Students, prospective students and continuing education participants with disabilities or chronic illnesses may be legally entitled to academic accommodations in order to ensure they have equal opportunities in their studies. Academic accommodations allow for differentiated treatment to ensure that students with disabilities and chronic health conditions have the same access to education as everyone else. Academic accommodations may be granted in connection with the following conditions:

• Mobility, physical or sensory impairments
• Chronic illnesses (e.g. bowel diseases, tumour diseases)
• Mental health conditions (e.g. depression, bipolar disorder)
• Specific learning disabilities (e.g. dyslexia, dyscalculia)
• Neurodivergence (e.g. ADHD, autism spectrum, dyslexia)

Academic accommodations serve to compensate for disadvantages arising from a disability on an individual basis with the aim of ensuring that everyone completing a study programme enjoys equal opportunities. Academic accommodations must not result in different learning objectives or confer advantages, and there is no entitlement to specific measures (see Regulations on Academic Accommodations). The measures must also be proportionate to the respective diagnosis and be feasible for the degree programme to implement. 

Advice and application

If you are unsure whether you are entitled to academic accommodations or you have any other questions on this subject, please contact the academic accommodations advisory service via e-mail at barrierefrei@zhaw.ch.

To apply for academic accommodations, please complete the online application on this page through the academic accommodations advisory service. Here, you can find all further information on the relevant requirements and procedures as well as the evidence you are required to provide.

Please note that it takes time to review your online application, advise you and coordinate with your degree programme. We therefore ask that you complete the online application as early as possible and within the deadline to ensure that enough time remains to review your application, schedule advisory consultations and prepare the application for your degree programme. 

Deadlines

The binding deadlines at the School of Applied Linguistics for submitting the online application are as follows:

• Deadline for entrance examination or aptitude assessment: three weeks before the application deadline
• Deadline for accommodations during classes or for assessments during the semester
  • For the autumn semester: end of calendar week 30
  • For the spring semester: end of calendar week 52 (of the previous year)
• Deadline for examinations at the end of the semester (end-of-module examinations)
  • For the autumn semester: end of calendar week 43
  • For the spring semester: end of calendar week 13

Contacts at the School

Your contact persons for School-specific questions are:

• BA in Communication and Media Studies: Calissa Ciroli-Strahm and Filip Dingerkus
• BA in Multilingual Communication: Raquel Montero Muñoz
• BA in Language and Integration: Marina Petkova
• MA in Language and Communication:  Andrea Hunziker Heeb (diversity.linguistik@zhaw.ch)

Barrier-free physical accessibility

Information on the facilities in the SF, SI and SM buildings can be found on the page on barrier-free accessibility at the St.-Georgen-Platz campus (in German).

Additional useful links

Further information and documents can be found on this Diversity Unit website.