Portal for info on students' disability support needs: Simplicity Access

Student Disability Services (SDS) have launched a new information portal. It provides a view for academic staff of students in their courses and the type of disability support they may need during the semester.  This is available now, so please log in to have a look. 

Objective and importance

This initiative is a strategic move towards achieving the University’s Disability Action Plan goal to support students with disabilities to succeed.

Logging In:

Log into Symplicity Access https://auckland-access.symplicity.com/faculty/index.php Links to an external site. using your University login details or Single Sign-On (SSO).  This should land you on the Home page.

All course lecturers are intended to have access to this.  If you find that you do not have access, please contact Group Services to request access.

Finding what you need in the portal

  • In order to see the information about your students, you need to click on ‘My Courses’ in the list on the left.  Then in the horizontal bar that appears, click on 'Enrolled Students'.
  • You will get a list of students, each with a list of bullet points outlining their support needs.
  • Ignore all bullet points concerning assessment: Suranjika's team and Group Services deal with these.
  • Also ignore notices requesting you to approve changes to assessments, for the same reason.
  • To help you understand the other bullet points, download the Glossary.  This is available at the 'Resources' tab in the list on the left.  Last time I checked, you had to scroll down to the bottom of the list of resources.  The glossary gives additional useful information, but it may still not tell you enough to be able to act on it.

If you have questions, please see under the next heading.

Support and Next Steps:

Eilidh Thorburn, Senior Project Officer at Student Disability Services is available to talk about Symplicity Access with you or a group, please contact: Eilidh.thorburn@auckland.ac.nz

You could also Join the Teams site Links to an external site. for information about training, user guidance and how to videos.

Further information - the blurb provided by SDS:

The portal uses Symplicity Access, which is a comprehensive disability case management system for students to request and receive various disability support services. You can read further about it here: Faculty Access Portal.

 The portal itself functions as follows:

  • Empowers Course Directors/Coordinators to proactively view enrolled students and their specific learning and teaching adjustments tied to classes.
  • Enables timely and secure delivery of confidential disability-related information between Student Disability Services (SDS), students, and teaching staff. It will see a reduction in email communications by providing a central place for all parties to view the same information relating to a student’s learning and teaching adjustments.
  • Eliminates the need for students to negotiate with every lecturer and repeat themselves multiple times. However, ongoing conversations between Course Directors/Coordinators and students are encouraged to tailor adjustments to each course.

For more information refer to: Students with disabilities | TeachWell Digital (auckland.ac.nz)

How does this change how I interact with Student Disability Services (SDS)?

The main change with the system is how SDS and students communicate about learning and teaching adjustments. All reasonable learning and teaching adjustments are in the Faculty Portal for you to view rather than being sent emails from SDS. There are no changes to how special conditions are managed in Law for tests, however you will be altered when new students with special conditions are added to the Faculty Portal – no action is required.