Reasonable Accommodations and Needs Assessments in Tertiary Education

AHEAD is an independent non-profit organisation working to create inclusive environments in education and employment for people with disabilities. The main focus of our work is further education and training, higher education and graduate employment.

AHEAD provides information to students and graduates with disabilities, teachers, guidance counsellors and parents on disability issues in education. We undertake national research relating to the inclusion of students with disabilities, contribute to national policy forums and provide professional development opportunities to develop the capacity of staff in FET and higher education to be more inclusive.

AHEAD works with graduates and employers through the GET AHEAD Graduate Forum and the WAM Mentored Work Placement Programme.

At the end of this course, you should be able to:

• Describe what a reasonable accommodation is and what legal responsibilities tertiary education institutions have in this area.
• Explain the concept of the Inclusive Practice Pyramid in tertiary education and how Universal Design and reasonable accommodations relate to each other.
• List the stages in a Needs Assessment (NA) and summarise why and when they are needed.
• Identify common reasonable accommodations offered to disabled learners in further education and training (FET), and higher education (HE) settings.