Ms Megan O'Connor:

FETAC levels 5, 6 and 7 are more accessible because we have been speaking about them for a longer time. We gave these courses the attention they needed. We did not really keep the pressure on when we needed it most. It was the easier thing to do. That is simply it. It is not that students have different capabilities or that they are not capable. It is absolutely not. It is just that we had that conversation and we pushed it forward and made it happen. I am very confident we can do that with postgraduate taught and research courses in the near future. We need to do more with the integration of further and higher education. There are very few colleges that offer the opportunity to enter at level 5 and progress to levels 6, 7 and 8. There are only one or two in the Dublin region. Expanding the progression programmes is very important so that students can go at their own pace. It is similar with part-time studies.

Lecturers cannot be expected to know everything. We need to understand they are not miracle workers. They have their own areas of expertise. They need a minimum amount of awareness and training so they can teach but, at the same time, they need to be supported by the disability services in each institution. We need to have technology officers with extensive awareness of the type of technology that is emerging that students may need. This is very important. Everything is changing so quickly. There are staff in our higher education sector who have been teaching on the ground for the past 40 years. Within a month they were expected not only to be able to give online lectures but to have all of their materials accessible in digital format. It was an absolute scramble. I was working at an institutional level last year. It was a scramble but people pulled together and they did it. People need an awful lot more support in how they can do this to ensure we keep up with the technological requirements of our culture.

On the other barriers and a magic wand, the universal design for learning is imperative. I dream of a world where students do not necessarily have to disclose a disability to have minimum requirements. We should have captions on lectures. We should have part-time studies available. All schools and departments should be completely physically accessible. This is not the case at present. For us not to have to make a deal out of a student with a disability or for students with a disability not to have to advocate or have to fight for what they have should be the minimum requirement in our sector. We have a long way to go but it should not take us a long time.