This blog will give you an outline of the first priority campaign of the Disabled Students’ Campaign for this year.

The campaign is called Our Opinions Count and is reflective of the fact that the opinions of disabled people are all too often ignored when creating policy and legislation that affects our lives.

Most of you will be aware that the Disability Discrimination Act is slowly but surely making its way onto the statute books. It has already begun affecting the lives of students, particularly one student at Bradford University who successfully reached a Section 5 agreement with the Disability Rights Commission after a period of sustained difficulties on his course.

The difficulty, though, with the Disability Discrimination Act, is in its implementation. All too often, the phrase ‘reasonable adjustments’ has caused difficulties for students who try to exercise their rights under the Act. All too often, they find that their institution argue that their access needs are not ‘reasonable’. Its not ‘reasonable’ to move the course to a different building so that students can take part. Its not ‘reasonable’ to provide a British Sign Language Interpreter for students to be able to understand their lectures. Its not ‘reasonable’ for an institution to provide notes in advance and in the correct format for students with learning differences.

Of course, we disagree. Its perfectly reasonable for an institution to make these changes, and more. Its perfectly reasonable for disabled students to be included in exactly the same way as their non-disabled counterparts, and if that involves cost of changes (and perhaps a little more work for lazy lecturers!) – then so be it.

So we think its reasonable. They don’t. Standstill. No-one will budge.

The end result is usually that the student suffers, and the Disability Discrimination Act might as well not exist. You can try and get funding to bring your case before a court, but its highly unlikely. If you do, the institution will usually cave in – and you get what you need. But getting to that point is expensive. If you’ve ever tried calling the Disability Rights Commission, you’ll find that you’ll be on hold for over an hour trying to get through to someone. When you do, they usually don’t have a budget to bring your case.

We could have predicted these difficulties. In fact we did. When the draft consultations on the Disability Discrimination Act came out, nearly every disability organisation under the sun argued that the phrase was too vague, that it will cause difficulties.

But to government failed to listen. They ignored the reasoned and expert voice of disabled people.

And this happens all to often with ‘consultations’. We’re asked for opinion, told we should be grateful for the ‘consultation’ and then our opinions are ignored.

Its not good enough. Our opinions count!

Of course, there are examples of success. The draft mental health bill was scrapped a few months ago, after pressure from NUS and the Mental Health Alliance. Finally we were listened to. But the government has failed to listen to our calls for independent advocacy.

There was one part of the draft bill which contained a provision for independent advocacy for all those being ‘treated’ under the Mental Health legislation. In the disability movement, we’ve been waiting for this for some time. The legislation is so complicated that its nearly impossible to understand it if you’ve only just come across it, never mind when you’re having difficulties in your life that have apparently extended to the point of action under the Mental Health Act.

But we weren’t prepared to accept the draft mental health bill because of its other, well documented, problems. Its definitions of ‘mental distress’ were far to wide reaching; its changes were, frankly, scary; and its implementation would have been complicated and distressing.

It is now all too clear that the independent advocacy in the draft bill was a sweetener to the rest of the nightmare. Take this advocacy, and we’ll remove all your rights.

It was a pill we were not prepared to swallow. The government responded to pressure and dropped the draft bill, and suggested instead some amendments to the current Mental Health Act (1983). The amendments did not include independent advocacy.

Again – our opinions count! Listen to us, we’ve been through the system, we know it better than anyone else.

There’s been so much policy, so much debate and so much legislation that affects the lives of disabled students in recent years. From the Transport Act (and its dodgy definitions of disability when deciding whether one gets free transport), to the Winter Fuel Payments (and their exclusion of disabled people), to the horrendous situation with education funding (both on a governmental level with fees/top up fees and on a local level with NUS’s flawed position on means testing).

And not enough people have listened to us. When they have listened, they’ve not changed anything.

We’ve launched a priority campaign that will:

• Support the rights of disabled people in being consulted on issues that affect them

• Fight for fair consultation with a wide range of disabled people before changes in policy are made

• Campaign against both governmental policy and the policy of individual organisations or groups that we disagree with

• Work on specific pieces of legislation – including the mental health act, assisted dying legislation, the disability discrimination act (and equality duty)

• Support student unions in ensuring that disabled students’ voices are heard in their institution.

Get in touch if you want to know more, or can help out. Watch out for our Early Day Motions, lobbies of parliament, materials and events.

The Blogs on this site represent the individual views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the policies or practices of the National Union of Students.

All links in blogs will open in a new browser window.

The permanent URL for this specific blog entry is: http://www.officeronline.co.uk/blogs/alexkemp/272768.aspx