6 Essential Requirements
As defined by the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) on the Policy on accessible education for students with disabilities, essential requirements are known as “bona fide academic requirements” and are defined as “the skills or attributes that one has to meet to be eligible for admission, pass a class or course, graduate from a program, etc.”.
According to this OHRC policy, “once receiving appropriate accommodation, a student must be able to meet bona fide academic requirements, such as meeting academic standards for admission, demonstrating specific skills, mastering the curriculum, and passing the class, course or program.” Furthermore, “the onus is on an education provider to show that an academic requirement is bona fide. To do this, the education provider would have to show that the needs of the student could not be accommodated without causing undue hardship.” (OHRC, 2018).
At Queen’s University, the Senate defines “essential academic requirements” under the Academic Accommodations for Students with Disabilities Policy as “the knowledge and/or skill which must be acquired and/or demonstrated for a student to successfully meet the learning outcomes or degree level requirements of a particular course or program.”
Subsequently, under the Academic Regulation 7.2.1 Provision of a Class Syllabus, the required elements of a course syllabus are stated, including “essential elements”, and that “any essential element(s) of the class that must be passed in order to pass the class must be included in the class syllabus.” Please note that going forward, this resource will only refer to the above as “essential requirement(s)”.
If a student’s accommodation requires it, the essential requirement must be allowed to be demonstrated by the student in an alternative modality (e.g., a final project instead of a final timed exam) unless “mastery of that format (e.g., oral communication) is also a vital requirement of the program”, according to the OHRC. In other words, “staff and faculty responsible for designing or developing new or revised facilities, services, policies, processes, courses, or curricula must ensure that these are designed inclusively, with flexibility to allow students with disabilities access to the course with minimal impact to curriculum or student” (Vice-Provost’s Summary Statement on Academic Accommodations 2023).
For further examples on how you can support students with accommodations to meet essential requirements, see the University of Waterloo’s Understanding Essential Requirements webpage under the “A Closer Look at Essential Requirements” section.
It is also important to discern how Course Learning Outcomes (CLOs) differ from essential requirements. In the Faculty of Arts and Science (FAS) at Queen’s University, CLOs “are direct statements that describe the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that students are expected to demonstrate in successfully completing a course or program. Learning outcomes describe, from the student’s perspective, what learning looks like.” (FAS, 2024). For more information, a table comparing the differences between essential requirements and CLOs is also available on the University of Waterloo’s website.
