Accessibility and Accommodations

Your needs and the University Writing Center

We serve all writers in the university community. This means that our consultants are committed to working with writers with a wide range of abilities, experiences and learning styles. Although University Writing Center consultants do not receive official training in disability accommodations, they do spend time in a Writing Center Theory and Practice course discussing ways to meet the needs of all writers – including writers with physical, developmental and learning disabilities. Consultants are also experienced in working with writers at any stage in the writing process, including understanding assignment guidelines and brainstorming.

If there are any accommodations we can make in order to better facilitate your learning during a consultation or to improve your experience in the University Writing Center, just let us know. Unless noted otherwise, accommodations do not require documentation from the Disability Resource Center, though such documentation may be helpful to your consultant if you wish to provide it. Potential accommodations include, but are not limited to:

• Conducting your consultation in one of our side rooms.

• Welcoming service animals into the University Writing Center.

• Working with American Sign Language interpreters.

• Using a variety of media to communicate with you about your writing.

• Additional time for appointments or more than three appointments per week if you provide documentation from the Disability Resource Center. 

To let us know about any of these needs, you can call us at 502-852-2173, send us an email, or indicate your requests in your appointment form.

Our resources and website

• The Dislexie Font is available on one of our computers, which can be used during a consultation.
• We provide transcripts or captions of our:
  • Video Workshops
  • Videos on how to make appointments both for the physical University Writing Center and Virtual Writing Center.
• Our handouts are formatted to be more accessible for use with screen-readers. If there is a resource on our website that is not screen-reader friendly, we can revise it by request.

The Virtual Writing Center

We can offer alternatives to conducting Virtual Writing Center sessions through louisville.mywconline.com if there is a program or medium you are more comfortable with. Please call or email us to indicate this need when you make your Virtual Writing Center appointment.

Other resources and more information about writing centers and accessibility

• University of Louisville’s Disability Resource Center
• The International Writing Center Association’s Position Statement on Disability
• DO-IT, “Equal Access: Universal Design of Tutoring and Learning Centers”
• The Americans with Disabilities Act
• Brizee, Allen; Sousa, Morgan; and Driscoll, Dana PhD, "Writing Centers and Students with Disabilities: The User-Centered Approach, Participatory Design, and Empirical Research as Collaborative Methodologies" (2012). Purdue Writing Lab/Purdue OWL Graduate Student Publications. http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/writinglabgradpubs/3/