Back in September 2025, we brought Symplicity Access clients together in Melbourne for the Accessibility Innovation Forum.

Over two days of open discussion about the realities of delivering accessibility services today, users shared what’s working, where pressure is building, and what needs to evolve.

This post is a follow-up to those conversations, a recap of what we heard and how that input is shaping now and into the future.

What We Heard

The discussions in Melbourne were broader than any single feature or release. They reflected the operational realities institutions are navigating across the sector: increasing demand, compliance pressure, and complexity in delivering support at scale.

While all of these areas are already supported within Access, the conversations helped us better understand where friction still exists, where workflows can be strengthened, and where further refinement makes a difference in practice.

Several themes came up consistently.

• Peak periods are where the strain shows: Semester transitions and add/drop cycles continue to create operational bottlenecks. Teams described the manual effort involved in renewals and approvals, especially when volume spikes. The ask wasn’t “remove oversight.” It was: make automation smarter and more flexible.

• Visibility matters, internally and externally: Advisors need clarity on where requests sit. Managers need better oversight. Faculty need clearer information about what an adjustment actually means in practice. Transparency wasn’t framed as a reporting issue. It was framed as a workflow issue.

• Exams remain high risk: Accommodation errors during exam periods carry real consequences. Even small mismatches in timing or room bookings can create unnecessary stress for students and staff. Clients spoke about wanting safeguards built into the system, not additional checks outside it.

• Faculty need context: Academics don’t want more systems to navigate. They want clear, concise information about student adjustments, ideally in one place.

• Growth can’t rely on adding staff: Demand for accessibility support is increasing. Resourcing is not increasing at the same rate. That gap needs to be addressed structurally, not temporarily.

We left the Forum with detailed feedback and a clearer sense of priority.

What We’ve Released Since the Forum

Several releases since the Melbourne event connect directly to those discussions.

ACC 7.3 – Case Tasks (Sep 2025)

Case Tasks introduced a more structured way to manage accessibility requests by breaking them into assignable, trackable actions.

For teams juggling complex cases, this helps reduce internal follow-up and makes ownership clearer.

ACC 8.0 – Improving Transparency and Efficiency (Dec 2025)

8.0 focused on workflow refinement and usability improvements.

Faculty Letter Signature Status on Student Interface

Batch Update Case Status Field

These updates weren’t designed to change how Access works, they were designed to make it easier to see what’s happening and reduce friction in day-to-day processing.

ACC 8.0.2 – Enhancing Usability (Jan 2026)

8.0.2 focused on improving usability for staff by auto saving case notes and making a semester option available to ANZ clients.

Auto Save Case Notes

Semester Option on Adjustment Letters

ACC 8.1 – Automation and exam safeguards (Feb 2026)

The upcoming February release builds further on automation and exam safeguards.

Separate Auto-Renew and Auto Approve processes

Institutions can now run Auto Renewal and Auto Approval independently, with configurable date ranges.

For teams managing high volumes during add/drop, this reduces repetitive manual review while maintaining control over which adjustments require approval.

System notifications have also been refined so that completion messages clearly reflect which process has run.

Test Room Booking and Exam Length Conflict Detection

Access now automatically flags discrepancies between a student’s adjusted exam duration and the booked test room length.

If the calculated time doesn’t match the booking, the system highlights it and suggests a correction. There is also a batch resolution option for eligible conflicts.

This directly addresses the risk conversations that surfaced at the Forum.

Faculty Adjustment Details

Faculty can now view adjustment descriptions directly from the enrolled student list.

Instead of seeing only the adjustment title, academics have clearer context about what it involves. It’s a small change, but one that supports better implementation.

What’s Coming Next

The conversations we had in Melbourne continue to inform product direction.

Further updates will be communicated through official release notes and product announcements as they are confirmed. We will continue to focus on automation and student retention related initiatives.

Continuing the Conversation

The Accessibility Innovation Forum was built around open discussion, and that feedback has been taken seriously, with the releases since then reflecting specific operational concerns, particularly around automation, exam safeguards, and faculty clarity.

As part of continuing that dialogue, we’ll also be reconnecting with Forum attendees to revisit the action items many of you committed to with peers during the sessions. If you were part of those conversations, we encourage you to reflect on the steps you agreed to explore and let us know how those have progressed.

If there are other areas where Access can be enhanced, we encourage you to raise them with your Client Manager. Those conversations are what shape future improvements.