Thousands sign petition against cuts to tech support for disabled students in England | Disability
Disability campaigners have called on the government to halt plans to cut funding for specialist technical support for tens of thousands of disabled students in England.
Nearly 10,000 people have signed a petition opposing a Department for Education (DfE) proposal to withdraw funding for specialist assistive software currently available as part of the Disabled Students Allowance (DSA).
The petition says this risks “widening the achievement gap for students with disabilities, increasing student dropout, worsening mental health pressures and reducing transitions into employment.”
DSA is a grant that helps students with additional costs they may face in higher education due to their disability. More than 88,000 students benefited from the scheme in 2023-24 at a cost of £203 million.
According to the DfE, funding support for specialist software is no longer needed except in “exceptional circumstances” because advances in technology mean free, mass-market tools can also do the job.
“Where a student needs support that cannot be met through widely available free tools, they will continue to receive software funded through the DSA,” a DfE spokesperson said.
But the British Assistive Technology Association (BATA) said the free, general-purpose tools “do not provide equivalent functionality” to individually assessed, clinically recommended specialist tools.
“For many students with disabilities, specialist assistive technology is the difference between attending higher education and not being able to do so at all,” a BATA spokesperson said.
The companion software, currently funded as part of the DSA, includes specialist tools for text-to-speech, speech-to-text, mind mapping and composition functions, as well as software to assist with research, note-taking and time and task management.
Sam Wood, 19, a sophomore criminology student and student disability officer at Edge Hill University, said living with a severe visual impairment means he already faces serious barriers to learning. “Specialist technology funded by DSA levels the playing field for me,” he said.
“Because of my condition, reading takes much longer. Tools like Scholarcy are vital because they summarize long journal articles into key points, saving me from wasting hours on irrelevant literature. I then use MindView to break this information down into manageable visual chunks that I can easily reference as I write.”
“Forcing us into cumbersome, free alternatives creates an unnecessary layer of stress and academic stigma, while creating a huge burden of proof for students to qualify for ‘exceptional circumstances’.”
Helena Mok, 22, is studying neuroscience with data science at Keele University in her final year. He suffers from fibromyalgia and ADHD and uses tools like Genio, Grammarly, Read&Write, and Tailo to support his studies.
“The government’s proposal to remove specialized software and replace it with generic, mass-market AI tools like ChatGPT or Copilot completely misjudges the way disabled students learn,” he said.
“Specialist tools like Talo use specialized AI to give concise and relevant educational explanations, while asking a scientific question to a generic chatbot only results in a long-winded, glitchy wall of text.”
Chris Purcell, co-founder of assistive technology company CareScribe, said: “Replacing specialist assistive technology with untested free alternatives is abandonment.
“This removes the regulations that make work possible and exposes disabled students to completely avoidable failure. Ministers must halt these proposals, publish a full impact assessment and protect disabled students’ allowances to ensure talent is not lost at the university door.”
a government advice The hearing on proposed changes to the DSA ends on June 18.
A DfE spokesperson said: “As technology advances, many of the functions in the tools the DSA currently funds are now available free of charge and are already widely used by university students.
“We want to modernize the system to reflect this, while also ensuring that all students continue to receive more specialist help if they need it. No one will be left without the support they need to study safely.”
