Experiences of Teaching Disabled Students of Computing at UK Universities Eur Ing Brian C Tompsett BSc MSc MBCS C.Eng CITP Department of Computer Science, University of Hull, HULL, UK, HU6 7RX
[email protected] Abstract. The change in the legal, social and educational environments in the UK have resulted in increasing numbers of disabled students entering higher education. Some subjects have been experiencing this expansion in disabled student numbers earlier than others, and Computer Science (or Computing generally) is one of those subject areas. Universities have responded in various ways to the changing nature of the students’ on their courses, and the University of Hull has been particularly proactive in supporting, nurturing and attracting disabled students. This paper outlines the environment in the UK for disabled students in Higher Education and the experiences of one department and one subject area at one university. The paper explores the assistive technology used, and the changes to the environment and the teaching and learning that were required. The paper concludes by looking towards the future and what new technological barriers will need to be overcome and what further changes to environment and teaching might be needed as the expansion continues.
1 Introduction The readership is assumed to be involved in education or disability issues outside the UK, and as such this paper will describe some issues that may be regarded as common knowledge, or everyday experience to those practicing in education or disability within the UK. The background is given as a form of orientation through personal experience rather than an exposition of formal research or pedagogical results. The teaching and learning of computer science in UK universities has changed over the last 10 to 15 years, and the teaching of disabled students at university has also changed in that time. Computer Science (or Computer and IT related subjects) have been, and remain, attractive options for disabled students. They attract disabled students for the same reason they attract other students, such as the career potential and the involvement with technology. A disabled student is attracted to study computing in additional ways, often perhaps because employment in computing might be more tractable to their disability, or because they have interacted with computing and digital devices for a greater period than other students, as they have used computers as part of their assistive technology in earlier education. The continued popularity of Computing, its attraction to disabled students and the increasing proportion of disabled students (HESA, 2006)[1] has provided significant numbers of disabled students studying
computing at Hull and other universities. The nature of the impairments experienced in our academic department are as varied as the students themselves, but has included blindness, and other degrees of visual impairment, deafness, cerebral palsy, Asperger’s Syndrome, mental health conditions including schizophrenia, depression and bipolar disorders, dyslexia, dispraxia, memory disorders, epilepsy and many others.
2 Outline of UK Environment 2.1 Disability Legislation The UK has a developing portfolio of legislation to encourage and enforce equality of opportunity and prevent discrimination on the grounds or race, religion, gender, sexual preference and disability. The laws that particularly relate to higher education are the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) of 1995 (HMSO 1995)[2], and the Disability Discrimination Action of 2005 (HMSO 2005)[3]. The first Act provided for rights for freedom from discrimination in employment, education, access to goods, facilities and services including transport. The second Act extended those rights to every public body and extended the coverage to those affected by HIV, cancer and multiple sclerosis. The more fundamental change in the second Act was the requirement of public bodies, which included universities, to promote equality of opportunity and have strategic action plans in place (Monaghan 2005)[4]. These legal changes have come hand in hand with societal changes which have made attitudes to disability and the disabled much more positive (Swain 2004, Shakespeare 2006, Doyle 2003)[5][6][7]. As a result of these changes the fabric of buildings, such as schools and universities, shops and streets as well as public transport have all been altered to make them more accessible for all kinds of disabled people. These include ramps for wheelchair access, Braille and tactile signs the introduction of induction loops and so on. A number of businesses have been spawned providing the aids and adjustments to public areas as required by both legal and societal expectations. The UK Government has established the Disability Rights Commission (DRC 2006)[8] as a body that can assist a student (or any other disabled person) who is have difficulty obtaining equality of access. At least one University in the UK is being required to resolve matters as they have not satisfied their legal obligations under law. The University of Hull appears to be demonstrating best practice in its support of disabled students, but we are careful to not get overconfident and drift into carelessness of a valued part of our student community.
2.2 The UK Education system In the UK students normally study for preuniversity qualifications between the ages of 1618 and enter university for degree courses at 18 (Scotland has a slightly different system to England and Wales, but is essentially the same). Fifteen years ago only about 510% of 18 year olds studied at university to degree level. The Government has a strategic objective to widen participation in higher education and achieve a goal of a minimum of half of the 18 year olds to enter to study at university at degree course
level, and as part of that expansion to reach out to various disadvantaged groups, including disabled people. The desire of the government was to achieve the increase in participation without any significantly increased funding of the higher education sector from the centre, but to expand through increased efficiency of the existing infrastructure. New sources of income were also exploited in the expansion, including the introduction of student fees to a previously free and centrally funded system.
2.3 Education of Disabled People The UK has had socialised medicine, state education and social services for some time. This has meant that, in most cases, the basic needs of disabled people are provided for in some form or another either by the supply of a state funded benefit to the person or by state provided services through an institution or a municipality, although there is still scope for improvement in several areas including the provision of independent living. The schooling of disabled children, particularly those with serious impairments, might be through special schools separate from their nondisabled peers. There is currently a move towards a system of integrated education, with the specialist support being made available to children in all schools, and disabled children being taught in the same classes as their peers with assistive technology or support staff being supplied as needed. The change to an integrated system of education, the removal of barriers from education and the provision of funding to support equal access to a disabled student in higher education has encouraged a far larger number of disabled students to attend and graduate from universities than previously. The specialist schooling system was more oriented towards independent life skills and employment as an aspiration, whereas in the integrated system disabled students share the same aspirational goals as those without disabilities. Government statistics show that in 1994 2.6% of university entrants were disabled which had risen to 5.8% in 2004 with an overall intake of 592839 in 1994 and 848740 in 2004 (HESA 2006)[1]. The increase in the proportion of students who are disabled, as well as an overall increase in student numbers means that the number of disabled students entering higher education is rising at a faster rate than any other student grouping.
2.4 Disabled Students’ Allowance In preuniversity schooling, any additional funding necessary for education adjustments is provided to the school through a student assessment mechanism known as statementing. The school has a legal requirement to provide equal access to education; however only the most seriously impaired students will attracted matched statementing funding. In the university sector the majority of funding is provided to the student themselves through a grant aid system known as the Disabled Students’ Allowances. In this system, the student provides evidence of their impairment to establish their eligibility for funding, which is paid by their local municipality. The impact of the student’s impairment on their ability to study is then assessed by an independent specialist. The needs assessment identifies exactly which assistive technology and personal assistance is required by the student to participate on an equal level on their university course.
A whole new service sector has now been established to provide these assessment of disability and assessments of needs, as well as the supply and maintenance of the assistive technology and personal support needs. The personal support could include paying for the services of a notetaker, or a personal assistant to aid with travel around the campus, or to carry books and equipment. The assistive technology could include personal or laptop computers for notetaking, specialist voice recognition or OCR software or audio or video recorders. Many students could require funding for support of many thousands of pounds per annum, and with a university having over a thousand students with such allowances, it can be seen that this system can facilitate several millions of pounds of business in supplying equipment and services to enable equal access for these students.
2.5 Assistive Technology and Reasonable Adjustments to Learning and Teaching Disabled students at university can require several different kinds of assistive technology and adaptations. Some of those are necessary for aspects of everyday tasks and living. These aspects of technology, which are not related to learning or being a student at a particular course, are usually the remit of the state health and social care services. Examples of this are wheelchairs, prosthetic limbs, hearing implants and such like. It is the legal duty of a university to be able to work with a student that uses such devices, and thus we must, for example, provide wheel chair access and hearing loops as an almost universal provision. The type of technology used to assist disabled students, or the changes in teaching practise or procedures necessary for them to have equal access to the teaching material might need exploring to familiarise readers with those currently in use in the UK. The adjustments are individually recommended based on each students need rather than being simply prescriptive based on the disability, however the university teachers would need to be prepared to implement any similar adjustments, depending on who attended a particular class. For example, many students are permitted extra time in formal closed book examinations that would adjust for their slower reading or writing time. Some students are permitted to take written examinations using computers in a special computer equipped examination room. We also have an alternate examination room at Hull where students who take extra time or need other adjustments such as special chairs or desks can take their exam. Some students require copies of notes in advance of a class to permit them to read it using special facilities, or some might need material in machine readable form, or magnified or in specific coloured type or paper. For notetaking some students have paid notetaking assistants, which can be graduate students or others in their cohort or special secretarial assistant. Students may be furnished with digital sound recorders or sometimes video recorders to assist with capturing teaching material in class.
3 Disability Support in Hull The University of Hull has always had a positive, supportive and caring attitude towards its students.
For over fifteen years the University has had a senior member of the administration responsible for coordinating disability issues, has provided specially adapted residential accommodation for students and has published a campus access guide showing the location of entrances, ramps, special parking and so on. In the student application and admission process there has always been attention to the needs of students when visiting and in the consideration of entrance qualifications. The university has also been the recipient of a number of endowments and bequests which have been specifically targeted at providing aid and support for disabled student. For example, our library has a specialist area that uses equipment to permit disabled access to library materials, including video magnifiers, OCR text readers and many other devices. The university has continued to improve its provision for disabled students regularly through the employment of advisors to disabled students and the specialist support of IT technology that assists disabled students. The continued expansion of services to disabled students and improvements of the university infrastructure to support equal access, and improvements to teaching and staff development have meant that the university has managed to stay abreast of developing legal and regulatory requirements (Aspland 2006, CVCP 2000, Phippen 1995, Rana 1999)[9][10][11][12], whereas a few other institutions have not had such a mature programme have found themselves playing a potentially more expensive game of catchup. The programme of improvements in the area of disabled support is part of our aspiration to remain close to bestpractise when compared to what is achievable, even at a world wide level. We hope this will further enhanced our attraction to potential students, and improve our recruitment of students, perhaps providing us with students with new and interesting support requirements, which allow us to change and improve yet again! The University of Hull has evolved to the current disability support team, which is coordinated by a Disability Officer heading a Disability Support Office team which is part of a larger Student Welfare group, which included issues such as student hardship loans, counselling, Residence Wardens, Chaplains and so on. The Disability Services team includes specialist staff to support students on a variety of specialist issues, including use of IT and Computers as assistive technology, Dyslexia, Mental Health and other areas of disability specialism. In addition, an independent disability needs assessment unit is located on campus. The strategic lead for disability provision at the university is provided by the Disability Committee which has representatives from all the relevant groups. Each academic department, such as Computer Science, also has a member of academic teaching staff nominated as a Disability Tutor which provides a subject specific contact with expertise in specific programmes of study. The total size of the support team is approximately 15 staff linked to the Disability Office and another 50 disability tutors in departments. This supports a disabled student population of about 1200 from a total student population of about 15000. The disability support arrangements are funded from several sources, and this include the provision of services to disabled students as funded from their DSA provision, from a share of the teaching income from the students, and from general university resources.
3.1 The Rôle of Disability Tutors
Disability tutors at Hull play a large part in the support of students in the areas of learning technology used in classes, but also have a pastoral care role. A lecturer can provide for the needs of a disabled student by performing exactly those actions enumerated on the special needs assessment. This can result in much duplication of effort within a class and from year to year. If one considers such items as the provision of magnified copies of class notes, or copies of teaching material in advance for certain students then this can impose a fair degree of work on anyone preparing materials for a larger class of students (such as above 100 students, which might involve up to a dozen special sets of materials). In Computer Science we make extensive use of online resources, as might be expected on a subject with access to such facilities and support infrastructure. We have internet web pages, and restricted intranet pages. We use chat boards, mailing lists, online dynamic and interactive pages, such as online tests and quality feedback as well as online handin of work where appropriate. We also have shared document stores for each module and programme of study. We also have various specially equipped computer laboratories where we place software and hardware used on our courses. All our teaching facilities are fully equipped with computer and video projection facilities and are connected to the network. The lecturers and module managers can utilise these facilities in combinations that are appropriate for their material and cohort of students. The position of Disability Tutor in Computer Science puts me in the unique position of being aware of several things simultaneously. As an Academic in the relevant department I am aware of the curriculum and the methods to teach it; as a technologist I’m aware of the teaching technology options available and their advantages and disadvantages, and as Disability Tutor I’m aware of the adjustments each student needs and those course modules they attend. I am able to work with my colleagues and suggest changes and improvements to the presentation of the material and technology used to make it more tractable to the class being taught without undue burden on those doing the preparation. Experience at performing this role for the last dozen years has shown the advantage to what has become known as the “Social Model of Disability” (Swain 2006, 2003, Shakespeare 2006, Riddell 2005, Barnes 2002)[5][13][6][14][15], which results in the preparation and presentation of material which can been given identically to all students in the class irrespective of their needs. Our experience has shown that in many cases this also assists other students in their learning in addition to disabled students. This mechanism is best explained by examples from our experience. In most classes there will be some students that require advance copies of the teaching materials (such as slides, handouts and so forth). We will also have students that will also want some form of notes from the lecturer, sometimes prepared in some alternate form. We find that an electronic form will almost universally satisfy the requirements for most disabled students as they will have their own display or reading technology that takes all common forms of electronic document. If the lecturers prepare in advance copies of class handouts, notes and slide presentations they can be placed on the module pages on our servers for the students to download at their own desired time and manner. We now find that as this service has been operating for some years that we have to do very little extra work for new disabled students. A further factor that has reduced the effort required by teachers is to learn how to be inclusive in their teaching style, and to embrace the needs of students with a variety of impairments as they enter our
classes. As a result we are much better at delivering material in classes simultaneously for visually impaired students (for example by ensuring that all written material is available in advance or is vocalised and described appropriately) and for hearing impaired students by ensuring that verbally delivered material is also available or summarised in writing, and so forth. Our most recent experiences are with phrasing assignments and examples in class that are clear and direct for students with Asperger’s Syndrome. This has provided challenges to those who like to use humour in their presentations! We have accumulated experience over years of these adjustments and now welcome working with our disabled students, and have the pleasure and satisfaction of seeing them go forward to excellent and valuable careers in the computer and technology industries.
3.2 The Student Application Process To help understand the level at which disabled students are supported, in might help to look at the provision from the perspective of students rather than that of the teacher. A student will apply to a university in the UK through a common application system known as UCAS. Students do not make individual application to each university. Most universities hold public open days to which local students in the 1618 classes at local schools and colleges are invited. Universities will also invite their applicants to visit either for an open day or for an interview as part of the application process. Applications are made prior to the student obtaining their entrance qualifications, usually commencing their final year of preuniversity study. The universities can reply to the application with a rejection, or more usually an offer of a place conditional on specific results in their course of study. Some students who are already qualified may be given an unconditional offer of a place. Applicants may apply to up to six universities as a maximum, and on receipt of the replies from all their chosen courses they must reduce their applications to only two, one of which is the first choice and one which is the reserve. The results of the examinations are provided direct to the universities at the end of the applicants’ period of study and universities then respond to the students who have an offer with them, and the conditional offers become unconditional places or rejects. Any students without a course are matched with universities who are short of students by a clearing process. A disabled student may wish to visit the university and examine the support facilities or accommodation in person before applying, and at Hull they may do this at an open day, or an academic department or the Disability Office may make arrangements for a special personalised visit, depending on the students need. Once an application is received, there is a section of the form regarding disability which contains basic coded information on the disability and adjustments. This is perused by the Disability Office and often by the Disability Tutor for the academic department concerned. Any student who might have unusual needs not currently provided for might get flagged up at this stage. The student is sent a more detailed questionnaire to learn about their particular needs in both accommodation and learning. The information provided enable arrangement to be made before the student actually arrives. On arrival the student can meet with an advisor from the university disability office and their own departmental disability tutor who can assist further with arrangements and facilitate learning adjustments.
Concurrent with applying for a university place a student is advised, either by their school, or by the universities to apply to their municipality for the Disabled Students’ Allowances funding. This requires them to submit evidence of disability that affects their ability to learn on an equal basis. The evidence of this disability may already exist from assessment during schooling or rehabilitation or medical events. If the student does not have any current evidence then they can be assessed by their chosen university just before or just after arrival to study. Once funding is approved the student can then be assessed for the nature and level of assistive technology and other adjustments required. This assessment is funded from the student allowance and is performed by an independent commercial assessment provider, often affiliated with several university campuses. The affiliation permits the assessors to understand the course specific requirements together with the students assessed disability. The “assessment of need” report will outline which equipment and services need to be provided to the student by the municipality, how the university facilities, teaching and infrastructure might need to be amended to permit the student to study. The student would normally liaise with their departmental disability tutor to ensure the teaching and examination arrangements are working properly, and liaise with the university disability services when looking at the ordering of personal equipment and supportive services.
3.3 Employability of Hull Students The University of Hull has a successful record for student employment following graduation, and in computer science we have initiated a European funded initiative to assist unemployed graduates of computing from any university gain employment (SEED, 2006)[16]. One of the problems for graduates is that many of the positions require some form of work experience, but it is hard for a graduate to gain that initial period of work experience on their CV. We have founded a sheltered work environment company which will perform genuine commercial project tasks with experienced project managers. Graduates are employed to work on these projects and thus gain experience of a genuine workplace in a managed environment. The SEED project assists in the employment training of all graduates, but it has a very valuable function for disabled graduates. Although discrimination in employment on the grounds of disability is illegal, there is a feeling by some disabled graduates that there remains a degree of latent reticence of hiring. The SEED scheme has enabled our disabled students to gain employment at the end of their studies, even when the students themselves felt that this might be unlikely. The period of successful employment and project work is usually sufficient to overcome the resistance of most employers and enable the graduate to perform in a fulfilling position. As the numbers of disabled students in computing rises, the value of having such a scheme within a computer science department become more and more relevant.
4 Research Informing Teaching The University of Hull has, in a number of academic areas, undertaken research programmes that have generated results, experience and expertise that have informed the disabled student provision and enhanced our teaching of disabled students. The research programmes have included work in Psychology on Dyslexia and Dyslexia Support (Singleton, 1995, 1997, 1999 Horne, 1999, Thomas 2000, Singleton, 2000, 2002, 2003, Horne 2005)[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25], work in Modern Languages on Learning Environments for distance support of students (Marsh 1997, 1999, Halliwell 2000)[26][27][28], work in Education on Virtual Learning Environments for distributed learning (Bennett 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, Merlin 2007)[29][30][31][32][33][34], work in Computer Science on Virtual Learning Environments and Online Information resources (Jesshope 2000, 2001, 2002, Wen 2003, Gehne 2001)[35][36][37][38][39], as well as research into supporting students with mental health difficulties (Stanley 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, Manthorpe 1999, 2000, Bradley 2000,)[40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49] and research into placement learning and disabled students (PEDS 2006) [50] to cite but a few. It might be implied by this paper that my own academic research area relates to the teaching of computer science, or to supportive technology. Disability tutors in Hull are selected from the regular academic staff as part of their teaching duties. My own area of research and teaching specialism is in Computer and Internet Security and computer Crime (Tompsett 2006, Marshall 2006)[51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58].
4.1 Present and Future Assistive Technology Issues Although we are supporting a moderate population of disabled students there are still many issues that we face in ensuring that the best provision is made for all the students. Some of our challenges at present relate to being able to control and modify the university environment to accommodate the needs of some students with rarer conditions. I include in this the ability to change and control lighting, including daylight or ultraviolet parts of the spectrum into teaching rooms for students with certain skin conditions, or control lighting for glare or colour tone for students with certain visual conditions. Fire evacuation or other emergency planning for certain classes of students can remain an issue, and access to upper floors to those over a certain weight, size or mobility due to the nature of evacuation equipment. The issue of automated real time signing translation for hearing impaired students is an issue that will need addressing in the future. Certain mental health conditions, particularly those which have a behavioural element can cause difficulties in adaptation that disability tutors must face. These include things like disruptive or challenging behaviour in class that can impact the learning of other students who have not been trained on how to handle it. This can cause a problem in small group work or team projects. One of the more interesting challenges that we are equipping ourselves to handle are forms of autistic spectrum disorder such as Asperger’s Syndrome. To ensure that we do not disadvantage these students
we have to be much more careful in our use of language in the teaching material, both written and verbal. We now review our material in class handouts, web pages and virtual learning content to ensure that ambiguous or subtle or misdirecting instructions are eliminated. The use of humour can be a powerful instructional aid, but for these groups of students it can easily case distress or misdirection. Technology provides a solution to many problems in accessing education for students, with the provision of mechanisms for accessing written material or capturing the students work in new and better ways. At the same time technology is being used to enhance education generally, and in Computer Science at Hull we are exploiting a wide variety of learning environments and course support mechanisms, including class servers, electronic bulletin boards, chat boards, shared document stores and so forth, as well as the use of PowerPoint and other teaching and presentation tools, including animation and video. We are now experiencing that the technology itself can be creating new forms of barriers to disabled students which we must solve. We have started to look at these issues from a research perspective.
4.2 Research Challenges Over recent years there has been an augmented use of elearning in higher education in the UK (Martin, 2004) [59] and internationally (Beller & Or, 2003)[60]. There has also been an increase in the number of disabled students attending higher education and in the level of assistive technology support available to them (Day & Edwards, 1996; Stodden et al, 2001)[61][62]. Christ and Stodden (2005) [63] suggest that disabled students who successfully complete postsecondary education achieve a more fulfilling life, financial success and increased employment options. At national (DfEE 1998, HEFCE 2002, DfES 2003)[64][65][66], European and international level, strong claims have been made within policy documents for elearning as a tool to address the need to widen participation of disabled and other disadvantaged groups within higher education, addressing concerns expressed in the Dearing Report, 1997 [67] which concluded that there were population groups who were under represented in higher education, notably those from socioeconomic groups III to V, people with disabilities and specific ethnic minority groups. A number of studies have shown elearning to be a positive development for disabled students (Stodden, Whelley, Chang and Harding, 2001; Zaparyniuk & Code, 2002)[63][68]. However, Beller and Or (2003) [60] argue that elearning ‘does not provide a “magic solution” that is suitable to all students and needs’ (page 24). In addition, the problems caused by integrating technologyenhanced learning (elearning) with assistive technology present a number of significant technological challenges which have already been identified as needing support (Techdis 2006) [69]. Furthermore, Pearson and Koppi (2003) [70] suggest that many of the needs of disabled students are not addressed in the design of online courses. There is a plethora of practicebased initiatives in the areas of assistive technology in education focus on the advice and training for students, tips for those preparing teaching material, guidelines for those conducting assessments and for those supporting students (Natdist 2006) [71]. However, the majority of these initiatives focus on discrete areas of practice. The solution to the problems of integrating elearning with various forms of assistive technology will address all of the important challenges identified. Personalisation is a necessary aspect of manipulating technologyenhanced learning to render it tractable and usable for individual students with a range of
impairments. By addressing these necessary personalisation needs of disabled students, we will be providing an environment that permits and enables useful forms of personalisation for the whole student body. The social model of disability recognises that diagnoses and labelling of impairments is not what creates a disability; rather it is the environment within which people operate. The personalisation of the learning environment moves the focus of the provision of learning support from minimising the effects of an individual’s impairment to the dialectical relationship between technologyenhanced learning and everyday learning within the total learning experience. Personalisation will inevitably embrace inclusion; however in addition, the development of increasingly flexible interfaces will enable us to explore the engagement and inclusion of disabled students and nontraditional learners. Flexible forms of learning are particularly important for disabled students who as a result of their impairments may not always be able to attend traditional forms of teaching such as lectures and tutorials or participate fully in groupbased collaborative activities. The development of technology alone will not promote inclusion; a key component is the use of the technology by students and the integration of the technology within the overall design of the learning experience by staff (Bennett, 2005)[31]. Flexible learning environments also play a central role in the lifelong learning agenda enabling people to access learning in a variety of ways. The productivity of disabled students, when working with technologyenhanced learning is one of the main motivations for undertaking research. The difficulties caused by the poor integration of some elearning and virtuallearning environments with specific assistive technologies, for example the screen reading software, can significantly degrade the productivity and achievement of some disabled students. Strategies to find the solution of problems of this nature which will not just address issues on an individual, studentbystudent basis but from a generalised and transferable perspective to benefit a broad range of disabled and nondisabled students will be a significant part of the research challenge of this project. To achieve this goal will require the solution of technical problems in the computer science domain of standardising and generalising application interfaces to system services.
5 Conclusions The discussion shows how the support for disabled students in a UK university has developed and improved over time, and we hope we have demonstrated that at Hull we achieved something close to best practise, but there are always ways to improve which we are working on. We have also shown how the number of disabled students has grown rapidly and this has greatly increased the need for a supportive infrastructure and more staff involvement. Conversely we have also shown that by intelligent application of improved teaching for all students by embracing the social model of disability we can also be efficient in keeping those costs and efforts under control and allow us to focus on the few students that might need an individual focus due to the unusual nature of their condition. I hope that we have also shown that a large number of disabled students can be seen as an opportunity rather than a burden. The students allow teaching to be improved for the benefit of all, and also provide fertile grounds for recruitment of new students. The disability services can also become an income
provider through the services it offers the students rather than a cost and a burden to the budget. On the futures side, we show the potential for technology changes to become another barrier to the disabled and how we need to be funding research for ways to overcome these barriers and thus enable us to continue to offer the best service for all our students.
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