6Making it real
Weeks eleven to fourteen. The letter is in hand, the arrangements are agreed. Now they have to happen.
- Working with Accommodation Offices and Access Advisors — the implementation gap, in which an approved accommodation is recorded and then not delivered, and the instructor’s part in closing it.
- Accommodated Exams and Assessment Logistics — this time for its second half: what the exam service needs from the instructor, by when, and what happens when timing, technology, or a person’s health fails during the exam.
- Delivering Accommodated Exams in a Learning Platform — if any part of the final is delivered online, the extended time has to be set in the platform for the right person, and checked.
- Training and Supervising Student Access Staff — the teaching assistants who run the tutorials and the make-up visit, and what they need to be able to do without being told anything they do not need to know.
- Accessible Live and Virtual Facilitation — the tutorial itself: how participation is invited so that a learner returning after three weeks can take part without being made the subject.
Delivery began in week nine. Between the email and the letter, Jules had a deadline, the recordings, and an answer about the tutorials, in writing, and knew what was still open. An accommodation process that leaves a person without an answer while it runs is one of the ways the process stalls (source 1), and the two weeks before the letter are where that happens most.
Every arrangement now has an owner, a date, and a check. The instructor confirms the exam accommodation with the exam service by its deadline, and confirms in week fourteen that the booking exists. The teaching assistants are told that Jules’s absences are excused and that the make-up visit is on the week thirteen date, and are told nothing about why (source 8). The teaching assistant leading the visit has the protocol, the recording sheets, and the briefing content a week ahead. The recordings for the remaining lectures are released as they are made, with captions, because conformance to the accessibility guidelines is defined against what a person can actually use, and a recording without captions is not access for everyone it is released to (source 25). In week twelve the instructor checks with Jules that each piece is in place, in one short message, and does not ask how Jules is feeling unless Jules raises it. An accommodation that is recorded and not delivered has discharged nothing (source 15).