This page contains a list of links to resources related to disability at Newcastle University.
We’re working on organising it; for now it’s a list of links in rough categories.
If you have a suggestion for a link that could go here, please email us.
Contents
Support
For staff and postgraduate researchers
- Linda Ogg is the Colleague Disability Support Coordinator. There is a dedicated email address, enable@newcastle.ac.uk, for questions about staff disability support. Emails to this address go to Linda.
- There is a Teams team for parents/carers of autistic children, open to staff and PGRs.
- There is a neurodiversity peer support group on Viva Engage (formerly Yammer), open to staff and PGRs.
Students
Students can access support through:
- Student Wellbeing
- or by emailing disabilityadvisor@newcastle.ac.uk.
Policies and guidance
Understanding accessibility requirements for public sector bodies – gov.uk
University policies and guidance are stored on sharepoint (NU Connect):
- Inclusive meeting guidance.
- Managing sickness absence policy.
Training
For staff
The following courses are listed on the LMS: (last updated 2024-02-07)
Understanding and Supporting our Neurodiverse Colleagues (for Line Managers)
Understanding and Supporting our Neurodiverse Colleagues (for everyone else)
There is a self-enrolment course on Canvas, Accessibility in Practice.
Information
- The Room Finder has photos and information about facilities available in each room on campus.
For staff
The EDI toolkit contains some pages related to disability:
- Information about disability as a protected characteristic.
- Guidance on creating accessible material.
There’s lots on Sharepoint (NU Connect), which is hard to search for. The following links will only work for Newcastle University members of staff.
- Enable – Support for colleagues with disabilities and those who need workplace adjustments
- Colleague supportive practice tool – lists some difficulties colleagues may have, and some possible disability-related reasons they may occur, as well as suggestions of actions to take to reduce them.
For students
How to access disability support
NUSU disability, mental health and neurodiversity society
Learn about disability topics
Many of these resources were collected by Milena Gama Dos Reis Fagundes in 2023.
- Generic resources about disability
- Resources about disability in higher education
- Resources about neurodiversity
- Resources for Postgraduate Researchers
- Teaching and learning resources
Generic resources about disability
The social model of disability
Resources about disability in higher education
Creating a Culture of Accessibility in the Sciences.
This book provides insights and advice on integrating students with disabilities into the STEM fields. Each chapter features research and best practices that are interwoven with experiential narratives.
Ableism in academia: where are the disabled and ill academics?
This article explores some of these issues in the context of higher education institutions in the United Kingdom. We draw on our research and our experiences as speakers regarding ableism in academia to provide food for thought, stimulate a debate and raise awareness of those academics experiencing chronic illness, disability or neurodiversity, whose voices are not heard.
Lived Experiences of Ableism in Academia: Strategies for Inclusion in Higher Education.
This important and eye-opening collection explores ableism in academia from the viewpoint of academics’ personal and professional experiences and scholarship. Through the theoretical lenses of autobiography, auto ethnography, embodiment, body work and emotional labour, contributors from the UK, Canada and the US present insightful, critical, analytical and rigorous explorations of being ‘othered’ in academia.
Academia needs to talk about ‘invisible’ disabilities.
Extraordinary demand for a conference on how universities support staff with invisible disabilities highlights how ableism remains widespread in academia, argue Jennifer Leigh and Nicole Brown.
Science diversified: Tackling an ‘ableist’ culture in research.
Two researchers with disabilities describe an ‘ableist’ culture in academia, a system designed for fully fit and healthy people that does little to account for those who fall outside those parameters.
Reporting from the Margins: Disabled Academics Reflections on Higher Education.
This article is rooted in the narratives of four disabled people with obvious impairments within higher education institutions (HEI). Their lived experiences highlight how the adoption of the neoliberal agenda by HEIs has ensured the continued exclusion of disabled academics.
Disabled in academia: to be or not to be, that is the question.
The authors discuss the importance of not only normalizing varying abilities, but embracing and valuing the diversity and contributions that individuals with disabilities bring to the academic environment.
A blog on supporting students with invisible disabilities.
A book that provides an interdisciplinary outlook on ableism that is currently missing. Through reporting research data and exploring personal experiences, the contributors theorise and conceptualise what it means to be/work outside the stereotypical norm.
An opinion piece on how inaccessibility continues to push disabled scientists out of science.
How to Be a Better Ally, With Disability Advocate Alice Wong.
A podcast on disability rights and how to be a better ally.
A piece about how autistic people are treated in the process of knowledge creation.
Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education.
A book that brings together disability studies and institutional critique to recognize the ways that disability is composed in and by higher education, and rewrites the spaces, times, and economies of disability in higher education to place disability front and centre.
An article in Inside Higher Ed.
Colleges and universities are making progress on efforts to serve disabled students, but some advocates and scholars say higher ed has been slow to recognize disability as an identity group or include it in programming around diversity and inclusion.
Resources about neurodiversity
Neurodiversity in higher education: a narrative synthesis.
This narrative synthesis draws together a corpus of international literature on how neurodiverse students experience higher education and the ways in which higher education institutions respond to the cluster of neurodiverse conditions.
How Neurodivergent Students Are Getting Through the Pandemic.
Students with anxiety disorders, autism and other disabilities are struggling with the disruption of their normal routines after the move to remote education.
Student experiences of neurodiversity in higher education: insights from the BRAINHE project.
This qualitative study explored the experiences of 27 current and previous students with a range of specific LDs by means of semi-structured interviews, using a thematic approach. The findings revealed that participants shared many life experiences and preferences for learning irrespective of their type of LD.
Resources for Postgraduate Researchers
Disabled in Grad School: I, Too, Dread the Accommodations Talk. This post is part of a series about being disabled at university, with a focus on graduate school: problems we encounter, how we deal with them, and what you can do that will make things easier for fellow graduate students with disabilities.
Our Disabilities Have Made Us Better Scientists.
The Adjusted PhD: What Accommodations Work(ed) for You?
Teaching and learning resources
Guidance for Viva examination of Autistic/neurodivergent PhD Students.
Intersectionality, Disability, and UDL.
Understanding the interaction of competence standards and reasonable adjustments.
The guidance will be of use to all staff involved in developing and assessing competence standards. This includes course directors, course programme managers, course tutors, departmental disability representatives, external examiners, disability services staff, inclusive practice managers, placement tutors, placement mentors, admissions staff, and marketing and recruitment staff.
Intersectionality: A pathway towards inclusive education?
This article aligns with recent international approaches to inclusive education and argues for a broadened understanding of the term, specifically in the context of Austria, which currently focuses only on children with disabilities.
Guidance: Designing Learning for Autistic and Neurodiverse Students.
Collaboratively created guidance from the OpenTEL.
University Reasonable Adjustments.
This site forms part of So, You’re Autistic (SYA)? at the University of Kent, a support programme teaching those with a diagnosis, awaiting a diagnosis, or self-diagnosed.
Advising neurodiverse thesis and dissertation students.
These thoughts intend to help faculty think accurately, compassionately, and helpfully about their students who have learning and other differences.
Top 5 autism tips: autistic students at university.
Tips for university lecturers supporting autistic students.
A guide for staff from autistic students.
This article presents a set of reasonable adjustments designed to remove social barriers from the existing viva process for the benefit of autistic doctoral viva candidates.
Inclusive teaching and learning: what’s next?
This paper reflects the ‘Inclusive Teaching and Learning in Higher Education as a route to Excellence’ published by the Disabled Students Sector Leadership Group’s (DSSLG) in January 2017 and highlights actions that may be required to attain the goals set out in the report.
Hacking Graduate School for Neurodiverse Learners.
The first of a 3-part series on supporting postgraduate neurodiverse learners.