Disability & Wellbeing Service Information for staff

Our Disability Advisers advise University staff on how best to support their students. Advisers are happy to provide guidance, training, and development in the areas of:

• disabled student support
• University policy
• disability awareness
• other areas

Who we support

Disability Advisers will support anyone experiencing physical, psychological, or mental impairments. These impairments may create barriers to life as a student. These might be, but are not limited to:

• Specific Learning Difficulties (SpLD's): students with dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, and attention deficit (hyperactivity) disorder (AD(H)D)
• visual impairments: students who are blind or have a serious visual impairment not corrected by glasses
• hearing impairments: students who are d/Deaf or have a loss of hearing
• physical impairments: students who have mobility difficulties
• mental health difficulties: this category includes a student who has depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia
• unseen disabilities: students with diabetes, epilepsy, asthma, chronic fatigue syndrome, cancer, or other illnesses
• Asperger's Syndrome: students with Asperger's or other Autistic Spectrum Disorder
• another impairment: for students who have an impairment not listed above but are classed as disabled under the Equality Act (2010). You're disabled under the Equality Act if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a 'substantial' and 'long-term' negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities

The sections below give University staff information about how we support disabled students. If you have a query that's not answered here, please contact us for more information:

• Disclosure & confidentiality
• Needs assessment process, including:
  • evidence
  • reasonable adjustments
  • disabled students information system on Pegasus (MS PowerPoint version)
  • Disabled Students' Allowance (DSA) & other funding
• Legislation
• Reasonable adjustments
• Exam arrangements guidance
• Role of the Departmental Disability Contact (DDC)
• Support available for students
• Guidance for the Provision of Live Captioning in Zoom
• Funding (Disability Resource Development Fund (DRDF))

Training and development

We also run a variety of development opportunities through the Organisational and Staff Development Unit (OSDU) including:

• ensure an inclusive approach in the classroom
• disability awareness
• working with students with Asperger’s Syndrome
• working with students with dyslexia/specific learning difficulties
• working with students who are deaf/hearing impaired
• working with students who are blind/visually impaired
• making documents accessible