[nabs-l] Accommedations Letter to Professors

[Steve Jacobson]

Jordan,

Judging from some of the responses you have gotten, I believe there is some confusion about this letter.  To some degree, how you handle a situation like this is 
going to depend upon your personal preferences and which DSS services you decide to use.  As I understand things at the University of Minnesota, the purpose of 
any letter is at least partly to make certain the professor knows about any reasonable accommodation that you need.  If you don't need any accommodations at all, 
you probably don't need a letter at all as some have indicated.  However, if you need to make alternative test arrangements, need to sit near the front, or need hand-
outs in an electronic format, you will need to communicate those needs to the professor.  As I understand it, you can have the DSS office contact the professor 
directly or you can contact the professor.  It sounds to me as though you have already decided that you will contact the professor, which is what I would do.  The 
question is, then, whose letter to use?  

If you are going to use the DSS office to administer tests to you, the professor needs to know exactly what procedure needs to be followed, where to send or bring 
the test, to whom to send it, how much lead time is required, and so on.  Obviously, if a test is to be brailled and if there are diagrams, significant lead time will be 
needed.  Knowing you as I do, I would guess that you will want to send your own letter to the prof so you can portray yourself and what you need in a positive light.  
Seeing their letter, at least for the first time, might not be a bad idea so you know for certain what the exact procedure is for taking tests using the DSS office.  You 
could still either revise their letter or incorporate the fundamentals into a letter of your own.  Since I don't know what you have already discussed with the DSS office, 
it could be that you already are certain of the procedures and are well able to lay them out to a professor in your own words.  If that is the case, you probably don't 
even need their letter.  If you're not sure, though, seeing there letter, whether you use it or not, gives you a way to know what specifics need to be communicated.

If you are not going to use any services of the DSS office, you may still want to explain how you will handle tests so that you don't run into problems on the day of the 
test.  It isn't helpful to sit down to take your first test only to find that you are making enough noise to distract other students.  It isn't always easy to find an empty 
room at the U of M on short notice.

In my day, I just went and talked to the professor after the first class.  Things were a little simpler then, though, because I was usually the only student who needed 
any kind of accommodations.  Now, it is not that uncommon for their to be more than one student using some special equipment to be taking classes from a 
professor.  Having something in writing on file with the professor helps insure that whatever you need is accounted for when test day comes around.  I would always 
rather speak for myself, but I would want to be sure I covered all of the necessary bases.  How you approach this is both a matter of philosophy and practicality.

Best regards,

Steve Jacobson

On Wed, 15 Apr 2009 18:58:51 -0500, Jordan Richardson wrote:

>hi all,
>i just talked to the person at the DSS office today and one of the things
>that we talked was the accommedations letter to the professors.  Now, i had
>heard about this through Jeff Thompson and MnABS.  Is it better to have the
>DSS office write the letter and send it to me for revisions, or for me to
>just write the letter and to send it to my professors myself.  If i do the
>latter, should i tell the DSS office that i will write the letter myself?
>thx,

>-- 
>Jordan Richardson
>lilrichie411 at gmail.com
>What is a friend? A friend is a single soul dwelling in two bodies
>--Aristotle
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