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Vice-President Academic and Provost

Allocations to support faculty accessibility strategies

August 27, 2025

In early July, the Vice-President Academic and Provost allocated $450,000 in one-time funding to Deans to support faculties with implementing their accessibility strategies beginning in 2025/26. The majority of funding is directed to hiring TAs.

Context

Historically, universities have relied on support models that emphasized accommodation over accessibility. While these approaches provided essential support in the past, they are no longer sufficient to meet the diverse and growing needs of our student population.

Looking ahead, we are committed to working collaboratively with academic and support units to develop proactive, inclusive approaches that align with both our Accessibility Plan and Equity Action Plan. We continue to invest in central accommodation supports in tandem with enabling, empowering and investing in structural changes to course design and assessment practices, consistent with our commitment to an inclusive educational experience. Meaningful, lasting change requires time, collaboration and the strategic use of resources.

Faculty strategies

In December 2024, Deans were asked to work with their leadership teams to draft accessibility strategies for implementation beginning fall term 2025. As part of these strategies, Deans were welcome to submit resourcing requests for cost-effective strategies to help Faculties achieve their accessible education goals.

Through various consultations, including with Deans' Council and instructors of large first-year courses, additional and directed TA resourcing was identified as an effective way to help shift our collective approach to assessments across campus.

TA funding

As part of VPAC’s commitment to supporting Faculties with their accessibility strategies, the Vice-President Academic and Provost allocated one-time funding to each Faculty for TAs for the 2025/26 Winter Session. The funding provided to each Faculty was based on an equitable formula that prioritizes high-enrolment courses as well as courses that currently rely heavily on accommodation services offered by CAL and OREM.

The intent is to provide workload relief for instructors while simultaneously providing them time and energy to revise their course materials and assessments for future years, working with LTI and engaging their workshops and curriculum specialists as needed. At the same time, we are providing much-needed funding to graduate students to support their education journey and ensuring a positive learning environment for undergraduate students. We encourage TAs to use some of their hours to access TA training in LTI as needed, which in turn further supports the course instructor.

The expectation is that, through this additional TA funding for invigilation and assessment support, reliance on CAL and OREM service use by instructors of these courses will decline. Annually, CAL and OREM monitor total service use for accommodated assessments by Faculty and by course. A list of the top 50 courses was provided to Deans, to support them in determining the most effective use of their TA accommodation funding as well as to provide an initial benchmark to assess effectiveness.

That said, we recognize that certain courses will always need more support, based on the disciplinary-specific needs. There is no one-size-fits-all, and Deans have flexibility to direct their TA hours within the spirit of the allocations as well as their own accessibility strategy.

Other supports

In addition, VPAC is committed to implementing several centrally-supported solutions identified in the strategies and consultations, through CAL, OREM and LTI. These include workshops, training, data collection and distribution.

Reflecting faculty accessibility strategies, we are also exploring how to best support and implement definitions and statements related to accommodations, including for course syllabi, through existing governance structures.

As previously announced, we will maintain the central exam supports in OREM as we continue to develop and implement new strategies. CAL will continue its mandate of supporting complex accommodations during the transition phase and into the foreseeable future.