#disabled students

[majaurukalo]

Everytime I hear about a school shooting my mind goes to the disabled students, teachers, and personnel who can’t hide as smoothly as others, whose disability doesn’t allow them to be quiet and still, who can’t run…

I mean, obviously it’s a situation no one should be in but I hope there is something in place to help disabled people during a school shooting.

[purpleweredragon]

"One size doesn’t fit all: Equality of opportunity for Disabled students, published in October by the Office for Students shows that despite some progress, Disabled students continue to experience significant disadvantage within higher education.

The report highlights inconsistencies in how reasonable adjustments are identified and implemented with many students encountering delays, unclear processes and support that depends too heavily on individual staff rather than institutional commitment.

Key findings include:

Of those [disabled students] who applied for adjustments, 43% had their requests fully or partly rejected, and 78% of those rejections came with no explanation."

Over 40% of complaints to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIA) in 2024 were from Disabled students."

[starlightshadowsworld]

The Department for Education (DFE) is proposing cutting Disabled Students Allowance (DSA) and that access to specialist software should only be given for “exceptional circumstances.”

If this follows through it is going to severely impact disabled students ability to go to university. As it’s going to take away valuable resources away for them and may put them off attending entirely.

Support under the DSA can include:

-Lecture recording software with transcripts

-Ergonomic chair and desk

-Software that summarises articles

-Software that breaks down long chunks of information into manageable segments.

I myself didn’t apply for DSA but I did benefit a lot from the assisted technology provided by my university. The needs assessment I got would’ve been funded by it and it was vital for me. Cause I was struggling a lot and I knew I needed help and I’m fortunate that I got that.

I can’t imagine needing this kind of support only to be told no you’re not “disabled enough” or some bullshit.

It’s already hard enough for disabled folk to get jobs in this country already taking a degree away from them will only make it harder. It should not be up to the government to decide who should and shouldn’t deserve to get much needed assistance to complete their studies.

Especially when they have proved and time again that they do not care for the disabled community in this country. They complain about disabled folk not working and are getting rid of the support they have to get them into jobs.

Not to mention when the “free alternatives” are AI slop that have no place in university and are not to the same standard of support as what the university offers.

Why should disabled folk spend this much money to get into an institution that gives them cheap lacklustre support in return?

There is a petition going around so I will link it here and I truly hope this does not go forward.

[bunny-ology]

I started off in college as an education major wanting to be a middle school science teacher, but ended up quitting that because of how ableist the major was.

I switched to an agriculture degree because I grew up on a farm, and during 2020 I was constantly at home and convinced myself I could physically do the work, and I completed that degree despite the professors being ableist and morally questionable.

While I was an Ag major, I was working for the geology museum on campus, and decided to get my Masters degree in museum studies. During my studies, I realized how disabled people are constantly left out of deai discussions in the museum field, only ever seen as potential visitors and never potential workers, and so I finished my degree with independent research into how disabled staff are treated.

During my last semester in grad school, I started working as a substitute teacher and realized that my education major professors were wrong; I as a disabled person can totally be a teacher without a problem. My grad school advisor also told me that a lot of myself professionals go back and forth between the school system and museums. So I'm taking the leap to try to become a teacher

I just took my GACE (the Georgia certification test) and passed at a professional level! Once I am hired by a school, I will start taking the remainder of classes that I need to be considered a full fledged teacher

I've literally just made a circle, but the agriculture and museum studies degrees are still a huge help to me as a science educator. Other than space, agriculture perfectly set me up to understand everything required for students to learn and places me in a good spot to introduce an FFA chapter to the school, while my museum studies degree has allowed me to see education from a different perspective than my coworkers in order to more adequately come up with ideas in joint discussions. Additionally, I included disability and deai research in almost everything I did from work to school, and as a disabled person myself, I feel that my understanding of accessibility and empathy for other disabled people has prepared me more for interacting with disabled students in my classes.

Not a single bit of my journey was for naught, and I no longer feel ashamed or regretful towards my agriculture degree. I'm also excited to continue learning and eventually helping others to learn too

[myalgicencephalomyelitiscfstom]

 This is a few months old but I'm not sure anything about it has dated

Higher education was easily accessible to disabled people during Covid. Why are we being shut out now? | Rosie Anfilogoff

The Covid era showed that remote learning is effective. It’s absurd that universities are going back to processes that exclude us, says Rosi

Some extracts: ---- Accommodations that disabled students had been requesting for years, such as lecture recordings and software that would allow them to take exams from home, were slotted into place so that students could learn remotely. —- Organisations that represent disabled students have made it clear that continued online provision is crucial, with many students requesting the same. “I’d like the option for remote learning to still be given to students who ask for it,” said one student —- But for those who would benefit from online programmes, the rewards are clear. The flexibility of online learning is especially important for students, like me, whose symptoms wax and wane, making the ability to study and take exams when able to perform best essential. —- Students with mobility impairments or executive functioning issues find not having to navigate campus helpful, because they can save their energy for studying, not logistics. —- I don’t know if I’ll be able to go to university anytime soon. But until I can, the system is failing me, and everyone like me. And as disability rates rise, more people than ever are being left behind. Not many of the issues I face as a disabled person are easily solvable, but this one is. 

[xxshankxx]

jazz hands idk. some old pics of mine were getting attention on here for some reason so uhhh this is a bunch of recent pics in case anyone was wondering

i recently moved back to the US after living in japan after 4.5 years and i'm going back to uni this fall. I don't think i've posted many if any selfies on tumblr since my teens so here's my glow up? i hope?

but ya i'm most active on instagram @/postpnuk and i usually just message on discord. i really only use tumblr now to like fan art and read hot takes so if any old mutuals n friends wanna hmu just ask for my discord @ :3

[worms-in-my-brain]

Hey if there are any disabled and/or mentally ill people out there who are in their first year of college or university and who are struggling. You got this. Shits really hard when you have extra stuff on your plate. And y’know what, it might not work out! But that’s okay. It’s not for everybody, and you don’t have to do it to have worth. You don’t have to do anything to have worth as a person. You can lie in your bed all day and you still deserve to be here and you still deserve to have people who love you.

I’m in my third year now and I’m coping a lot better than I was before. But sometimes I’m just sitting there and I remember how fucking hard it was. Truly if anybody needs to or wants to talk, feel free to send me a DM.

[adhdstudybitch]

Sometimes I think about the fact that I went through five years of college, half of that undiagnosed, with no accommodations whatsoever. Didn’t even ask for extensions on assignments or extra time on tests or even an understanding ear from a professor.

And this is not an accomplishment. It’s not something I look back on with pride, but rather pain.

It hurt me so much. I could have received help, I could have probably avoided so many breakdowns and meltdowns and panic attacks, I could have felt at least somewhat like I wasn’t losing my mind and falling further and further behind, but I let my fear of being vulnerable hinder my own progress and path to healing.

Please, please use accommodations if you can. It doesn’t matter if you technically can get through college without them and still do relatively well like I did, the bottom line is that you shouldn’t have to. Don’t do what I did. In the immortal words of Carrie Fisher, “Be afraid but do it anyway”.