• Meet qualifications and maintain essential institutional standards for courses, programs, services, jobs, activities, and facilities;
• Identify themselves as an individual with a disability and to seek information, counsel, and assistance as necessary;
• Demonstrate and/or document (from an appropriate professional) how the disability limits their participation in courses, programs, services, jobs, activities, and facilities;
• Follow published procedures for obtaining reasonable accommodations, academic adjustments, and/or auxiliary aids and services;
• Assume responsibility for testing procedures and notifying faculty and Disability Services accordingly;
• Provide for his/her personal independent living needs or other personal disability related needs.

• Request verification from the Disability Services office for any student requesting classroom accommodations. Disability Services is the only office designated to review disability documentation and determine eligibility for appropriate accommodations.

• Expect the student to initiate accommodation requests.
• If the student is taking their tests at Disability Services, expect ODS to administer exams in a secure and monitored environment.

Accommodations
Faculty do not need to consider a student's request for classroom accommodations if the student has not provided an accommodation form from Disability Services for that semester.

A faculty member has the right to question recommended accommodation requests in the following situations:

1. if s/he believes the student is not otherwise qualified
2. the accommodation would result in a fundamental alteration of the program or an essential component of the course
3. the institution is being asked to address a personal need
4. the accommodation would impose undue financial or administrative burden.

• Identify and establish essential functions, abilities, skills, and knowledge of their courses and evaluate students on this basis.  Students with disabilities should meet the same course expectations as their peer.
• Work to ensure that all audio-visual materials and web based materials used in class are accessible (e.g., that videos shown are captioned, and have availability of audio description or a written transcript,  that web sites have text descriptions of graphs and charts, and audio tracks have transcripts or captioning to describe important information.)
• Use a syllabus statement and class announcements to invite students to disclose their needs.
• Treat and protect all disability-related information as confidential. Faculty does not have the right to ask students if they have a disability. Due to confidentiality, the nature of the disability may not be disclosed to the faculty unless there is a specific need to know or signed student consent.  Students are encouraged to self-disclose the nature of their disability and specific functional limitations related to their disability based on their level of comfort.
• For proctored testing through Disability Services, the testing modification form must be completed in a timely manner and sent to Disability Services one week in advance of the test date.

Shared Responsibility
It is the responsibility of the faculty to assume a shared responsibility in providing reasonable accommodations for students with disabilities.

Referral
If a faculty member is notified by a student that s/he has a disability or if the student brings a medical statement to the instructor, it is the faculty member's responsibility to refer that student with his/her medical statement to Disability Services. If a student is having academic difficulty, encourage them to talk with you about possible campus resources.

Confidentiality
Maintain appropriate confidentiality and discretion regarding both records and verbal communication when working with students with disabilities. Any explicit or implicit inference to a particular student and the disability is inappropriate.

Rights & Responsibilities of The Pennsylvania State University

The Pennsylvania State University has the right to:

• Identify and establish essential functions, abilities, skills, knowledge, and standards for courses, programs, services, jobs, activities, and facilities and to evaluate students on this basis;
• Request and receive, through Disability Services current documentation that supports requests for accommodations, academic adjustments, and/or auxiliary aids and services;
• Deny a request for accommodations, academic adjustments, and/or auxiliary aids and services if the documentation demonstrates that the request is not warranted, or if the individual fails to provide appropriate documentation; or the request alters the essential components of the course;
• Select among equally effective accommodations, adjustments, and/or auxiliary aids and services;
• Refuse an unreasonable accommodation, adjustment, and/or auxiliary aid and service that impose a fundamental alteration to a program or activity of the University.

The Pennsylvania State University has the responsibility to:

• Provide information to faculty, staff, students, and the general public with disabilities in accessible formats upon request;
• Ensure that courses, programs, services, jobs, activities, and facilities, when viewed in their entirety, are available and usable in the most integrated and appropriate settings;

• Provide or arrange reasonable accommodations, academic adjustments, and/or auxiliary aids and services for faculty, staff, students, and guests with disabilities in courses, programs, services, jobs, activities, and facilities;

• Maintain appropriate confidentiality of records and communications;

• To prohibit discrimination against qualified individuals with disabilities;

• To assist the student with self-advocacy and problem solving;

• To guide the student to possible resources that might assist him or her, whether it is on campus or networking in the community.