Assistive software funded through Disabled Students’ Allowance

Disabled Students’ Allowance (DSA) is a grant for disabled students which plays a key role in supporting access to higher education. In the 2023/24 academic year, DSA supported over 88,000 students to receive support such as specialist equipment and software, additional disability-related travel and accommodation costs, and non-medical help (the human support that some students need to help them access their studies, such as British Sign Language (BSL) interpreters or specialist study skills support).

Since its introduction in 1974, DSA has evolved many times to remain relevant to the needs of the disabled students it supports. Over recent years there have been huge advances in technology, with many functions that were once the preserve of specialist software products now being available as standard across computer operating systems and widely used mainstream software programmes. Alongside this, higher education providers (HEPs) have increasingly been providing learning technologies across their student cohort, both to reflect the increasingly widespread use of technology in schools, higher education study and in the workplace, and in line with a move towards creating more inclusive learning environments. We strongly support these approaches, which we expect also to enable a smooth transition for disabled students from schools and colleges into HE and then the workplace, or from the workplace into HE and back to the workplace.

With these changes in mind, this consultation seeks views on our proposals to modernise the way in which assistive software is funded through DSA to ensure that we are funding what the student of today needs, not the technology of the past. As part of this, we are also seeking input to support development of our policy on DSA funding for tools which incorporate artificial intelligence (AI). Overall, the proposals in this consultation are intended to support a move to a policy position where the assumption is that assistive software is readily available to the student and will therefore only be funded where there is an additional disability-related need for it that cannot be met by any other software available to the student free of charge – to allow us to better support students in other ways, where there are not free alternatives to meet their needs.

Who this is for

• higher education providers (HEPs)
• current and prospective disabled students in HE, and HE graduates
• stakeholders within the HE sector working with disabled students
• groups working with disabled people wishing to enter HE
• disability charities and wider advocacy organisations working with disabled people
• those working in the DSA sector, including suppliers of assistive software.

We are seeking to consult as widely as possible and would welcome input from independent experts in disability and assistive software, as well as from all those who may be affected by the proposals in this consultation.