For Heather Popejoy, Director of Student Accessibility Services at Washburn University, Accommodate isn't just software. It's truly the backbone of how her office runs. Four years in, she can barely imagine operating without it. Here's how a team that was once buried in paper files and disconnected systems built something that actually works! (And you can too.)
When Heather arrived at Washburn, the office was running on a patchwork of tools from paper files to spreadsheets to Navigate. Documents lived in separate cases, data was scattered, and looking anything up was slow and confusing.
"It doesn't keep everything in one beautiful place," Heather says of the old approach. "You constantly have to look up all the different cases, which makes it very confusing and time consuming."
There was no clean way to store documentation, no easy path to reporting, and no single source of truth for what was happening with any given student. If this sounds familiar, keep reading because this does not have to be your day to day.
"I could not report, I could not get funding without the intricate things it does. We could not do this without Accommodate."
— Heather Popejoy, Director of Student Accessibility Services, Washburn University
Heather was there for every step of implementation with Accommodate, working closely with the Symplicity team in regular sessions that gave her real hands-on time with the platform before it went live.
"The implementation team made everything super seamless and easy," she says. "Any adjustments that we made or random thoughts we had, we could talk through to make sure they could get implemented — or if they couldn't, here's why."
The team also provided customizable video and PDF instructions tailored to Washburn's campus, making it easier to roll out training to faculty across departments. Heather ran four or five large workshops open to all faculty, plus smaller sessions for departments that wanted individualized training.
Now, Accommodate is the first thing Heather opens every morning. She checks for incoming accommodation requests, assigns them to staff, then moves into meetings — where her team documents everything, in detail, directly in the student's file.
That documentation discipline pays off. If Heather is ever out, anyone on her team can open a student's record and see exactly what's been discussed, what's been decided, and what's next. No digging through Outlook. No missing context.
"You're not having to dig through emails when you can't search anymore and find anything," she says.
And when the vice president is mid-meeting with the board of regents and needs real-time numbers? Heather can pull a customized report in under two minutes.
"I couldn't do that before. I would have to sit there and count through every single person, which takes so much time."
That reporting capability has had an impact beyond daily operations. The Washburn Foundation regularly reaches out to alumni about scholarship opportunities, and Accommodate's data has helped Heather make the case for targeted funding.
By being able to pinpoint specific populations within her student data, Heather has been able to connect alumni donors with meaningful scholarship opportunities — funding her office wouldn't have secured otherwise.
"Because of Accommodate and being able to pinpoint specific populations of disabilities that maybe alumni want to focus on, that has been really helpful to get us scholarships for students that we wouldn't have gotten otherwise."
One of the quieter wins has been the shift in how faculty interact with the office. Before, accommodation letters got buried in inboxes. Faculty would call the office to track something down, or worse, miss a student's accommodation entirely.
Now, letters are accessible anytime. Faculty can upload exams directly for proctoring and receive them back without having to come across campus. And when they have questions, the letter itself gives them what they need.
"I really don't get too many complaints anymore, which is very nice," Heather says. "Our calls from faculty asking about accommodations are less because they have the letter — and it gives them more confidence because it tells them specifically what to do and they can reference it at any time."
When Heather thinks about what Accommodate has made possible for students, one story stands out.
There was a student who, for a long time, would simply show up for exams without scheduling them in advance. Getting him to engage with the system independently seemed out of reach. Over time, with the right support and a platform that made the process clear and manageable, that changed.
"We got him to the point where he would schedule all his exams for the entire semester without being prompted — he did all of that by himself."
For Heather, that's the success story behind the success story: a student who built genuine self-advocacy skills, saved himself stress, and stopped putting strain on staff who were managing his no-shows. Accommodate didn't do that alone, but it made the path visible.
One last detail that says a lot: Heather doesn't need her laptop. When she's meeting with a faculty member across campus, she pulls Accommodate up on her phone — and can show them exactly when a letter was sent, what it says, and what they're responsible for, right there in the hallway.
"If we didn't have it, I truly don't think we would be able to function," she says. "It just does so much to save my day to day."
Symplicity Accommodate is a purpose-built accessibility management platform that helps higher education institutions streamline accommodation workflows, improve faculty communication, and create a more empowering experience for students with disabilities. From intake to exam scheduling, Accommodate centralizes every part of the process — reducing administrative burden while keeping students at the center. Learn more today! This could be you, too.