Accessibility of higher education for people with disabilities
Project annotation/short description of project goals and methods
Project's aim: investigate whether and to what extent higher education is accessible to persons with different types of disabilities.
Methods:
- a survey of persons with disabilities who have studied in the past, on their experience in higher education;
- a survey of persons with disabilities who have not studied in the past, on their willingness to start studying in higher education institutions;
- a survey of universities;
- an inspection of higher education buildings/facilities — an assessment of the actual situation.
Project partners (e.g., contractor, collaborators)
Association of Disabled Persons and their Friends “Apeirons”
Project funding - resources (e.g., EU funding, State budget)
State budget
Project funding - budgets
Annual budget of the Ombudsman's Office of the Republic of Latvia
Language of project outputs
field_language_of_project_output
Added value/outcomes: short description of any outcome reached (e.g., input for strategic documents on national level/municipal
The Ombudsman of Latvia determined many recommendations to universities. Two of the recommendations were with strict deadlines:
1. Update the university websites by including information on accessibility of all study facilities, accommodation, libraries, and branches of the university; indicate the physical accessibility features in all these buildings, and if the building lacks physical accessibility, indicate that as well. It is also necessary to specify in which buildings the studies take place, and whether, for example, students from one faculty may have to attend lectures in several buildings.
The recommendation was carried out by all universities.
2. Develop signs and guidance systems in universities. The recommendation was carried out by some universities.
In addition to the research, the Ombudsman provided information on how to ensure accessible information for students with different types of disabilities more easily and conveniently. A separate informational material on the accessibility of documents (Word, Excel, PDF, PPT and scanned documents) was also prepared.
Main challenges and lessons learned: short description if applicable
Main challenge was to gain information from persons with disabilities on their experience in the higher education system or the willingness to gain higher education. People were resistant to share information.
It was interesting to see how each university approach accessibility. It was not hard to provide accessibility for buildings in middle of the forest for some universities, while others were talking about lack of resources, even when they had access to EU funding.