Privacy notice—Accessibility Service

Collecting information

When you submit this form, the personal and health information you provide is being collected by the UTS Accessibility Service in the Student Services Unit (SSU). In becoming a client of the Accessibility Service, further information will also be collected from you as required, or from external parties with your consent (such as supporting / medical documentation), for the purposes listed below.
The amount of information you choose to provide may impact on the ability of the Accessibility Service to register you and provide services and/or reasonable adjustments.

Our legal grounds for processing your information is to provide you the services and accommodations you have requested and that have been agreed to with you, with your consent.
We collect relevant personal information from you to be used for the following purposes:
1. to assess your eligibility to register for accommodations and services, to communicate with you and arrange meetings with your Accessibility Consultant.
2. to make recommendations of assessment arrangements for approval by your faculty, or other areas providing services, based on the Service Agreements / Access Plan. To implement agreed accommodations, we will be required to exchange information between relevant areas of UTS. This exchange will only occur in line with your Service Agreements and Access Plan.
3. for planning, quality improvement and service review activities, to support continuity of service, routine administrative activities, for debriefing/case discussion and handovers between Accessibility staff where required, or to manage and respond to any relevant grievances or complaints.
4. to support funding purposes (using student ID only); and statistical reporting (using de-identified information) to the Federal and State Government.

All staff working in SSU may need to access client records to support the above purposes.
Certain SSU Services (Accessibility and Financial Assistance and Counselling) use a shared appointment system so these services have shared access to details regarding appointment scheduling.
The Accessibility, Financial Assistance and Counselling Services adopt a collaborative approach to enhance service delivery for students. This enables more cohesion between services, smooth transition and referral between services, and minimises the duplication of processes and information collection.

Registering with Accessibility Services is not recorded on your Academic Transcript.
Your information may be shared with specific areas of the university to put in place and manage accommodations that are being arranged for you.
Your information may be disclosed if it is considered necessary to lessen or prevent a serious and imminent risk to life or health of yourself or another person, or a threat to public health or public safety. Where a risk may not be imminent, but there are valid concerns for the health and safety of staff or students, information may be disclosed to staff responsible for campus security and wellbeing.
Your information will not be disclosed further unless you have provided consent, or the disclosure is required or permitted by law (e.g. mandatory reporting of a serious crime, or Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) mandatory reporting obligations).

The Accessibility Service protects client personal and health information. Your information will be collected and stored within Access, which is a system used by UTS to manage Accessibility Services. Data held in Access is protected and stored in Australia by Symplicity, under contract with UTS.

Your information will be retained for the purposes in this notice and in line with minimum legal retention requirements before it is confidentially destroyed.

You can access your information directly via your Access student portal. Otherwise, you can request access to information held about you, request inaccurate or out of date information to be corrected or deleted, restrict or stop us from processing your information, raise any concerns, or make a complaint, by contacting the Accessibility Service.

The Accessibility Service uses Access (student portal) for service delivery. Access is used to send service and accessibility information to relevant students via email. The purpose of these communications is to keep students updated on particular services and opportunities.

If you have questions or concerns regarding your privacy and how this relates to the Accessibility Service, please email Accessibility@uts.edu.au or telephone SSU reception on 9514 1177 and request to speak to the Manager before you register and provide your personal information.