The University of Southampton

CASE STUDY Helping the University of Southampton to become more accessible.

Enhancing the university’s equality through awareness training

After working with The University of Southampton to develop its ‘whole-organisation’ approach to disability equality, Chris Jay’s support helped the university to become the first in the country to achieve Disability Confident Leader status.

After this achievement the university decided to further develop its ongoing efforts to become a fully accessible institution, through the disability awareness training provided by Chris, to staff members from a range of faculties from within the university.

Here, he worked with the university’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Team, to further develop their ‘whole-organisation’ approach to disability equality.

The content of the training programme was tailored specifically to enable the University of Southampton to continue to provide an inclusive and supportive environment for both staff and students.

The training covered numerous topics such as language, disability definition, etiquette, disclosure, physical accessibility, barriers of disability and much more.

The staff training resulted in further plans to roll out even more awareness training to wider teams across the university.

Aysha Rahman, Equality Diversity and Inclusion Officer, at the University of Southampton said, “Staff, including managers, attending the disability awareness workshop, felt that the training was informative and helpful.”

“Discussions around communication, accessibility and reasonable adjustments proved to be useful in enabling individuals to think of the process they were using and planning ahead.”

“The University of Southampton has systems in place to support staff and students with disabilities and it was good to review this in a practical manner.”

“We are thankful to Chris for his work with us towards enhancing collegiality, attaining the highest quality in everything that we do, and our aim to be a community, welcoming and inclusive of all.”