Note-taking
A note-taking accommodation helps students with disabilities record real-time instruction. When unable to take notes, a note-taking accommodation provides an alternative method for students to obtain equivalent information. A note-taking accommodation may be used in lectures, labs, tutorials, seminars, and other educational activities.
Note-taking accommodations may include:
- A volunteer peer notetaker
- A student in the class provides their notes to student who is unable to take notes.
- A specialized note taker
- A professional notetaker records notes for a student who is unable to take notes.
- Copies of Instructor’s Notes, where possible
- The instructor provides class notes to the student or posts class notes online.
- Use of a laptop for note-taking
- Instructor permits use of a laptop in courses where laptop use is normally not permitted. Student may require use of a keyboard or tablet/stylus to take notes or may require assistive technology.
Who is this for?
Note-taking may be necessary to support equitable learning opportunities for learners:
- Who experience barriers to perceiving information presented in visual format only.
- Who experience barriers to capturing and reviewing lecture content in visual forms.
- Who experience barriers to perceiving information presented orally.
- Whose spelling, grammar, and punctuation and or clarity and organization of written expression is significantly below expected level.
- Whose stamina, energy, or ability to engage is significantly diminished by disability.
- Who experience significant pain due to persistent, episodic, or temporary medical conditions.
- Who have physical difficulty writing quickly and legibly or typing.
- Who have difficulty filtering out distracting visual and auditory stimuli impacting their ability to focus, process information and record information.
- Whose disability impacts their reading comprehension, accuracy, rate, or fluency or causes significant reading fatigue.
- Who experience barriers to interpreting and understanding audio information, even if their hearing is unaffected.
- Who experience barriers to processing information.
- Whose ability to follow information over short periods is significantly impacted by disability.
- Requiring the use of assistive technology such as specialized note-taking or mind mapping software.
This accommodation supports students to:
- Focus on lecture content by alleviating extraneous limitations on their ability to record notes.
- Equitably access class material.
- Augment their own note-taking efforts.
- Understand and organize information.
- Review and apply concepts and ideas.
- Revisit instructions and guidelines.
- Prepare for tests and assessments.
- Enhance the detail and accuracy of notes.
- Engage and actively participate in class.
- Be more autonomous.
- Use assistive technology in class.
What it is
A note-taking accommodation:
- Is an alternate method to record class material.
- May replace or supplement a student’s own note-taking efforts.
- Helps students engage with class material.
What it’s not
A student with a note-taking accommodation must still attend class and engage with classroom material and activities.
Instructors are not required to evaluate the quality of notes. For volunteer notetakers, instructors only need to find volunteers and facilitate note sharing with the student.
How can I support this in my classroom?
You may be asked to help find and support a volunteer notetaker from students in your class. A volunteer notetaker is required to record and share legible handwritten or typed notes for lectures, labs, tutorials, seminars, and other educational activities. Make an announcement to the class asking for anyone willing to share their notes with another student. You may consider asking for a backup notetaker to account for illness and/or absence.
Ensure you do not disclose personal information about the student.
Some institutions may offer verified volunteer hours for notetakers. Advertising this opportunity may help recruit volunteers.
Some students may wish to connect directly with the volunteer notetaker, while others will wish to remain anonymous. In event of the latter, collect the notes from the volunteer and forward them to the student anonymously.
If a specialized notetaker is present in your class assisting a student, you are not required to make any special arrangements.
Consider providing a copy of your lecture notes to all students.
Additional Notes
If a volunteer notetaker cannot be found:
- Providing a copy of your speaker notes
- Allow the student to take a picture of presentation materials
- Allow student to record audio for personal review only.
You may need to refer the student back to accessibility services to discuss other solutions. Other accommodations could require instructors to share their notes with the student and/or allowing audio recordings of lectures.
