Many students with a disability at Melbourne University say that the process of applying for and managing their adjustment plans creates a bureaucratic burden that in and of itself is discriminatory: it makes uni harder.
Years ago, when my brother Adam Whitehead was an accredited high ropes officer at a kids’ camp, a school group came in with one boy in a wheelchair.
But early in the course Adam noticed he wasn’t getting these materials on time. “Sometimes I would get the readings on the day of class, or the day after,” he says. “I often had no time to prepare for lectures and tutorials.” Adam with Madeleine Salisbury, Professor Keith McVilly and Shuyun Zhang on campus at Melbourne University.Adam has talked to students at other unis. “A friend is studying at Swinburne, and told me that the uni is really good with accessibility. My friend has ADHD, and she says they are so on top of accessibility, and communicate with her regularly about it,” he says. “There is no push-back.”
Sometimes Lara gets overwhelmed and can’t get out of bed for days. Although she has an adjustment plan, she still has issues getting extensions when she needs time.Lara’s adjustment plan lists the 10-day extension as an adjustment: “Extension requests of between 1 and 10 working days can be supported by this Academic Adjustment Plan. Length of extension is at the discretion of teaching staff.”
“What may constitute a breach of the legislation and the Disability Standards for Education is if the faculty would arbitrarily withhold approval without giving due regard to medical evidence.”Belardo points out that if an assignment is deemed to take five days, expecting a student who is suffering from mental illness to complete it in the same timeframe would constitute indirect discrimination.
“Firstly, we need to publicise [adjustment plans] more. I think we need to improve the quality [of the plans]. And we need to increase the resourcing to SEDS. “Betty Zhang and I did a walk through a newly remodelled building, opened in 2022, and it was immediately apparent that there were access problems,” says Adam. “Afterwards I joined a group of students in wheelchairs who were doing an informal audit. They mentioned that there were inclines that made it impractical to get around in the new building, and to get to the lifts,” he says.
Shuyun Zhang was one of the students in the group. She has a mental disability, and is an elected Disability Officer at the university’s student union.
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