SAS staff and students work together via an interactive process to determine appropriate accommodations. The process works best when SAS staff have the opportunity to review documentation, especially for students with invisible disabilities, prior to an initial meeting. In some cases, documentation may not be needed.
Student Accessibility Services (SAS) recognizes the impact that complex, multi-layered and identity-related factors may have on a student's ability to secure documentation and substantiate their eligibility as an individual with disability.
Students may come to our office from backgrounds that include distrust of the medical establishment, experiences of medical racism, fear generated in the LGBTQIA+ community by homosexuality having previously been considered a mental disorder, and/or familial or cultural stigma that prevents them from seeking treatment. First-generation and/or low-income students, those coming to Dartmouth from under-resourced public schools, and those for whom English was not the primary language used at home or from countries without protections such as the Americans with Disabilities Act may not have been introduced to their rights to services and support before coming to Dartmouth.
Beyond these factors, the consequences of systems of oppression, such as racial trauma, may produce physical and psychological symptoms that are disabling for students. These impacts may then be even further exacerbated by repeated exposure to microaggressions and microassaults. This, coupled with fear of not being believed, may delay students seeking mental health and medical care and thus obtaining documentation.
Documentation is not required to meet with us. We may need it to establish eligibility for disability services, but we'll cross that bridge if we get to it.
To request a meeting with an SAS advisor without documentation, email student.accessibility.services@dartmouth.edu. If you're ready to apply for SAS services, you can also do so without documentation.
Documentation should be provided by a qualified, licensed professional whose field of specialization directly pertains to the student's disability and who is unrelated to the student. Except in cases of psychoeducational or neuropsychological evaluations, where there is a comprehensive report available, SAS recommends that students' providers complete SAS' Disability Verification Form, which is HIPAA-compliant, as documentation. The verification form also instructs providers to upload a brief, signed, dated letter on their letterhead. The verification form is designed to be broad enough to apply to a range of conditions and potential accommodations. Documentation needs to be provided in English, and if translation is required, it must be completed by a certified translator.
As reflected by the questions in the SAS Disability Verification Form documentation that is most beneficial to SAS:
In many cases, providers can thoroughly complete the online SAS Disability Verification Form on a student's behalf to share the information that is most useful to SAS in working with students to determine reasonable accommodations and other supports. (Non-Dartmouth providers will also need to submit a brief, signed and dated letter on letterhead.) If a condition is variable in nature, documentation should generally be no more than one year old so that SAS is in the best position to support current needs.
However, for conditions such as speech/language or learning disorders, attention-defict/hyperactivity disorder, auditory processing disorders, traumatic brain injuries, and Asperger's/autism spectrum disorders, a thorough evaluation report is preferred over the verification form and may be required. Students and providers should review the condition-specific documentation guidelines that apply to them:
Examples of documentation that are not typically sufficient for accommodations at postsecondary level, but could be used to supplement primary documentation, include:
Documentation can be submitted to SAS in the following ways:
Additional information/documentation may be requested to verify a student's condition or to support particular accommodation requests especially when the student or their documentation does not clearly illustrate the need.