Universities are still failing disabled students

Staff had “low expectations” of disabled students, “actively discouraged students’ aspirations,” and in some cases told autistic students that their expectations for support were “too high.”

Dyslexic students were enrolled on additional needs programmes “regardless of their academic ability.” Tutors who were told about support needs simply “failed to make changes to teaching and assessment.”

The Disability Unit – now housed within the Office for Equality and Opportunity – has published an evidence review on disabled people’s lived experience of education in the UK.

It covers primary, secondary, further and higher education, but it’s the university-level findings I’m focussed on here. It covers research published between 2010 and 2021.

The review looked at 113 resources and addressed four research questions about barriers, their impacts, reasonable adjustments, and what actually works.

None of its findings will shock anyone who works in disability support in HE – but the cumulative picture, assembled under government auspices from over a decade of lived experience research, is as useful as it is bleak.

Tell us something we don’t know

The review notes that students “felt misunderstood and worried about being blamed for their impairments.” Disabled students were “sometimes reluctant to identify as ‘disabled'” at university, and the reasons are entirely rational. Some autistic students hid their diagnosis to avoid being defined by it.

Others chose not to disclose to universities or placement providers. Students worried that disclosing would result in “stigma,” that their “fitness to practise” – particularly in medicine and nursing – would be questioned, and that they’d face “limited opportunities to study for a degree.”

They weren’t wrong to worry. The review contains accounts of staff “not believing and refusing to, or not having the skills, to provide adjustments and support.” Other staff reported reluctance to make adjustments to teaching and assessment, believing that such adjustments “would make degrees easier, particularly for those training in medicine and nursing.”

Students who don’t disclose don’t get support, and students who do disclose risk suspicion. The result? Disabled students reported working harder than non-disabled peers, which resulted in “burnout, self-doubt, and a feeling of inadequacy.”

Universities were described as “institutions that failed to adapt to meet the needs of students, resulting in students having to adapt, work harder and longer hours.”

The DSA disaster

Students with vision impairments reported that online systems of applying to university and for DSA “were not accessible, and paper versions were often not sent in formats suitable for people who were blind.”

University internal processes and DSA are interdependent – “with one application seemingly being contingent on the success of the other” – causing “stress, mental health problems and overall disaffection regarding trusting higher education institutions and government agencies.”

In some cases, “support may not be in place for the student at the start of their course.”

Students had a “patchy” understanding of what their rights were under the Equality Act 2010 – and to actually receive adjustments, “the onus appears to be placed on the individual themselves” in terms of being able to fight for and justify their needs.

University students were “expected to find their own information regarding reasonable adjustments” – a tall order if they’d previously had support identified and provided for them in compulsory education.

One study described how participation in mainstream education was “sometimes problematic due to teacher concerns that if reasonable adjustments were to be implemented, this would risk affecting the educational standards for the rest of the cohort.” That framing – adjustments as a threat to standards rather than a legal duty – is still alive in some corners of the sector.

Even when adjustments are made, they can create new problems. Students whose workstations were separated from the class “spent less time with peers.” High levels of one-to-one support resulted in “stigma from peers, a decline in student confidence and embarrassment.” Students receiving adjustments for assignments were “conflicted in terms of whether accessing this support challenges their legitimacy to be a university student.”

What actually works

The review is much thinner on solutions – the authors are candid about this – but the HE findings that do emerge are instructive.

If varied methods of assessment were offered as standard, like a choice between presentation, essay or exam, then disabled people may not need to ask for reasonable adjustments as they become standard for all.

Students involved in decisions about exam access arrangements “experienced less anxiety and performed better.” Coordinated support with “a central team to work with and co-ordinate services” meant “provision being provided more quickly.”

Students appreciated support from SUs “when this support provides a sense of normality and safety” – places where they could be themselves “without anyone questioning their needs or impairment.”

The gaps

The review’s limitations are almost as revealing as its findings. Most studies treated disabled people as “a single or homogenous group” with “little research that directly attempted to address intersectionality.” The majority were “conducted on disabled people, rather than with them.”

But the biggest gap is temporal. The evidence ends in 2021. The entire post-pandemic period – which transformed disabled students’ experience in ways both positive (recorded lectures, online options) and negative (the retreat from those accommodations as “emergency measures”) – is missing. The cost of living crisis, the latest DSA reforms, the sector’s current financial pressures and what they mean for disability support staffing – none of it’s here.

What the review does – perhaps unintentionally – is make a compelling case that the Equality Act’s reasonable adjustment duty, as it operates in HE, is something of a fiction for many disabled students.

The duty exists on paper. But if students don’t know their rights, are afraid to disclose, can’t get support in place before their course starts, and face staff who are untrained or actively resistant, then the right is rationed to those with the confidence and resources to demand it. Everyone else just works harder and does their best. But in this case, that best is literally and legally not good enough.