Students with Disabilities
11.1 All Departments/Schools should implement the ‘Procedures for Schools for Compliance with the Disability Discrimination Act’ and ‘Procedures for Determining Special Examination Arrangements’, monitor their effectiveness and where appropriate modify them in response to feedback from students and staff.
11.2 Departments/Schools should continue to make progress with promoting Birkbeck to disabled applicants and in enhancing the accessibility of the admissions process from first enquiry to induction, and where necessary modify admissions processes in response to applicant feedback.
11.3 The ‘Procedures for Schools for Compliance with the Disability Discrimination Act’ supported by the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s ‘Good Practice Guide on Learning and Teaching’ establishes accessible teaching and recognised standards of good practice as College policy. Academic staff, who are already implementing many of these strategies for accessibility, should extend this out to all aspects of their teaching and their supervision of research students and there should be a high level of accessibility to teaching materials, teaching delivery, group, laboratory, field trip, placement and research provision.
11.4 Departments/Schools should continue to work with the Disability Office, where appropriate, so that the office may make an increased contribution to the process of programme design and review in order to ensure that disability access is incorporated at the developmental level.
11.5 The College will continue to disseminate information to students and staff on the ‘Procedures for Determining Special Examination Arrangements’ (see 11.1 above) with the objective that all students eligible for provision will receive it, and will review the effectiveness of the procedures in liaison with Departments/Schools and where necessary revise them.
11.6 Departments/Schools should be aware of the Confidentiality Consent Procedures and the requirement to refer all students declaring disabilities to the Disability Office for an assessment of their needs. The Confidentiality Consent Form and Guidance Notes are available here.
11.7 Departments/Schools should be aware of the ‘Individual Student Support Agreement’ (ISSA) procedure. The ISSA is a detailed statement of the "reasonable adjustments" staff in Departments/Schools and central services are required to make to ensure disabled students receive the support they need and are not substantially disadvantaged. Guidance notes and examples of ISSA's for students with a range of disabilities are available from the Disability Office. There are also Mental Health Procedures which provide specialist advice on support at this website.
11.8 Complaints will continue to be addressed through the College’s complaints procedure (see section 13 below). Schools should continue to work with the Disability Office in working towards solving student complaints before they reach this point.