Beatrice's story

Below is Beatrice's story in her own words. We have changed the student's name to protect her privacy.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my time at York as a student and am happy that I chose to come here for my degree. So far I have found that the university has been very accommodating to my needs as a student with disabilities, which have an impact on how I carry out my studies. I mainly struggle visually, finding it hard to study for extended periods of time due to my eyes becoming sore and having double vision and so I am unable to complete as much university work as I would like to during the day. It takes me longer to read and process information compared to the average person, and so I cannot study to the same ability as my peers.

Before coming to York, I had support from my secondary school such as having my assignments printed on enlarged green paper and extra time, which helped me both during class and in official exams. Whereas at university, I have received even more support, such as specific teaching arrangements, increased extra time and individual exam requirements, including the option to change the time of the exam to suit the way my eyes work.

Before university I was also worried about falling behind on content; however, the lectures and seminar work and solutions have always been available to me online, so I have never felt at a disadvantage. During my first year I was not fully aware of the help I could receive and so didn’t make use of all the arrangements available to me, such as the library’s alternative format service, which would’ve made online reading content more accessible to me.

However, as university was essentially online for most of my second year, it was harder to be motivated to seek out this support. Despite this, I still feel as though the university has accommodated my needs. For example, I have always been able to contact someone about any changes in my disability needs and having the option to increase my extra time, to take account of the possible change from online exams to in-person exams during my final year.

The only criticism I have in terms of support is struggling to easily find or be aware of any help with understanding how to use the technology that I have been supplied with to assist my learning, which would have been useful especially during my second year where everything was based online.

Overall I have found that the university has been extremely helpful in allowing me to demonstrate my full academic ability.