Ian F Said:
> In case you haven't seen this - I think it's really important for
> disability officers and anyone concerned about widening participation
> to respond to this asap. The assumption it seems to be making (that
> everyone has a computer nowadays) does not reflect reality, in my view.
>
> https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/targeted-support-for-higher-education-students-review-call-for-evidence
Thanks Ian, I replied to someone who posted this survey to ADSHE mailing
list and I'll post a very similar reply here as I'd appreciate people's
thoughts.
I don't actually know how many students in general do or don't own a
computer. I am a disability & tech adviser and I only see disabled
students so I have no idea about the broader student population and a
quick Google didn't show any promising data on computer ownership amongst
students.
I would argue that it is foolish to attempt to do a university course
without access to your own computer. I believe this was the case 10-15
years ago and that's only become more magnified since. It is akin to not
having pens and paper (how much would 3 years of notebooks & pens cost vs
a £100 second hand computer?). Students are expected to buy textbooks
although I know our student union is doing research into "hidden costs of
degrees" and working out "additional costs" of things like textbooks,
fieldtrips etc as increased fees is putting the spotlight on non-included
"extras". It's horrible in some ways because I imagine if you are poor
you simply lose out and I worry that many of our students are poorer than
average for reasons related to their disability.
If you are not disabled then you may have the energy/time/capacity to not
have your own computer and just use library or public PCs on campus. Or
use a really grotty old computer with Open Office instead of MS office etc
etc. Many of our disabled students can't get to or can't use university
provided public PCs for disability-related-reasons and maybe free software
is just too complicated. It'd end up with more students stuck and falling
out of the system because their disability is likely to magnify the impact
of not having suitable computing equipment and other things like poverty.
It is for this reason that we can get DSA to pay for taxi transport for
journeys for some students who can't walk 1-2 miles to university like
their non-disabled counterparts.
I worry that if our students had to provide their own machine there would
be even more problems with "reliability of tech" than there are now. As
"tech of all trades" at our place I am often asked to advise/help with
dodgy computers and where DSA is involved it's great to be able to advise
"Contact the supplier, arrange repair, get a loan machine" etc. DSA
machines are generally standardised and suppliers are improving with
repair and loan quality of support. Sending a machine with AT on it to a
general tech for repair/advice often results in the techies panicking and
either refusing to deal with it, or messing up the AT.
If a student had to use their own machine for installing AT on then if it
broke or had the usual computer issues and they couldn't afford a
repair/replacement then they'd be deprived of assistive tech as well as
the basic machine. We'd be wrangling whether their computers were fit for
purpose and all sorts. Just the thought of this makes me CRINGE! It is
bad enough when a student uses their own machine and that fails completely
on the student.
Public access PCs are really very basic. The ergonomics is often
atrocious and it's not easy to do ergo stuff "one size fits all" as it can
be subtleties like specific mice/keyboards, chair settings, screen
settings, profile info, etc. They're not designed for sustained use which
would be needed by students doing all their work on one. Often the
keyboards are worn out! I believe EA Draffan has done or talked about
some work on "personalisation" of a PC and how important that is to
students - and possibly magnified for disabled students.
Before I could consider answering this survey I think I'd need to think
about how to frame my response so that BIS would recognise the very real
dangers of "treating disabled students the same as everyone else" being a
form of discrimination in itself. I am not sure I'm articulate enough to
argue "well yes many/most (citation needed) non disabled studes do have
computers, but here's why ours would suffer if you took DSA computers
away...."
Is what I am saying making sense?
Natalya
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