Reasonable adjustments (or accommodations) for disabled students

What is it? Higher education providers (HEPs) must provide a range of reasonable adjustments (or, particularly in the US context, ‘accommodations’) for disabled students to help them succeed on their course; for example access to assistive technologies, or extra time on tests.

Evidence? Despite existing legal requirements and funding, there is very little research on the impact of reasonable adjustments and what is most effective.

Should HEPs adopt it? HEPs have legal responsibilities to support disabled students under the Equality Act 2010. They also receive funding from the government in the form of Disabled Student Premium to provide reasonable adjustments and support services for disabled students. However, based on existing evidence, it is not clear which approaches should be adopted.

What is this intervention?

HEPs must provide a range of reasonable adjustments (or, particularly in the US context, ‘accommodations’) for disabled students. Such adjustments may include:

• Extra time on tests
• Access to assistive technologies
• Tutoring
• Mentoring
• Support programmes
• Financial support

What is the target group?

The advice on this page draws on evidence about reasonable adjustments for disabled HE students. It refers to a wide range of disabled student subgroups who fall under this umbrella. There is not enough evidence to provide specific advice on how to support students with specific disabilities.

How effective is it?

There are a number of studies which generally suggest a positive correlation between adjustments and HE success for disabled students (see for example Kim & Lee, 2016, Safer et al., 2020). However, they do not provide evidence of impact.

One study which goes further to establish effectiveness used administrative data to examine a sample of 220 US college students with learning difficulties (Newman et al., 2019). By matching students who received support at college with a group of similar students who did not receive support, they found that students receiving universal support (e.g. tutors or writing centres) were more likely to be successful. However, the method they used cannot entirely account for the fact that students who access these forms of support may be systematically different from those who don’t (for example, they may have better support networks).

One US study which provides a useful example of generating stronger evidence on specific accommodations is provided by Weis and Beauchemin (2020). They set out to test whether the practice of allowing students with ADHD and/or learning disabilities to complete examinations in a separate, distraction-reduced setting was an effective accommodation. With a sample of over 1,600 students in a US college they randomly varied whether students sat a test in a separate room or in a group setting. They found students performed equally well in the group setting, but students with disabilities earned significantly lower scores than their classmates without disabilities when tested in a separate room, so this accommodation might actually lower test scores.

What features seem to be important?

We don’t have enough evidence on effective reasonable adjustments to comment on the most effective features.

What don’t we know?

We need more evidence on the impact of reasonable adjustments for specific groups of disabled students.

Where does the evidence come from?

TASO’s advice on the efficacy of reasonable adjustments is based on evidence from four research studies including one causal study.

The key references are given below.

Key references

Causal studies

Weis, R., & Beauchemin, E. L. (2020) ‘Are separate room test accommodations effective for college students with disabilities?’, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 45(5), 794–809. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2019.1702922

Other studies

Kim, W. H., & Lee, J. (2016) ‘The effect of accommodation on academic performance of college students with disabilities’, Rehabilitation Counseling Bulletin, 60(1), 40–50. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0034355215605259

Newman, L. A., Madaus, J. W., Lalor, A. R., & Javitz, H. S. (2019) ‘Support receipt: effect on postsecondary success of students with learning disabilities’, Career Development and Transition for Exceptional Individuals, 42(1), 6–16. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/2165143418811288

Safer, A., Farmer, L., & Song, B. (2020) ‘Quantifying difficulties of university students with disabilities’, Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability, 33(1), 5-21. doi: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1273641