Activity 1.1 - Challenges for Disabled Students (Notes)

Resource 1 - Seale


Resource 2 - Skills for Access: Challenges to Learning


"There is a tendency to assume that 'disability' can be equated with a complete loss of one specific sensory, cognitive or physical ability. In fact, most people who encounter access barriers when trying to access on-line resources do so as a result of a combination of impairments of varying severity."

• Visual difficulties
• Auditory difficulties
• Motor and/or manual dexterity difficulties
• Sensitivity to flashing or moving content
• Attention and concentration difficulties
• Memory and recall difficulties
• Language and comprehension difficulties

Resource 3 - Dyslexia and difficulties with study skills in higher education

Resource 4 - ‘Managing’ disability: early experiences of university students with disabilities

"From the 1970s onwards, however, the social model has been the guiding framework of disability theorists, increasingly representing disability as a form of social oppression, the appropriate response to which is one of civil rights rather than medical or social care."

"More recently, a more pluralistic approach has been called for. Williams (2001) argued that neither personal nor collective experiences of disability can be understood without recognition of both 'relational' definitions [...] and the 'property' definitions found in welfare and medical categorizations. "

"As late as the early 1990s the majority of British colleges and universities offered little systematic support to disabled students"

Identity matters - "Coming to university constitutes for many a big step in the process of forming an independent personal and social identity. Disabled students may have more complex sets of social relations to negotiate as part of this process than others (Borland & James, 1999). "

Disclosure - "Disclosure acts as a symbol of and repository for a complex nexus of issues and social relations and students had different approaches and attitudes to it. "

Extravisibility - "Students also had to actively manage their identity in terms of their 'extravisibility'. Students with disabilities can become 'invisible' if/when their needs are not met—they are disabled by the environment from full participation and 'disappear from view'. On the other hand, if and when they have to go out of their way to make their needs known they become 'extravisible' in a negative way. "

Emotional work - "The reference above to 'not kicking up a fuss' highlights the emotional work (Hochschild, 1983) students are obliged to undertake in managing their identities as people with a disability"

Being proactive - "Our data frequently contradicted notions of 'victimhood'. They featured students being proactive in accessing learning and teaching. Nevertheless, judgements about the degree of emotional work necessary to access their rights on occasion affected how proactive they felt able to be. Already facing physical and psychological hurdles, they often didn't have the energy to 'do battle'."

Transition into higher education - "If students with disabilities already have 'added bits' to manage in the transition from school to university, it was particularly unfortunate that for a number of those interviewed this transition had been fraught with difficulties. Special provision was not the most important factor for them in deciding which university to apply for [...] but some did explore in advance what kind of provision was available."