Disability Resource Centre (DRC)

Understanding the effects of impairments

Understanding how particular impairments hold students back may help you to support them. Discuss the matter with the student. It is essential to be discreet and sensitive; not all students will want their condition or impairment widely known in their college or faculty. Generally you won't need medical information, but there may be occasions when you find it useful to familiarise yourself with the effects of a particular condition, and with the effects of drug and other therapies used to treat it.

It may become apparent that the student cannot work at the same intensity as other students in the same subject and year. You may be able to:

• Extend deadlines for work beyond full term
• Excuse attendance at non-essential lectures or classes, in order to lighten the workload
• Extend deadlines for the return of library books
• Provide directed reading lists
• Give clear and precise feedback on work, focusing on academic content rather than spelling and grammar

Illness and unseen impairment

Students may have, or develop, an illness that has a long-term effect. There may be periods of relative health followed by relapse; or the student may have an ongoing condition resulting in lassitude and fatigue. It might not be immediately obvious from meeting a student that they have this illness or unseen impairment. Not everyone with an unseen impairment would consider themselves to be ill.

The quality of the student's work might fluctuate, and there may be times when he/she is unable to work effectively. Attendance at lectures or supervisions may also seem erratic. When experiencing fatigue, the student may seem distant, vague and uncommunicative.

Specific Learning Difficulties (SpLD)

The term Specific Learning Difficulty (SpLD) is most commonly used as the descriptor for the profiles of students with whom the DRC carry out assessments. The term Specific Learning Difficulty (SpLD) can be used as an umbrella term for a range of difficulties, the most common of which are dyslexia, dyspraxia, dysgraphia and dyscalculia. Specific Learning Difficulty can also be used as a descriptor term in its own right.

All Specific Learning Difficulties (SpLDs) exist on a continuum from mild to moderate through to severe. Common patterns of behaviour and experience do exist but there will be a range of different patterns of affects for each individual. It is always important to consider the context in which the individual is functioning. This term is used because it is often the most appropriate one for the very particular subtle and complex profiles that generally emerge during the assessment process. The SpLD profile usually reveals a pattern of weakness, or a specific area of weakness, in the way in which information is processed. These areas of weakness in information processing often become most apparent when the individual is placed under time pressure. Students at Cambridge University experience time pressure in the most obvious form in the examination hall. They also experience it because of the intensity of the eight-week terms and the academic demands placed upon them to manage a full workload, whether as an undergraduate or a post-graduate.

Students with SpLD may:

• Find it difficult to cope with all the reading expected of them, even though they recognise the importance of reading to the academic discipline
• Take longer to read material than fellow students
• Get the general overview from reading but find it difficult to recall specific details
• Have difficulty expressing themselves clearly and precisely, either when speaking or in writing
• Find it difficult to keep up with the lecturer in order to make useful notes
• Have difficulty creating and maintaining a coherent structure in written work; this can be at sentence and paragraph level, as well as across the piece of work as a whole
• Make errors in transferring data from one place to another — this could include symbols, numbers or text

Assessment of SpLD

The Disability Adviser (SpLD) may help a student explore the possible presence of a Specific Learning Difficulty in his/her profile through preliminary diagnostic assessment, which includes an interview followed by a targeted assessment. This process gathers evidence for the possible presence of a Specific Learning Difficulty and provides a companion report to the one produced by the Educational Psychologist. This process can also be very helpful in providing evidence to the College should some assistance with funding be required for a full diagnostic assessment with an Educational Psychologist.

The next stage in the process is to undergo a full diagnostic assessment with an Educational Psychologist. Assessment with an Educational Psychologist should not only produce a diagnosis but also provide a more detailed profile of an individual's strengths and weaknesses. It will make recommendations for the most appropriate action to be taken to support the student's needs, which might include examination access arrangements.

Asperger Syndrome

Asperger Syndrome is a mild form of autism. People with this condition have poor social skills, including conversation, eye contact and body language. Skill factsheet suggests the following provision:

• Pastoral support
• A dedicated support worker
• Awareness training for staff
• Specialist tuition support, e.g. language skills, structuring work
• Materials in literal language
• Extra time immediately after group sessions to check that they have been understood
• Alternatives to group working as a way of completing team work
• To have the same information conveyed in more than one way, e.g. verbally and in writing
• Time to get accustomed to the campus or site

Students may be interested in

• University Students With Autism and Asperger Syndrome
• Research undertaken within the University

Deafness and hearing impairment

Deafness and hearing impairment are terms used to cover the whole range of hearing loss. This includes people who are: Deaf, partially deaf/partially hearing, deafened, deaf/blind, hard of hearing, and people with tinnitus. A medical assessment to ascertain the level of impairment may be appropriate.

Deafness does not usually affect a student's work. The biggest problems are in hearing what goes on in lectures and seminars. Very few lecture rooms are equipped with induction loops. Students can experience great frustration in these situations, and where a lot of teaching is done in seminar groups, they can fall behind in their work. Please read the notes about enabling people with hearing impairments.

Visual impairment

People with a visual impairment experience varying degrees of sight loss; the majority will have some sight, and in many cases impairment will not be obvious. Very low or very bright lighting can cause problems for various people.

Reading

A student with a visual impairment may take longer to read printed material than other students, and may not be able to read it at all without using special computer software or equipment. This means that it is particularly important for tutors to prioritise reading lists so that the student's time is spent on the most important texts. Skim reading is very difficult so it is important to plan ahead so that effective use can be made of the vacation, especially if students need to get hold of books on tape. It can take longer to find books in libraries, and overnight loan books pose a problem since it is hard to read them quickly enough.

Travelling around Cambridge

Usually students who have a visual impairment do not cycle, and so it takes longer to get around town - it is also more difficult to locate venues such as supervisors' rooms.

Physical impairment

Students with physical impairments may have difficulties with mobility, manual dexterity and speech. Some would use a wheelchair all or some of the time. They might need support with personal care.

The rate of the student's work may be slower, although this is far from universal. There may be difficulty getting from place to place quickly, and activities of daily living could be more time consuming, making early starts and short break periods difficult. Some students might employ personal assistants to enable them to participate and, when these arrangements go wrong, might be held up.

There will be difficulties with inaccessible buildings: steps and stairs, narrow or heavy doors, lifts that are too small, cramped working spaces and lack of useable toilets.