Disabled students’ experiences of the tertiary education system

In 2024, the Ministry of Education released findings from qualitative data about disabled students’ experiences of the tertiary education system.

The research project was a collaboration between the National Disabled Students’ Association, the Ministry of Education, the Tertiary Education Commission and the New Zealand Qualifications Authority.

Key themes from the report are summarised below. The full report is available on the Education Counts website: Let’s Get Accessible: Disabled students’ experiences navigating the tertiary education system external URL

It is published in a wide range of accessible formats, including audio reports, Braille, Easy Read and Large Print.

Disabled students have to repeat themselves to get their needs met

The report emphasised that disabled students have to continuously repeat information about their experiences and needs, across multiple situations to ask for their needs to be met. Some situations include:

• students having to self-disclose their disability
• sharing personal information
• being made to provide medical evidence of their disability on more than one occasion, especially related to attendance and grades.

Disabled students spoke of self-disclosure being a major barrier to accessing support from disability services and teaching staff at their education provider. Having to share personal information and provide evidence of their disability did not only incur a financial cost, but also an emotional and energy cost – and was often retraumatising for the students. 

Accessibility accommodations are often not set up well

Almost one-quarter (23%) of disabled students who participated in the survey said that the support they received at their education provider was not enough, and another 48% said that the support was only partly enough or were unsure if the support was enough. In addition, students spent a considerable amount of time trying to access supports – with more than a quarter (26%) of survey respondents saying they spent more than four hours during the last semester accessing supports, not including time for assessments required for diagnosis.

Students noted many accessibility issues at tertiary education providers, including:

• disability services not being well advertised, and sometimes inappropriately named – leading to confusion and lack of support
• parking at education providers being limited and expensive, and for those with disability parking permits not many disability parks available
• older buildings being physically inaccessible – including more stairs, older uncomfortable chairs, fixed desks, and lack of power points to plug in assistive devices
• lack of low-sensory environments available
• unstable Wi-Fi – which affects connections to assistive technologies
• lecture recordings not containing captions.

Some students reported that requesting specific accommodations led to them being isolated from their peers. 

Many students also noted that even when gaining access to some support there were inconsistencies and reliability issues with receiving continued support. Support was reported to often change depending on teaching staff, and different levels of support were received from disability services compared with teaching staff. 

Attitudes towards disability vary

Disabled students reported instances of negative attitudes and lack of support from teaching staff in various forms. Some students reported that teaching staff did not follow disability service-provided support plans and were less accommodating to disabled students needing to take breaks during class or requiring extensions on assignments due to their disabilities. 

Some disabled students reported being pressured to drop out of courses by teaching staff and being told they placed an extra burden on staff and other students. Instances of teaching staff reinforcing harmful narratives was also evident – for example continuing the narrative of neurodivergent diagnoses being a societal trend. 

About the research

This report was based on data from survey responses and focus groups of disabled students enrolled at tertiary education. The sample of disabled students included (but was not limited to) individuals who:

• had a physical impairment
• had a mental health and/or psychological condition
• were neurodiverse
• had a chronic illness and/or pain
• or were an individual within the Deaf community. 

The study was not based on a random sample and was not designed to be representative of all disabled students. There were a total of 235 respondents to the online survey, open from July to August 2023, and 10 participants in the seven focus groups held both online and in person over September 2023. Most identified as Pākehā/European (70%), and 12% were tāngata whaikaha Māori.