{"id":8959,"date":"2025-02-06T09:44:35","date_gmt":"2025-02-06T17:44:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spokane.wsu.edu\/studentaffairs\/?page_id=8959"},"modified":"2026-04-17T09:04:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T16:04:24","slug":"student-disability-confidentiality-guidelines","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/spokane.wsu.edu\/studentaffairs\/access-and-wellness\/access-services\/student-disability-confidentiality-guidelines\/","title":{"rendered":"Confidentiality Guidelines for Student Disability Information"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wsu-decorator  wsu-decorator--style-triangle-gray-right\" style=\"bottom:0;left:65%\"><\/div>\n\n<div class=\"wsu-container  wsu-position--relative\" >\r\n    \n\n<p>All disability-related information, including accommodation letters, correspondence, and consultations are considered confidential and must be managed in line with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) regulations. This includes electronic, paper, verbal, and any other types of communication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In addition to fulfilling legal obligations, maintaining a high standard of confidentiality also serves to maintain an environment in which students with disabilities feel respected, safe, supported, and protected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Breaches of confidentiality are taken very seriously by Washington State University. Unauthorized disclosures of student information must be documented and can result in the University being in non-compliance with federal regulations. &nbsp;The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) may audit FERPA compliance and require corrective actions.&nbsp; Additionally, such disclosures may violate state privacy laws and may subject the university and the individual to liability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We recognize that disclosures of information are generally inadvertent. For this reason, a high level of vigilance to avoid unintentional but inappropriate disclosure of disability information must be maintained. Please contact Student Affairs if there are any questions, issues, or concerns regarding maintaining the confidentiality of information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Access Services offers the following guidelines for faculty, staff, and administrators to ensure that confidential student information is kept secure:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>All information\u00a0that a student shares with a faculty member\u00a0is to be used specifically for arranging reasonable accommodations\u00a0for the course of study.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Do not leave student disability information visible\u00a0on your computer or in any printed format that others can see.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Faculty Notification Letters should be filed in a safe place.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Refrain from discussing a student\u2019s disability status and necessary accommodations\u00a0within hearing range of fellow students or others who do not have an \u201ceducational need to know.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Do not assume that students registered with Access Services are aware of other students\u2019 disability status.\u00a0If, for some reason, you feel it might be beneficial for students with disabilities to know each other, Access Services is happy to discuss this further with you. However, the default action is to keep this information confidential.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>When sending emails to a group of students, even if they are all registered with Access Services,\u00a0blind copy (bcc) students\u00a0so they are not privy to other students\u2019 information, or better yet, send separate emails to each student.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>At no time should the class be informed\u00a0that a student has a disability, except at the student\u2019s request.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Discuss Faculty Notification Letters and the logistics of implementing accommodations with students\u00a0in private.<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>Make yourself available by email, during office hours, or by appointment to discuss.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Casual conversations with colleagues about a student\u2019s disability status are inappropriate.\u00a0Confidential disability information, to which you have access, should be released to other faculty or staff based only on their\u00a0need to know\u00a0(e.g., they are a co-instructor in the course, they are proctoring an exam, they are arranging for exam space, they are assisting you to identify a note-taker in the course). In such cases, disclose only the necessary information. For example:\n<ul>\n<li>A\u00a0course coordinator\u00a0proctoring your exam would only need to know the student\u2019s approved exam accommodation (e.g., 1.5 extended time and private room).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A\u00a0TA\u00a0who is providing Access Services with a list of the required books for the course only needs to know that the book list is needed, not which student the request is related to.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A\u00a0clinical supervisor\u00a0only needs to know the approved on-site accommodations, not why the student requires them.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>It is acceptable to communicate an anticipated number of students with testing needs to faculty in other blocks to aid in test administration pre-planning.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Requesting specific information about a student\u2019s disability is inappropriate.\u00a0Instead, faculty should focus any inquiry on how a student\u2019s learning is impacted by their disability.\n<ul>\n<li>Requesting a letter from the student\u2019s physician is inappropriate.\u00a0The Letter of Accommodation is all that is needed to justify the accommodation and supersedes any letter from the student\u2019s provider.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>If a student voluntarily discloses the nature of a disability to you, even if it is obvious, do not disclose it to others.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>If a student tries to provide you with primary disability documentation, refuse to read or accept it\u00a0and refer the student to Access Services. WSU has designated Access Services as the repository of all disability documentation for students with disabilities.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Contact Access Services if you have questions or concerns about the accommodation(s).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":41121,"featured_media":0,"parent":527,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_wsuwp_accessibility_report":null},"categories":[],"tags":[],"wsuwp_university_location":[],"wsuwp_university_org":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spokane.wsu.edu\/studentaffairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8959"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spokane.wsu.edu\/studentaffairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spokane.wsu.edu\/studentaffairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spokane.wsu.edu\/studentaffairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41121"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spokane.wsu.edu\/studentaffairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8959"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/spokane.wsu.edu\/studentaffairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9536,"href":"https:\/\/spokane.wsu.edu\/studentaffairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8959\/revisions\/9536"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spokane.wsu.edu\/studentaffairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spokane.wsu.edu\/studentaffairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spokane.wsu.edu\/studentaffairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spokane.wsu.edu\/studentaffairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8959"},{"taxonomy":"wsuwp_university_location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spokane.wsu.edu\/studentaffairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wsuwp_university_location?post=8959"},{"taxonomy":"wsuwp_university_org","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spokane.wsu.edu\/studentaffairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wsuwp_university_org?post=8959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}