Study Needs assessments
You will be asked to have a needs assessment once your Disabled Students' Allowance (DSA) has been approved. This gives you the opportunity to talk to a specialist assessor about the difficulties you may have with studying, so that they can tell Student Finance England about the specific support you will need (it is not an assessment of your disability, specific learning difficulty or academic ability.)
Student Finance England will send you the details of the organisation which will conduct your study needs assessment. We recommend the following:
- You have your study needs assessment in person; students who have in-person study needs assessments often find they get more out of the experience than those who are assessed remotely.
- You request a demonstration of any assistive technology software that your study needs assessor is intending to recommend. Only by seeing this assistive technology can you be confident that it will meet your needs.
- Your needs assessor will offer you the choice of seeing an assistive technology trainer or learning from videos. We recommend that you ensure that your assistive technology training is with a trainer. This is because you can ask an assistive technology trainer questions that enhance your understanding and this means you get more out of the experience than you would from just watching a video.