Barrier-free education

Eleven percent of students suffer from study-relevant disabilities. With only four percent of such students their health impairment is immediately apparent. Conversely, this means that a vast majority of students with disabilities can go unnoticed if they want to. This emerges from a study published in 2018 by the Deutsches Studentenwerk (DSW) and the German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (DZHW), for which around 21,000 students with study-relevant disabilities from 153 universities were surveyed online.

Invisibility of the disability: this particularly applies to the group of students with mental illnesses, chronic-somatic illnesses, and partial performance disorders such as dyslexia, as well as to students with multiple disabilities and sensory and mobility impairments.

The 14 state-run universities and the Berufsakademie Saxony have been receiving two million euros a year since 2015 to improve the situation of employees and students with disabilities. Many large and small projects have made studying and scientific work easier for people with disabilities.

Every Saxon university and the four Studentenwerk centres offer the same free advice services for everyone. The most important thing is to actively seek advice. Even in the case of schoolchildren, it is important to seek advice as early as possible – ideally, six to nine months before they start studies so that everything can be regulated.

 

• Good advice can lead to a good degree – this is how studying with disabilities works:
• Students with disabilities can study on an equal footing.
• Free advice services are available at all Saxon universities, colleges and Studentenwerk centres.
• The advice is also useful in the case of disabilities that arise during the course of studies.
• The most important thing is to actively seek advice.
• Counsellors can find individual solutions for all problems.
• Compensation for disadvantages regulates equal opportunities in studies.
• Communication is the be-all and end-all.
• Advice services also apply to students and graduates before and after their studies respectively.