With the COVID-19 pandemic causing massive disruption to studies, many students have taken to fight for refunds on their University fees. However Disabled students have been frequently forgotten in this conversation.
"Don't worry it is only those with pre-existing conditions who will die" became almost the tagline to the beginning of this pandemic. Instantaneously a bar was drawn on whose lives were worth saving and who we could justify letting go of to maintain some 'normality'. And it was true, 60% of all those who have died in the COVID-19 pandemic were Disabled - which is massively disproportionate.
Disabled people were immediate targets - ignored, dehumanized and with some even having DNR orders imposed on them against their will. Lots of these Disabled people are students, still studying, possibly shielding and doing their best in a beyond dire situation. Our community has taken a massive hit, and it often feels like this has been glossed over or even justified.
This academic year at my University began with a new system of online learning - Ignite. It has received lots of criticism for lacking teaching quality and not working in comparison to in-person learning. And many students are calling for refunds on the education that they have received this year. Though I totally support these calls for refunds, I also find myself disheartened to see such silence surrounding Disabled students and the additional barriers we have faced.
For me, Ignite hasn't been brilliant but also has been an improvement on the quality of education I've received as a Disabled student previously. Online learning has become almost a staple in my degree, however this was at a time when my degree was not supposed to be learnt this way or adapted to be any more online friendly. My lectures were simply inaccessible to me and this has meant for the vast majority of my degree I've been teaching myself the course content. Somehow I've managed it and come out with respectable grades despite incredibly low physical attendance (just a quick thing to say attendance policies are disablist). But I'm not alone, so many Disabled students either have to teach themselves like me or drop out of Uni because they simply cannot access their course content. My point is... the issues students are fighting for refunds over now are not new issues, yet are being frequently treated as if they are 'unprecedented' or unique.
Looking at the image I have added to this post, the signs include "years of debt for no classes?" and "Where's the money gone Principal?". These are questions Disabled students have been asking for years when we couldn't access our course content and yet were still paying £9k+ for the 'luxury' of an inaccessible education.
A lot of this debate centers around whether the teaching we are receiving is worth the amount that we are paying. However, when considering all the other accessibility issues that Disabled students have faced since Universities began, we are receiving the lowest value of money for our degrees compared to non-Disabled students. In example, I am a 3rd year student due to leave University in a few months and for my entire degree my department building has had no wheelchair access at all. Wheelchair users literally cannot go inside - I guess they expect me to hold my classes in the carpark? These issues were happening long before the pandemic dictated that we couldn't go to physical Uni anyway, but simply aren't being discussed. When we talk about this value for money, we need to be considering the context of specific student groups and how even in this pandemic every group of students has a different set of circumstances that may exacerbate certain issues - like accessibility to education and the quality they can receive as a result.
Despite having possibly the lowest value for money in education and a heightened impact for the pandemic generally, Disabled students have been massively left out of the conversation on student refunds. Why is no one questioning the quality and access to teaching that Disabled students have had forever? And if refunds are achieved, why would I be entitled for a refund on a year where if anything my teaching being meant for online learning makes it slightly more accessible to me, but not the years which I have had to almost exclusively teach myself because of barriers I had no control over? Surely that doesn't make much logical sense, besides the fact that now access impacts non-Disabled people too, it has finally become an issue people want to speak about. Just frustratingly, now we are finally talking about it, we are forgetting that for Disabled people this access barrier is even bigger.
I got annoyed over seeing so many manifestos in student elections mentioning "accessibility" without reference to Disabled students that I wrote this on my personal social media... "I'm just gonna straight say it, as a Disabled person, I HATE when people use the word 'accessibility' without mentioning Disabled people. You are ignoring institutionalized and systemic inaccessibility and the oppression of Disabled people to use a buzzword.
I have a moment of 'am i seen?' when i first start to read 'accessibility' in a manifesto, but more often than not it doesn't relate to Disabled students at all or is intended to be for 'everyone' - therefore ignores the additional accessibility barriers for Disabled students.
It's 2021... lets do better?" The student body at the moment are FINALLY fighting huge fights for access yet still ignoring the additional barriers of Disabled people. It's beyond frustrating to see.
I have tried to bring up this conversation with a few people and I'm often met with comments such as "But you knew what you were signing up to" or "all education should be free anyway". But these feel really beside the point. No matter where Disabled students go, we do not receive the same quality or access to education as non-Disabled students. And even if education was totally free, we'd still be receiving the lowest quality of education regardless and maintain our position at the bottom. Until we start having wide reaching conversations on access to education for Disabled people, Disabled students will never be able to access the level or quality of education that we deserve.
So when you are fighting for refunds, signing petitions, lobbying your University and the government or talking about accessibility, please make sure you consider Disabled students too. Take a moment to think about the additional barriers that Disabled students have faced both forever and during the pandemic, and put our voices into this conversation as well! It is about time that relative silence on the additional barriers for Disabled students was changed to a wide reaching conversation. We should not ever leave this pandemic behind without using it to inform and strive for new standards of better accessibility for Disabled people. Thank you :)