Photo by Vasily Koloda on Unsplash
In the last three years, 332,300 students in higher education in the UK said that they identified as disabled.
Many universities have societies dedicated to disabled students, and there is an open conversation online these days about young people who experience disabilities.
However, is the university experience truly accessible?
Courtney, who is a 21-year-old psychology student at Manchester University, believes that some higher education establishments are failing their students.
“I haven’t had a good time with the disability support at all,” she said.
“Right at the start I checked out their disability support and I signed myself up to the disability support service, I had meetings and assessments with them, and they gave me a long list of things they were going to do for me.
“And they haven’t done any of them.”
Despite promising separate, smaller rooms to accommodate for Courtney’s disability in exams, she found that in many cases, she had been placed in the same “massive” room as “hundreds” of other students.
“I have PTSD so that’s very difficult for me,” Courtney said, “and it meant that I’ve had to walk out of a lot of exams and not do them whatsoever, which has obviously effected my performance quite significantly.
“I’m in my second year, second semester now, and every time they’ve promised it’ll be different on the next set of exams, it’s not at all.”
Due to the lack of support, Courtney has had a meeting with the university about the credits she hasn’t passed in her course.
Photo by Zachary Kyra-Derksen on Unsplash
Instead of being apologetic, Courtney said the university were coming up with “lots of excuses.”
It isn’t just exams that Courtney has found aren’t accessible to her; some experiences in the classroom haven’t been adapted.
“With my disability support plan, lecturers are supposed to find me before the class and ask what they can do to support me, but that hasn’t happened once.”
Courtney has heard other disabled people being told they shouldn’t come to university because things cannot be adapted for them, even if these students have the “drive” to get to HE.
“People with disabilities do so much fighting in their everyday lives anyway, and the fact that there are so many people who have that strength to even decide to go to uni, I think it’s insulting that they don’t make it easier for us.
“With everything that we have to go through, it’s so much work.
“And it’s minimal work for [universities] to make it easier for us, so it’s a bit of a slap in the face.”
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