Universal Design and Disabled Students: From Inclusion to
Excellence
Alan HurstTrustee – Skill: National Bureau for
Students with Disabilities, UK
The Main Challenge
In the UK and elsewhere, specialist disability staff see most of the difficulties they and their disabled students face result from issues about access to the curriculum, learning and teaching, and academic assessment
A Common Aim and
A Shared Need for Change
From Fire Fighting to Fire Prevention in other words from reaction to proaction
“Hi, is that the Disability Office? I have one of your students with me.”
“We are all responsible for disabled students if we claim to work in a genuinely inclusive institution.”
Universal Design and the Curriculum
The most effective way to ensure that disabled students are included is to design courses and study programmes which are barrier-free and accessible to all (that is by anticipating what might be needed). The more effort at this stage means that there will be less need to make reasonable adjustments/changes for individual disabled students later.
Key Principles Underpinning My Approach to Universal Design 1
From an individual/medical/deficit model of impairment to a social/educational/political model
• Can you tell me what is wrong with you?
• What complaint causes your difficulty in holding, gripping, and turning things?
• Does your health problem/disability exclude you from going to university?
The Questions Again
Rewritten from a social/political/educational view the questions become:
• Can you tell me what is wrong with society?
• What defects in the design of everyday equipment like jars, bottles and tins cause you difficulty in holding, gripping or turning them?
• Are courses and the teaching and learning through which they are delivered creating barriers to participation for someone with your health problem/disability?
Key Principles Underpinning My Approach to Universal Design 2
• Principles of independent living especially having choices and the right to take decisions about one’s own life
• Focus on equity rather than equality – treating people differently according to needs and not treating all people in the same way and ignoring their individual needs
An Example of a Successful Project Encouraging Universal
Curriculum Design
The “Teachability” Programme in Scotland
Course Teaching Staff Asked to:
• identify ways in which the subject/course/programme for which you have responsibility or with which you are associated closely is accessible to students with a range of impairments ( i.e. impaired hearing/mobility/vision/intellectual functioning et al)
• identify barriers to prevent the participation of students with a range of impairments and if so what are they?
• suggest how might these barriers be overcome?
• outline what needs to be done in order to implement the strategies you have identified for overcoming the barriers?
• say how attention van be drawn in an honest way to the possibilities and challenges posed by our current subjects/courses/programmes of study?
The “Teachability” Project
Experience in Scotland suggests that sometimes teaching staff need more assistance at the start of the tasks. If this is the case then the key question they need to address is:
What do you consider to be the core requirements/ core skills which all students must have on completing the subject/course/programme of study successfully?
Curriculum Design
• Attendance Requirements• Fieldwork, Study Visits, Home and
Overseas placements• Laboratories, Workshops, Studios• Special Equipment and Technology
REMEMBER – IDENTIFY THE CORE, NON-NEGOTIABLE REQUIREMENTS OF THE COURSE/PROGRAMME
Learning and Teaching
• Barriers intrinsic to the nature of the subject
• Barriers resulting from chosen methods of teaching and learning
• Barriers created inadvertently
Assessment of Learning
• Scope for flexibility
• Early and clear information about requirements,
marking criteria, and distribution of marks
• Physical and environmental considerations
• Modifications and alternatives
• Allocation of responsibilities
Quality Monitoring and Enhancement
• Validation of new courses/review of existing courses
• Disabled students’ involvement and feedback
• Position of external bodies
Universal Design: Other Parts of Student Life
• Entering university e.g. access to information and publicity
• Participating in social life e.g. living accommodation
• Leaving university and getting a job e.g. advice and guidance on careers and/or further study
Moving to Universal Design:Other Stimuli for Action
Anti discrimination laws
National monitoring of quality in universities
Creating and improving training and continuing professional development for staff
The Disability Discrimination Act 1995
Defines disability – a physical or sensory impairment which has a substantial and long term adverse effect on a person’s ability to carry out day-to-day activities
Defines discrimination – treating someone less favourably that someone else for a reason related to her/his disability without justification
Justifications include: maintenance of academic standards reasons that are “material and substantial”
Responses required – make reasonable adjustments and undertake anticipatory duties
The Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) for Higher Education Code of
Practice 2010
• Code covers all aspects of university policy and provision in different sections. Section 3 is about disabled students
• Code is used for guidance by those responsible for periodic visits to consider the quality of what a university provides
• Codes are made up of general precepts followed by a number of illustrations of good practice
Sample Precepts from the QAA CoP
• Precept 10 – the design of new programmes and the review and/or revalidation of existing programmes include assessment of the extent to which the programme is inclusive of disabled students
• Precept 11 – both the design and implementation of learning and teaching strategies and related activities such as the learning environment, recognise the entitlement of disabled students to participate in all activities provided as part of their programme of study
The Finishing PointThe Mission
The successful introduction and implementation
of universal design involves the changing of cultures at many levels in society and in institutions - a very difficult task for those promoting change and those being changed.
Cultural change can be more enduring than changes required by law
“A law cannot guarantee what a culture will not give” (Mary Johnson 2003)
The Finishing PointThe Outcome
“If we do not change the direction we are headed now, we shall end up where we are going” (Chinese proverb quoted by Jodi Picoult as the frontispiece of the recent novel “Nineteen Minutes”)
“If we do not know where we are going, how will we know when we get there?”
Evidence of major progress?
When disability services are seen as value-added provision in universities rather than a source of additional institutional expense.
Some Useful Websites
• www.teachability.strath.ac.uk (guides on inclusive practices)
• www.heacademy.ac.uk ( review of research on inclusion 2010)
• www.qaa.ac.uk (code of practice 2010)• www.skill.org.uk ( publications including Alan
Hurst’s Staff Development Guide)
email address for comments/questions [email protected]
