Dear All

I'm writing to provide information on four areas of our disability work:

1. The new disability special funding programme
2. The guidance on base-level provision report
3. The guidelines for accessible courseware report 
4. The next request for disability statements


NEW DISABILITY FUNDING PROGRAMME

This week we launched a new three year disability funding programme with
6 million available in total. The programme has three strands, each with
a different but related focus:

STRAND ONE - aims to help institutions that currently have little
provision for, or experience in supporting students with disabilities,
to make at least base-level provision in institutions 
STRAND TWO - aims to support the promotion and transfer of expertise
that already exists in the sector
STRAND THREE - aims to help institutions to collaborate to share
existing resources

The detailed bidding document (HEFCE 99/08) outlining the programme,
including the bidding process and assessment criteria, is already with
your heads of institutions and will be available next week from our
web-site at: http://www.niss.ac.uk/education/hefce/pub99/

The bidding document also includes a brief update on our proposal to
introduce a disability premium weight, based on DSA data, into our
mainstream teaching funding method.


BASE-LEVEL PROVISION REPORT

You will already have seen discussion of this report on dis-forum. We
commissioned the report, in partnership with the HEFCW, to take a first
look at what provision HE institutions might need to make to ensure they
are reasonably accessible to all disabled students. This was not an easy
task and the foreword reflects our view that the report will be the
start of a wider discussion. The report intends to guide institutions in
developing their provision for disabled students; it does NOT prescribe
the provision HEFCE expects institutions to make.

The report's funding recommendations are those of the independent
consultants at SQW who undertook the research. The HEFCE has responded
to these recommendations in two ways:
1. The new special funding programme detailed above
2. The proposal for a disability premium weight as part of our
mainstream teaching funding method (see above and HEFCE 98/39) -
http://www.niss.ac.uk/education/hefce/pub98/98_39.html 


You can download the base-level report from our web-site at:
http://www.niss.ac.uk/education/hefce/pub99/99_04.html



GUIDELINES FOR ACCESSIBLE COURSEWARE REPORT

This report arises from the Teaching and Learning Technology Programme.
It provides initial guidance for IT developers to ensure that materials
are accessible to disabled students. This report, HEFCE 99/05, will
shortly be on our web-site at:
http://www.niss.ac.uk/education/hefce/pub99/



DISABILITY STATEMENTS

As a result of the 1995 DDA all HE institutions must produce and publish
disability statements. We will be asking for updated statements from
HEIs in April or May 1999. Taking on board feedback from the last Skill
HE conference we are planning to extend the return period for statements
from the 8 months we gave last time up to a year this time. The
rationale for this is to provide HEIs with the best possible opportunity
to integrate their disability statements with all of their activities.

The document requesting disability statements will be sent to all heads
of institutions, and will also be on our web site at:
http://www.niss.ac.uk/education/hefce/pub99/

The request will take full account of our good practice report published
in November 1998 (HEFCE 98/66). You can download this report from:
http://www.niss.ac.uk/education/hefce/pub98/98_66.html


I hope this information is useful. I look forward to seeing many of you
at this week's Skill conference.


Best wishes

Richard Townend
HEFCE




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