Available Accommodations at the Graduate Writing Lab
The Graduate Writing Lab makes every effort to provide writing support for all Yale graduate students. We offer accommodations to welcome students with disabilities and special needs in the Writing Lab, and we are eager to continue our efforts to be as inclusive as possible. We want to ensure that the Writing Lab is accessible—not merely legally accessible, but thoughtfully, accommodatingly, and graciously accessible—to students with physical disabilities, neuro-diverse learners, and students with special needs, irrespective of their intent to disclose them or not. Registration forms for GWL consultations and events have a space to request accommodations. We encourage you to talk to your consultant about how you learn best, or start a conversation about the best way to support your progress as a writer.
The types of accommodations we can offer include:
Location & Meeting Spaces
- Consultations may be moved to more accessible spaces
- Consultations may be conducted online using Skype or Zoom
- Furniture arrangements and lighting can be adjusted, as the location permits
Communication
- Consultants can read comments aloud
- Consultants can refrain from asking student writers to read their work aloud
- Consultants can adjust the conversation for lip reading (e.g. by facing the student when speaking)
- Communications can be conducted entirely in writing
- The writing can be referenced using non-visual cues such as elements in the paper rather than visual cues such as location on a page
Information
- Consultations can be recorded
- Materials for notetaking can be provided
- Whiteboards can be used in some consultation rooms
- Comments or ideas can be repeated
- Consultants can assist with notetaking
- Consultants can be asked in advance to provide a hard copy of the writing with their comments for use in in-person consultations
Other Accommodations
- Consultants can focus on recurring problems that the writer faces due to their disability (e.g. spelling errors, disorganized paragraphs, etc.)
- Consultants can aim to provide the style of commenting or discussion that best accommodates a disabled writer’s needs
- Consultants can accommodate specific writing software or technology
