Thousands sign petition against cuts to tech support for disabled students in England

Disability campaigners have called on the government to halt plans to cut funding for specialist tech support for tens of thousands of disabled students in England.

Almost 10,000 people have signed a petition opposing Department for Education (DfE) proposals to withdraw funding for specialist assistive software available as part of the Disabled Students’ Allowance (DSA).

The petition says it risks “widening the attainment gap for disabled students, increasing student withdrawals, worsening mental health pressures, and reducing progression into employment”.

The DSA is a grant that helps students with additional costs they may face in higher education because of their disability. In 2023-24 more than 88,000 students benefited, at a cost of £203m.

According to the DfE, funded support for specialist software is no longer needed – except in “exceptional circumstances” – because advances in technology mean free, mass-market tools can do the job just as well.

“Where a student requires support that can’t be met through widely available free tools, they will continue to receive funded software through DSA,” a DfE spokesperson said.

However, the British Assistive Technology Association (BATA) has said free, general-purpose tools “do not provide equivalent functionality” to individually assessed, clinically recommended specialist tools.

“For many disabled students, specialist assistive technology is the difference between participating in higher education and being unable to do so at all,” a BATA spokesperson said.

The assistive software currently funded as part of the DSA includes specialist tools for text-to-speech, speech-to-text, mind mapping and composition functions, as well as software to aid research, note-taking and time and task management.

Students said free mass-market tools did not provide the same support as the specialist software. Photograph: Sergio Azenha/Alamy

Sam Wood, 19, a second-year criminology student and disabled students’ officer at Edge Hill University, Lancashire, said living with a severe visual impairment meant he already faced significant barriers to learning. “DSA-funded specialist tech is what levels the playing field for me,” he said.

“Because of my condition, reading takes me much longer. Tools like Scholarcy are vital because they summarise long journal articles into key points, saving me from wasting hours on irrelevant literature. I then use MindView to break that information down into manageable visual chunks that I can easily refer to when writing.