The following issues have been raised by the Accessible Education Services Student Advisory Panel (AES Student Advisory Panel or ASAP), college employees, or students as accessibility concerns at Fleming. Please check here for updates as these issues are resolved or new issues are brought forward.
| Date | Accessibility Issue or Barrier | Progress to Date or Resolution | Status |
| January 2022 | AES (Accessible Education Services) received feedback from the accessibility student advisory panel (ASAP) and faculty members via a survey conducted in early 2020. These groups indicated that the letter of accommodation (LOA) that outlines a student’s accommodation plan for Faculty was wordy, confusing, and too generic. |
AES incorporated the ASAP panel recommendations and the feedback from Faculty that we received into the new template. Here is a link to a sample letter that is now the new LOA template.
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RESOLVED |
| January 2022 | The AES student advisory panel indicated that the AES website should be more user-friendly and less text-based to enhance user experience and ease of navigation to find relevant information. | AES, Counselling, and Health Services has partnered with a website development team to completely re-design and create user-friendly websites to improve student service delivery and navigation. | RESOLVED |
| April 2022 | The AES student advisory panel indicated that it would be helpful for AES to develop modules for students to self-orient themselves to AES supports and services prior to starting classes to improve the transition to college and accessing accommodations and support services. | AES had already begun the development of modules to support student transitions to Fleming, and they were launched in early July 2022. You can access the modules by going to the Access Success Transition Program 2022 site. | RESOLVED |
| September 2022 | The AES student advisory panel recommended that an Accessibility Progress Report be created to track and publish the recommendations and resolutions to the accessibility concerns raised. The panel also recommended that AES create a feedback form so concerns can be tracked and managed. | Both an Accessibility Progress Report and a feedback form were created by AES and will be updated as new concerns are submitted and actioned. | RESOLVED |
| February 2023 | We consulted with the AES student advisory panel about how we could better advertise or market our department, because we were finding that students were not connecting “accessibility” necessarily with a non-physical, temporary, or mental health disability. Specifically, we asked what messaging would best get students’ attention and explain why a student might want to access or utilize our services. |
The ASAP panel suggested messaging such as do you struggle with keeping track of assignments and tests? do you completely blank out during tests? etc. Inclusive and informative messaging was crafted and is used by faculty posted to their D2L course and is displayed on the on-campus screens throughout the campus with a QR code. |
RESOLVED |
| February 2023 | The AES student advisory panel recommended that all campus services and front-line staff have a supply of consistent and accurate information about all student services with the goal of developing better communications for students across Fleming departments and student services. | AES staff have been working to build better connections to all service areas at the college. Areas like the RO, international student services, indigenous student services, academic operations, IT, facilities, and security to name a few. A student experience goal is to create a pathway or a “navigational map” for all student experience areas. The work to meet this goal is currently ongoing. The college has also created several student success coach roles, that are designed to help students navigate the college systems and support areas, as well as focus on supporting students’ success for at risk students or those who are on academic probation. | ONGOING |
| March 2023 | The ASAP panel recommended that Fleming create an “ally” program for students with disabilities, i.e., Staff, a safe space for students to connect based on a disability. |
AES runs a “Social Connect” group at the Frost campus (in-person) each Fall and Winter semester. AES also runs the “Thrive at Fleming” group at the Sutherland campus (in-person) and all campuses (virtually) every Fall and Winter semester. Click the Thrive at Fleming link to read more about the group and how to register! AES just recently developed a “Thrive at work” program for students in their final semester to prepare for the transition from college to work. Both Thrive programs are eligible for Co-Curricular Record credit! |
RESOLVED |
| March 2024 – Present | AES and Personal Wellness Counsellors determined that because Counsellors and Professors are equally committed to promoting student success and they can be more effective when they work collaboratively. This collaboration is best realized when counsellors and professors have solid, trusting working relationships. To that end, the counsellors have scheduled a number of drop-ins for faculty. The drop-ins have no specific agenda. They can be helpful for new faculty who may be looking for guidance around a student’s accommodations. Or they may be looking for advice on how to support a student who appears to be dealing with a mental health challenge. | AES and personal Wellness have created and communicated an ongoing semester-based schedule for faculty drop-in sessions. To date the sessions have been relatively well attended and have contributed to a better understanding for faculty of counselling and accessible education services, while at the same time fostering relationship building and connections with faculty. | RESOLVED & ONGOING |
| March 2024 | AES consulted the ASAP panel members to inquire how we can better communicate appointment reminders to students because we were emailing students, but were finding higher rates of no-shows, which leads to delays in accessing accommodations timely. Consensus from the panel was that if AES could text a student the same day or just before an AES appointment, that would be most beneficial to remind students. Recommendation was a text the day before and another text a few hours before the appointment time the day of. |
AES has begun exploring how to configure this with the current scheduling software through IT. An anticipated completion date for this functionality is by September 2024. |
IN PROGRESS |
Please complete the form below if you would like to report a new accessibility concern that has not already been captured in the accessibility progress report. It will be submitted to disabilities@flemingcollege.ca. A staff member will review the concern and address it immediately or add it to the accessibility progress report for ongoing tracking and management of the issue.