Mr. Somhairle Brennan:

I am the vice president for welfare of USI. I thank the Chairperson and members of the joint committee for the opportunity to participate in this round-table discussion on aligning education with the UNCRPD. USI is the national representative body for more than 370,000 students across the island of Ireland. A key element of USI's core mission includes protecting access to education, ensuring equal opportunities for all and working to remove barriers that prevent the pursuit of third level education. There is an undeniable inequality in accessing third level education for students living with disabilities and this must change. The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted and exacerbated these issues, but they were very much present before the pandemic and will remain in the future, unless significant action is taken to address them.

All people with disabilities have a right to good quality health, education, work and to community and family. However, within the third level sector, many educational, financial and technological barriers exist and prevent students, including potential students, with disabilities from accessing a third level degree. USI has worked, and will continue to work, to remove these barriers and open up third level education fully to students and people with disabilities. However, there are some actions that can only be carried out at Government level and at Oireachtas level to ensure equity. USI urges that at every step of this process and during the implantation of any changes and supports students with disabilities and their representatives are engaged and listened to and that the voices of students with disabilities are at the centre of everything that is done.

Advances in technology have had a significant impact on the lives and well-being of people with disabilities and as much as possible must be done to ensure that students in Ireland have access to the vast range of technological solutions that now exist to support the lives of people with disabilities. As we enter the new post-pandemic world, it is important we do not forget the learnings of Covid-19. It has taught us that all students need more flexibility in their study options and nowhere is this more the case than for students living with disabilities while accessing education. While students with disabilities should be supported to have full physical access to campuses, they should also have the option to connect virtually with their studies in a blended model. I want to emphasise that students with disabilities should have as much access to in-person classes as anyone else, but given the nature of many disabilities, including hidden disabilities, they need the flexibility of blended or online options. Lecture content and study materials should always be available in a format that is accessible to all students. Investment in assistive technology is also necessary in order to enable students with disabilities to thrive in the increasingly technological world in which we live. Lecture content and recordings should have close captions or interpretative options and universal design for learning, UDL, principles should be included in all class preparations.

Along with the above measures, UDL principles should always be utilised to guide institutions in making education accessible for all. Students who need the support of UDL should be given immediate access to it throughout the duration of their studies. They should not be asked to jump through hoops and spend the majority of their college years asking for support to learn and to access lecture materials, but rather have it given to them. Students with disabilities and their representatives and advocates are frustrated by the lack of standards both within institutions and across the country in terms of teaching methods, and this introduces the question of whether guidelines could be created to make access to UDL and other learning aids standard across our institutions. Equally, training should also be provided to all academic and higher education institution, HEI, staff on their legal obligations to students with disabilities, as some students have been made to feel uncomfortable when highlighting their needs and rights in this area in regard to disclosure.

Other crucial factors that are key to ensuring proper access to third level education for students and potential students with disabilities are financial and health-related supports, including mental health and well-being. It is vital that the higher education access route, HEAR, and disability access route to education, DARE, schemes are funded adequately to support students with disabilities throughout their academic and social lives in college. We know from numerous and varied research that people with disabilities are more likely to struggle with financial hardship and access to the required finances that should never be a barrier to a person with disabilities accessing their right to an education. A study by the Association for Higher Education Access & Disability, AHEAD, showed that there has been a 200% increase in the past decade or so in the number of students disclosing disabilities within the higher education sector. There must also be increased supports for mental health resources in institutions for students who need this support because of disability. As USI and others have said repeatedly, there remains a huge demand for publicly funded diagnostic services for students who cannot avail of disability supports without an official diagnosis, but cannot afford to access the current private diagnostic routes.

As I said at the beginning of my statement, it is vital that students with disabilities and their representatives are involved at every step of these conversations. Having a disability while trying to access third level education is an undeniable barrier that makes it more difficult, but it is not and should not, be impossible to access supports. Let us consider the struggle that a person with a with a disability will face on top of the everyday pressures of being a student in third level education. Students who need support should receive it so they can thrive academically and socially. By doing so, we are being true to what we say when we make disability rights a priority.