Disability Services for Students

The last day to reserve final exams in the DSS Testing Center is April 25th, 2024 at 5 pm

Welcome

Hello and welcome to Texas Woman’s University! We are glad you are here. Texas Woman’s University values diverse identities and experiences, and honors disability as an important aspect of human diversity. Disability Services for Students (DSS) works in partnership with students, faculty, staff, and guests of the University to eliminate or minimize barriers and facilitate inclusion on campus. DSS collaborates with all members of the University community to improve access for people with disabilities in these ways:

1. determining and implementing reasonable academic and guest accommodations;
2. providing education on access and inclusion;
3. partnering with University offices to ensure meaningful physical and technological access

To contact us please call 940-898-3835 or email Disability Services for Students.

Mission Statement

Disability Services for Students (DSS) ensures that TWU students with disabilities have equitable access to TWU classes, programs and events. We enhance student learning by promoting self-advocacy and partnering with faculty and staff to create a more accessible environment. We seek to advance representation of TWU students with disabilities and establish disability culture as an essential aspect of diversity, vital to society and the TWU community.

What is Accessibility?

Accessibility means that all TWU students can perceive, understand, navigate, interact and contribute to their experience at TWU, both on campus and online. If something is inaccessible, it means that the user is not able to perceive, understand, navigate, interact and contribute to whatever it is that they are trying to access.

Access is a campus wide responsibility; Accommodation is for DSS.

Access, when considered from the beginning of content creation, purchasing, etc., is incredibly simple, and has nominal cost, if any.
Accommodation is where DSS will adapt or modify something to be usable by a student with a disability. Accommodation can be costly and typically requires coordination between the student and multiple staff members for the end result to be effective.

What informs Disability Services’ work?

• Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA): In accordance with ADA and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Section 504, no qualified person will be denied access to, participation in, or the benefits of, any program or activity operated by the University because of disability.
• Social Justice: Disability is an aspect of diversity, integral to our society and to the TWU community. All disabled students are valued members of the TWU community and should have equitable access to all curricular and co-curricular offerings of the university. DSS works to ensure that access is provided seamlessly, with minimal additional burden on the disabled student.
• Universal Design: DSS promotes universal design, the idea that experiences should be usable by all people to the greatest extent possible, ideally without the need for individual adjustments. Identifying and removing barriers to access in the design process can result in an enhanced experience for all participants and reduce the need for individual accommodations.
• Disability Studies: Disability Studies is a multi- and interdisciplinary academic field of inquiry that defines impairment as naturally occurring on the continuum of human difference. Experts in the field challenge the dated view of disability as an individual deficit or defect, emphasizing instead that individuals are disabled by their environments, not by their impairments.

Page last updated 10:40 AM, April 1, 2024