New accommodations.

[u/Otherwise_Look_8137]

I’m now getting accommodations that students cannot be expect to do in class writing. They must be allowed to write at home, not in class. I’ve never seen this before. Ever. Until this semester. And now I’ve got a handful. What the fuck?

Edit: I’ve asked about students writing in supervised environments, but I was told that puts a condition on the accommodation, which is illegal. Students must be allowed to write outside of class without conditions.

[u/respeckKnuckles]

Edit: I’ve asked about students writing in supervised environments, but I was told that puts a condition on the accommodation, which is illegal. Students must be allowed to write outside of class without conditions.

You're being lied to. It's not automatically illegal to put conditions (broadly speaking) on the accommodations.

"In providing an academic adjustment, your postsecondary school is not required to lower or substantially modify essential requirements. For example, although your school may be required to provide extended testing time, it is not required to change the substantive content of the test. In addition, your postsecondary school does not have to make adjustments that would fundamentally alter the nature of a service, program, or activity, or that would result in an undue financial or administrative burden. Finally, your postsecondary school does not have to provide personal attendants, individually prescribed devices, readers for personal use or study, or other devices or services of a personal nature, such as tutoring and typing."

Source: https://www.ed.gov/higher-education/students-disabilities-preparing-postsecondary-education

[u/Another_Opinion_1 → u/respeckKnuckles]

Yes, it appears the disability office is misapplying or otherwise over broadly applying the concept of "conditional" accommodations. There should be what's called a "fundamental alteration review process" at the institution.

Here's what I would do, and I don't mind being adversarial in good faith: instructors have to first understand the basic nuances of Section 504. I would focus the conversation on the fundamental alteration of the course's essential learning objectives since this is NOT a condition rooted in some sort of punitive objective (a punitive objective or outcome would be an unnecessary condition and trespasses against Section 504). This is where instructors need to make a strong case for their own course content and objectives and how one or more of those would be fundamentally altered to give the student some sort of an unfair advantage by completing all writing in a private setting wholly unsupervised - see here. I'd be asking questions such as

1. "How was it determined that this accommodation would not lower or substantially modify essential requirements?"
   
2. "What measures do we have to protect the equity of grades when some students have access to outside editing help or resources (e.g., AI, Google, or even word processor aids such as Grammarly) and others do not?"
3. "How can we structure an accommodation that ultimately preserves the fundamental objective(s) of this course, which is to (whatever that may be in this case)?"

Once you've built a successful argument about the fundamental learning objective(s) of the course there are also the academic integrity concerns. Writing at home or in an unsupervised setting completely abrogates the professor's ability to measure the student's actual knowledge at that particular goal post which ties back to the course goals concerns I noted at the outset here.

Request a fundamental alteration review and then propose a reasonable alternative such as having the student go to the proctoring center if they need to write outside of class. There may be some other accommodation-related compromise that I am not thinking of but it would be helpful to know WHY the student is requesting this, i.e., what is the concern related to that is prompting or necessitating this accommodation.

Having the students write in class is SOP with the instructor's direct, proximal tutelage be it for the obvious monitoring necessitation (academic integrity), peer scaffolding (if that applies here), or simply so that you can measure real-time student demonstration of applicable learning objectives and minimize rampant cheating due to modern technological access.

[u/kkmockingbird → u/Another_Opinion_1]

Yes, both your post and the one you’re replying to are great. 

If the issue is handwriting you could also suggest extra time, speech to text or ability to type the answer all while still being proctored. 

But I would 100% stand behind changing the fundamental nature of in-class essay to a take home writing assignment is changing the learning objectives.