Assistance for Instructors and Staff in Catering to Students with Impairments

Express your support during your courses and show that students with impairments are part of everyday university life. In this way, you help students to openly address their impairment and to accept offers of support. Inform students in a timely manner before assessments during courses that it is possible to apply for compensation for disadvantages due to impairments resulting from a certified illness. Keep in mind that it can take a lot for students to broach the issue of their impairment and to ask for help. Ask questions if you are unsure how the impairment affects their studies, for example. Only when you have grasped a student’s difficulties can you support them and work with them to develop a solution to the difficulties that arise. Offer to make your teaching materials available in another format (e.g. digitally) so that they can better process them using assistance programmes. Be open to the use of assistive devices such as a microport system and study assistants.

Ensure fresh air in the course rooms and consider the lighting conditions, acoustics and background noise during courses. Consider the accessibility of the course venue. Ensure loud and clear pronunciation and well-managed discussion sessions. Structure your slides well and provide literature lists and topics for assignments/speeches as early as possible, as it may take more time for students with impairments to obtain and process the literature.  Also ensure your teaching materials are accessible. Wherever possible, teaching materials and literature should also be made available in a digital format for processing in assistive programmes.

» Accessible digital teaching

Compensation for disadvantages is anchored in legislation and in no way represents benefits or facilitations, but rather merely intends to ensure equal opportunities and prevent discrimination. At the same time, this means that compensation for disadvantages must not lead to overcompensation and cannot compensate for past inequalities. Despite the legal regulations, there is no legal entitlement to specific compensation for a disadvantage and there are also no tables in which one can look up which compensation for disadvantages should be granted for each specific impairment. Compensations for disadvantages should instead be adapted individually and according to the situation. Because even the same impairment can have different effects and lead to different disadvantages. The students themselves usually know best which compensation would help them. The granting of compensation for a disadvantage ends where the impairment is factually related to the performance to be assessed. Therefore, it should always be checked in advance what exactly is being assessed. The assessment cannot be changed, but the assessment modalities can.

If possible, students should apply for compensation for disadvantages at the start of the semester, in most cases by means of an informal application together with a current medical certificate submitted to the examination board. The current medical certificate does not need to contain any diagnoses, but must provide a description of the health impairment that is comprehensible to laypersons. The doctor should explain how the impairment affects the student’s studies and provide a recommendation for design of the compensation for disadvantages. A disabled person’s ID alone is not sufficient for the application. The examination board decides on the application for compensation for disadvantages. Students then receive notification informing whether and to what extent their application has been granted. Following approval by the examination board, the student must approach their lecturers and discuss the compensation for disadvantages for the respective course on an individual basis.

Possible Compensation for Disadvantages

• extension of the processing time for time-dependent assessments (in particular examinations, term papers and dissertations)
• interruption of assessments due to recovery breaks, which are not to be credited to the (extended) processing time
• splitting of assessments into partial assessments
• separate room, if necessary with equipment according to requirements or certain room acoustics, e.g. adjustable chair or table, carpet, light sources
• personnel or technical support for written or oral assessments, e.g. typing assistance, assistance for »handling« documents, sign language interpreters, assistive technologies
• adaptation of tasks (e.g. in terms of font, font size, font decoration or as an audio file)
• co-determination with regard to date, place, seat, supervisor
• replacement of one form of assessment with another of the same level, e.g. an oral assessment rather than a written one or vice versa, or individual rather than group assessments