Welcome to our monthly update newsletter!
Hi everyone, Amelia here 😀 In our second Newsletter of 2021, we are bringing you exciting news on the development of the organisation, and our latest activities - all alongside a month that saw a very British heatwave! While exams have come to an end, graduations are being celebrated and students left for the summer, we are happy to forecast an upcoming summer of student-fueled activity.
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What have we been up to?
Below each of our Directors shares what they have been up to in the last month and what is coming up in their areas for the month ahead.
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Organisational Update
Our work to attain financial stability is continuing. This month we have applied for a couple of grants, acquired a bank account and an interim finance officer who is helping us with budgets and finding an accountant (if you know any, hit us up).
On the business side of things, we have worked with Liber consultants on a pricing strategy for our paid services and worked with the Oxford Incubator on a business plan.
As you know, we have also had a goal of improving the clarity of our communications. To this end, we are very happy to have acquired an excellent communications officer, who has quickly become a leader within the organisation. I will leave the rest of the communications updates to his section of the newsletter. We are still recruiting for a number of roles and it’s wonderful to see the organisation continue to grow like this.
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Network Update
In general updates, the Network Directorate has been a hive of activity assisting in the response to our volunteer outreach, forming relationships to support our consultation work, providing feedback to Disabled Students Allowance and establishing the Communications Team.
This month saw us hosting three talks at the biggest online SU Professional Conference, SU21 Digital - here we discussed our pandemic research, UACP and how to Integrate Disability Issues & Supporting Disabled Students. All content is online for ticket holders.
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We have been continuing our work collaborating with ALLFIE, attending the Young People's Forum to discuss the issues pertaining to education more broadly and following up on our consultation response to the government's Post Qualification Application (admissions) proposals.
The directorate's main focus this month has been the upcoming workshops we are hosting for NUS Lead and Change in the coming fortnight. This will provide SU Sabbatical Officers with a baseline knowledge of disability, an interactive space to engage with the issues and a framework from which to act.
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Research Update
A lot is happening in research which is part of why we have intensified our search for a Research Director. (See below if you are interested in finding out more about this role and potentially applying).
In addition to presenting the UACP to Student Unions (4 have signed up to be collaborators already!), we have gotten in touch with a number of charities who are now joining the project. The process of finding funding and collaborators will continue next month. Despite the great progress we still do not have funding for the project, which is why we have decided to postpone the launch by two months until November.
We are continuing the work to create the student survey and FOI requests for this project.
Our next UACP open meeting, this Saturday, will be about support, accessible teaching and accessible examination. In addition to the UACP the research team is continuing the study and write about the impact of the pandemic on disabled students – and how we can improve things this autumn.
We have also been processing the COVID survey results and started writing up results. In addition, we have been working with Plymouth University as consultants on their COVID survey. This being our second paid research collaboration and we have already agreed to a third, which is great news!
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Tech Update
As the tech remit much like tech itself is somewhat all-encompassing, the past month has mostly consisted of (finally) getting our bank account approved, refreshing our current structures and content, while outlining the path for future growth.
As DSUK has rapidly approached the stage where we’re onboarding new volunteers to help grow DSUK the past month has mostly consisted of improving our internal organisational systems to handle the load. We’ve migrated a lot of our work to Notion.so - an ‘All-in-One’ workspace that should help us keep each other on track going forward.
You may have noticed our social graphics getting a refresh, similarly the website itself is going through an overhaul to bring it up to date with all the information we’ve garnered in the past year and solidify our branding.
The star of the tech remit is undoubtedly the University Accessibility Comparison Project (described above from a research perspective) which will undoubtedly take up an increasing amount of space in these updates in the following months. For a sneak peek see this video.
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Video showing overview of the University Accessibility Comparison Project website which is currently in development.
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Most importantly, despite interest in the other areas - we’ve yet to onboard any techies! If you’re studying CS/SE, a related field or just have a general interest get in touch mark@disabledstudents.co.uk
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Communications Update
Hi, everyone! Your new Communications Director here. It’s great to have joined the DSUK team at such an exciting time. I am also honoured to have so quickly been asked to join the leadership of the organisation. I am keen to build on the amazing work that has already been done and to look ahead to the future to look at ways to continue our growth and reach.
My priorities over the coming months will be looking at establishing a social media and communications strategy as well as creating a regular calendar of content and communications to go out via our various social media channels as well as ensuring that our newsletters are getting to the right people and can hear about and get involved with all the great work that is going on.
As you will see, amongst other things, we are in the process of refreshing our newsletters and we have separated them into two. On the last week of each month, we are hoping to share our monthly updates with both our partners and stakeholders within the Higher Education Sector and associated spaces as well as with you all about what is happening and opportunities to get involved and sharing some interesting things we have come across in the past month. We hope that this approach will be a good way for us to update you on all that is going on and what we have to look forward to. So if you haven’t already and would like to get our monthly email updates please sign up using this link: https://disabledstudents.co.uk/subscribe/
We have also set up a new Linktr.ee profile which gives us one easily sharable link to all of our platforms and things we want to share. So if you would like to share more information about us or easily direct people to where they may be able to find us online, feel free to use this link below. Please feel free to share wide and far with your networks and contacts: https://linktr.ee/DisabledStudentsUK
Finally, as we look to grow our communications team and our area of work, it would be great to have a few more people on board who have a passion for communications, social media and engagement on board. If you are interested in joining the team or equally have any ideas of what more we could be doing, please do drop us a line at communications@disabledstudents.co.uk We would love to hear from you!
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University Accessibility Comparison Project
The University Accessibility Comparison Project (UACP) aims to compare universities on measures of accessibility and thereby increase accountability. Our next steps involve collecting experiences and information from across the country and we need your help!
Could your Student Union benefit from better statistics around accessibility at the university? Sign up your SU to be a collaborator on the University Accessibility Comparison Project below!
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Want to know more about the University Accessibility Comparison Project?
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A short video giving overview more about what the University Accessibility Comparison Project is about.
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UACP Open Meetings
In keeping with our co-creation ethos, once a month researchers, students and disability staff meet to discuss the suggested measures of accessibility with which to compare universities. Each open meeting invites a researcher to speak on the topic and involves a wider discussion including staff members, accessibility consultants and other informed allies. The schedule for open meetings and links to sign up to them via our Eventbrite can be found below:
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Join DSUK
We are a fast-growing grassroots organisation working to increase accessibility in Higher Education. We are looking for self-starters who share our goal and want to work in an organisation with a culture of accessibility.
Officer and Team Roles
We are looking for volunteers who have lived experience as disabled students and expertise in one of these areas: Accounting, Community welfare, Fundraising, Web-dev, Accessibility, Business, Disability Law, Policy, Administration.
Research Director
We are also on the lookout for someone to take on the role of Research Director in a voluntary capacity. Do you have lived experience as a disabled student and are passionate about research in HE accessibility? Can you dedicate 10 hours per week and develop into a leadership role?
If you know any disabled students who have recently graduated or are taking a year out, please share!
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Share your ideas for our Social Media
The Communications Team have set up a quick form to help us collect contributions/suggestions from you for future DSUK Social Media and Communications.
Have you read or come across something interesting within the Disability and Higher Education space that you think would be worthwhile sharing, then please let us know. We'd love to hear from you!
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In case you missed it
Each month we will be sharing stories and interesting things we have come across that we think may spark your interest or discussion. Please see below to see what we are thinking about this month:
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"Disabled students deserve to be at Oxford, and should be judged on their intellect rather than their productive output over an eight-week term. Part-time study has given me the space to enjoy my degree without jeopardizing my health."
This month, we are sharing an excellent article from Danni Watts on the importance of allowing part-time study. The article explores why there needs to be more information about and opportunity for such flexible degree structures at Oxford University.
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