Accessibility Services ยท Federation University
A short guide for TAFE trainers: what a Learning Access Plan is, how to read one, and what to do if something in it doesn't work in your class.
A Learning Access Plan (LAP) sets out the reasonable adjustments agreed for a student with a disability, medical condition or mental health condition, or a student who cares for someone with any of these. It's written with the student by Accessibility Services, and shared with trainers so everyone involved knows what's been agreed.
It isn't a diagnosis. The plan tells you what to do, not what the student's condition is. You don't need, and won't be told, the medical detail behind it.
The adjustments listed have already been agreed between the student and Accessibility Services, not proposed for review. The learning outcomes and the standard required to pass the unit don't change: the plan changes how the student gets there and is assessed, not what they have to achieve.
Every adjustment on the plan is broken into four parts:
Occasionally an adjustment is still being worked out: maybe a specialist assessment hasn't come back yet, or a detail is still being agreed with the student. These are marked Being Confirmed on the plan, with a note on what's being checked and who's checking it, plus what applies in the meantime. Everything else on the plan applies straight away.
Some adjustments are for Accessibility Services or another area to action; you don't need to do anything with those, but it's worth knowing they exist so you understand the full picture for that student.
Sometimes an adjustment, as written, genuinely doesn't work for your class: a format doesn't suit the assessment, the timing clashes with something, or similar. That's normal, and it happens. The plan is wrong far more often than the request is unreasonable.
What to do: contact the Accessibility contact named on the plan before changing or stopping an adjustment yourself. Don't just quietly not do it, and don't try to work out an alternative with the student on your own; they shouldn't have to sort it out by themselves, and a change needs to be agreed and recorded properly.
Before a plan is finalised, Accessibility Services often sends trainers a draft PDF asking for input, particularly on whether the adjustments that name you can be done as written. Before you tick, you're checking one thing: whether the adjustment would lower the standard expected of anyone completing this unit or course, not whether it's the easiest way to deliver it. Under each adjustment you'll find three tick options:
The starting position is that adjustments go ahead as agreed. The one thing that can override that is a genuine conflict with the course's inherent requirements, meaning the adjustment would let a student meet the outcome at a lower standard than the qualification demands, not just reach it a different way. If ticking "Not able to do this," that's the kind of reason to explain (for example, an adjustment that would let a student avoid demonstrating a skill the unit specifically has to assess). Workload, convenience, or "that's not how I usually run the class" aren't inherent requirement issues; raise those with Accessibility Services too, but as a conversation about how to make it work, not a reason to decline.
Accessibility Services looks at every tick and comment with the student before the plan is finalised. Open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat Reader or Microsoft Edge (not the Outlook preview, which won't let you type), fill it in, save it, and reply with the saved copy attached.
The plan is shared with you specifically so you can support the student: please don't forward it on without checking with Accessibility Services first, even to another staff member who might reasonably need to know.
If anything in a specific plan is unclear, the Accessibility contact named on that plan is the quickest way to get an answer. For anything general about this guide, contact Accessibility Services.