Natalya you made absolute sense from my point of view and these questions
need careful answering so that BIS see the whole picture.
Several of us have carried out surveys with students in the last year and
with a bit of help I think we could present some of the data that may
allow disabled students to have a voice in this call for evidence.
Deb Viney, Sue Wilkinson and I are meeting on Tuesday 2nd April to discuss
our survey data, but perhaps we need to think about collaborating more
with others who hold data?
I feel we need to have hard evidence for all the answers we give to BIS.
Best Wishes
E.A.
Mrs E.A. Draffan
ECS, University of Southampton,
Tel +44 (0)23 8059 7246
http://access.ecs.soton.ac.uk
> 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
>
Mrs E.A. Draffan
ECS, University of Southampton,
Tel +44 (0)23 8059 7246
http://access.ecs.soton.ac.uk
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