodation for qualified individuals with disabilities.
Policy Guidelines
FSW is committed to providing students with Equal Access/Equal Opportunity to all qualified students. The equal opportunity principle applies to otherwise qualified persons with disabilities with regard to employment, the delivery of educational programs and services and all other appropriate areas in which the College is involved.
The College assumes the Department of Labor’s definition of an individual with a disability is “one who (1) has a physical or mental impairment which substantially limits one or more of such person’s major life activities; (2) has a record of such impairment; or (3) is regarded as having such an impairment.”
The College understands that it must provide reasonable accommodations to the known physical or mental limitations of a qualified applicant, employee, and/or student with a disability, unless such accommodation would impose a fundamental alteration to the nature of a course or an undue hardship on the College.
Procedure
It is the obligation of the individual with a disability to request a reasonable accommodation. Students and applicants must submit any request for accommodations to the Office of ADAptive Services (OAS) for consideration. Individuals with a disability must provide recent documentation from a qualified, licensed professional that addresses the disability and the requested accommodation. Requests for accommodations must be specific to the documented needs. Once a student has been established with the office, it is the student’s responsibility to request accommodations each semester thereafter.
The Office of ADAptive Services will issue a Letter of Accommodation to the individual's Professors verifying that the student is a registered participant and has provided the College with all required documentation. Communication is vital between the student and their Professors and also between the student and the Office of ADAptive Services.
Accommodations may include, but are not limited to, isolated testing environments, up to double the amount of time on tests, sign language interpretation, oral testing, and the use of auxiliary aids.
Professors are encouraged to notify the Office of ADAptive Service immediately should they have any questions or concerns regarding academic accommodations. Academic accommodations are not intended to fundamentally alter the nature of the course. Additionally, academic adjustments are not appropriate if they supplement the very skills which the test is intended to measure. For example, permission to use an electronic spell-checker when required to write an essay on English literature might be an appropriate adjustment; however, the same accommodation would NOT be appropriate if the student is taking a spelling test.