Disability

According to the Equality Act, a person has a disability if they have a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on that person’s ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.

How this applies to Higher Education

Testimonies indicate that the average disabled student’s experience at UCL is likely to include being expected to study in spaces that are not accessible to them, encountering ignorant or offensive statements […] from an academic or administrative staff member and not being informed of or being misled about their rights. (Disability Discrimination Faced by UCL Students & Recommended Measures – A UCL Disabled Students’ Network Report, 2020, p48)

…undergraduate disabled students are doing less well than non-disabled students in terms of continuing their course (0.9 percentage points), degree attainment (2.8 percentage points), and progression onto highly skilled employment or postgraduate study (1.8 percentage points). Office for Students ‘Beyond the Bare Minimum’

Common issues

A recent report into one faculty at UCL (but representing experience more widely) was called ‘Enough is not enough’ to highlight that even when some support is provided, it is often complicated to find out about and to actually obtain in practice. ‘What is technically an ‘accessible room’ may be an unrealistic distance from a toilet, for instance; students may have to explain (and argue for) an existing SORA with every module leader. There are many examples which prove the same point, that hard-won and legally required adjustments are almost constantly undermined.

Stereotypes about disabled students

When thinking about inclusion, the following assumptions are some of those likely to arise:

  • That non-visible disabilities are not ‘real’ disabilities.
  • The systems that are designed to provide adjustments are themselves onerous or do not work fully as intended.
  • That a disabled student would not be able to engage fully with a programme of study.
  • That a disabled student could cause disruption in a classroom.

Issues facing disabled students

  • Not having a sense of belonging to the programme/faculty/institution, either due to exclusions, SORAs not being met, a sense of ‘othering’ due to people’s behaviour but also course content that assumes that people are able-bodied.
  • Decreased attendance to f2f teaching depending on health/hospital visits
  • Inaccessible course materials.

Suggested responses

  • Ensure your provision is accessible: see also the Connected Learning Baseline page (with links for further resources).
  • Assume that even with SORAs and adjustments, that disabled students still face challenges, and be flexible.
  • Also assume that some of your students have ‘hidden disabilities’ which could make their participation and attendance more difficult than you appreciate.
  • Read some of the reports listed under Further Resources to become familiar with the day-to-day issues that arise for students.

Case study

From: https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/advice-and-guidance/education-case-studies

Securing greater accessibility for disabled students – The Open University

Background

The Open University (OU) has had a long track record of making teaching and learning accessible to students with a wide range of impairments. The OU has more disabled students than any other higher education institution in the UK with more than 21,000 disabled students registered in 2012/13.

Broadly speaking, the OU with its open and distance-learning method has demonstrated its suitability for students with complex needs and multiple-impairments.

However, equality monitoring information gathered by the OU in 2011 showed that disabled students were:

  • Three times more likely to raise a complaint or appeal, in comparison to non-disabled students
  • Less satisfied with their overall study experience.

In order to remedy this, the OU committed to ’increase the satisfaction of disabled students from 82 percent in 2010/11 to 84 percent in 2014/15 as part of its equality objectives to support compliance with the Public Sector Equality Duty.

Action

Prior to taking any actions, the OU conducted qualitative research to develop a better understanding of the source and the nature of student dissatisfaction. It found out that a significant proportion of its services and reasonable adjustments were made retrospectively once courses started. This ‘retro-fitting’ created uncertainty for students, sometimes led to delays in obtaining services and often resulted in added costs to the institution.

Thus, the OU shifted consideration of disabled students needs to before and during course development (curriculum stage).

The securing greater accessibility project was established by the director of students (a member of the vice-chancellor’s executive) to embed responsibility for accessibility more firmly in faculties and provide knowledge development.

In the first two years of the project, the following infrastructure was set up:

  • Named associate deans were allocated overall responsibility for accessibility in each faculty
  • Accessibility specialists were appointed in each faculty to champion accessibility in course development. This included training them in matters related to disability as well as providing them with support when required.
  • A central accessibility referrals panel was created to bring experts together to make recommendations on complex cases involving access to the curriculum, accessibility of learning platforms and adjustments for individual students
  • A website was launched to provide a central source of advice and guidance to all staff members on issues such as access to audio and visual material, notation in maths, science and music and use of third-party learning materials

Outcomes

The project has enabled the OU to meet its target, two years ahead of the anticipated schedule. The student satisfaction survey carried out in 2013 showed that disabled students’ overall satisfaction rates increased from 82 percent to more than 84 percent.

As a result of this achievement, a new performance indicator was agreed in 2014 which focuses on reducing any differences in satisfaction between disabled and non-disabled students from a three percent gap in 2013 to two percent by 2016.

Further work is planned to review all services and support to disabled students and to ensure issues identified in complaints are being systematically addressed.

Further resources