Disability Resource Centre (DRC)

Technical and human support

There is a range of equipment and support workers available to disabled people so that they can manage their day-to-day and working lives. Home students (undergraduate and postgraduate) can claim the Disabled Students' Allowance (DSA) to cover non-medical personal assistance, specialist equipment, travel and other costs.

Access Centres assist disabled people with participation in education, employment and training, through:

  • Assessment for assistive technology and study strategies, and advice on obtaining funding for specialist equipment and personal assistance
  • Training for individuals in the use of equipment and software
  • Advice, training and consultancy for organisations, institutions and employers on technology and specialist strategies disabled students can use Access Centre assessments are carried out to determine the level of Disabled Students' Allowances. Local centres include:

Anglia Assessment Centre

Address
HEL333
Anglia Ruskin University
East Road
Cambridge CB1 1PT
Tel.
0845 196 2378
Web
www.earac.org.uk

Cambridge ACCESS Centre

Address
3 Grange Gardens
Cambridge CB3 9AT
Tel.
01223 233701
07967 891 154
Email
info@cambridgeaccesscentre.com
Web
www.cambridgeaccesscentre.com

Please encourage any disabled student you come across who has not claimed the DSA to do so. You and they can contact the Disability Resource Centre for information, which includes the Department for Education and Skills leaflet, Bridging the Gap.

The Centre can help stretch the DSA by providing some services from its own budget. The DRC also has a loan pool of equipment available, please contact us. From time to time the cost of support could outstrip the allotted amount in the Disabled Students' Allowance. In these cases students should be made aware of other funding such as Access funds and any college or departmental funds available.

Specific Learning Difficulties

Human Support

The most helpful form of human support for students with SpLD is specialist study skills tuition. Occasionally students may benefit from book fetchers, scribes and readers.

Technological Support

There are a number of technical aids that can help a student with a SpLD:

  • Assistive software, especially text-to-speech synthesis programs, such as ReadWrite TextHelp Gold, and programs to help with planning and organisation
  • Digital recorders
  • PDAs
  • Specialist dictionaries and spellcheckers

Hearing

Human Support

The Disability Resource Centre keeps a database of Non-Medical Assistants (NMAs) with relevant skills (such as note-taking). Payment from a student's DSA is all handled by the DRC. Students wishing to make use of this service should contact the Resource Centre as early as possible so that note-takers in the correct subject can be recruited. Interpretation agencies can arrange to provide the following support:

  • Lip-speakers repeat the words of the speaker without voice and are useful for people who do not use sign language but who find a tutor or lecturer difficult to lip-read
  • Interpreters translate what is said by the lecturer or tutor into British Sign Language or Sign Supported English and will provide a voice-over for the student's own signed contribution
  • Note-takers take down almost the whole lecture and will follow the instructions of the deaf student about what should be included or excluded
  • SpeedText: using two lap-top computers, the operator types what is being said and the text appears on the student's screen
  • Palantype: a method of machine shorthand used to provide a verbatim transcript of a meeting, which appears instantly on a television monitor or large screen

Please contact the DRC for further details.

Interpreters, communicators and note-takers are trained to standards set by the Council for the Advancement of Communication with Deaf People (CACDP). There is a national shortage of sign-language interpreters: it would be difficult to find, and pay for enough interpreters to support a student who wished to rely entirely upon sign language.

Technological Support

Students will generally already have their personal hearing aid system before coming up to Cambridge. Systems for use in lectures and classes require lecturers and speakers to use a microphone, which will need to be passed round a group to each speaker. They help solve problems of distance and background noise, and include:

  • Radio microphone systems that transmit to a receiver worn by the student
  • Induction loops: a microphone is connected to a cable loop fitted around the perimeter of a room; the student hears the sound through his/her hearing aid
  • Recording devices can be used by students with a substantial amount of residual hearing and recordings of lectures can be listened to at leisure
  • Induction loops can be fitted permanently into rooms although portable systems are available. Faculties expecting a hearing aid user might wish to investigate buying a portable loop; details of suppliers are available from the Disability Resource Centre

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Visual Impairment

Human Support

Visually impaired students may use personal readers to help with printed material, or assistants to find books in libraries. The Disabled Students' Allowance can be made to stretch further if colleges can help advertise for volunteer assistants. Colleges can also help by obtaining borrowing rights from the University Library for first and second year undergraduates, so that these students can use the equipment in their rooms to read texts.

Braille transcription is available, and the Disability Resource Centre can advise.

Technological Support

There are numerous software packages and pieces of equipment designed to help the visually impaired student study:

  • Larger sized computer screen can, for some students, provide all the magnification required
  • Software is available to magnify the print on an ordinary sized screen
  • A scanner can read text into a computer; a voice synthesiser can then speak the text, or software can convert the text to Braille
  • Braille displays for use with a computer provide a Braille image of text on the screen
  • CCTV (closed circuit television) can display texts enlarged on a TV screen

University Library Assistive Technology Area

The Assistive Technology Area, located off the Catalogue Room, is furnished with a bench at the recommended height for wheelchair users, three electrically operated, height-adjustable desks and a range of ergonomic chairs. Two PCs are available, one with a 19-inch monitor and one with a 17-inch flat screen. Each has a scanner attached and both are connected to a dedicated colour printer. These PCs provide access to the full range of the Library's electronic resources, including the Newton catalogue, databases, e-journals and the Internet, as well as Microsoft Office and email.

Specialist software has also been installed on these machines: Dolphin Supernova and JAWS, both of which provide screen reading and magnification facilities, and the Dragon NaturallySpeaking voice-recognition package. An adjustable keyboard and trackball mouse are available. The area is also equipped with a CCTV reader.

These developments have been made possible by a generous donation from the Abbey Charitable Trust, for which the Library is most grateful.

Physical Impairment

These are some of the people and items of equipment that a person with physical impairment may need to use:

  • Wheelchair
  • Adapted IT hardware and software — eg tracker ball instead of mouse, voice inputting, mouth stick for typing
  • Raised desk or other adapted furniture
  • Personal assistant — for personal care
  • Support worker — at work or study
  • Door opener
  • Adapted room

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