Should you disclose your disability?
The University aims to provide an environment in which you feel comfortable disclosing your disability. You can disclose at any time, although you will be specifically invited to during admissions and enrolment.
Full disclosure of a disability or long-term health condition will not affect any application to study here or any other academic review of your work but will simply allow you to benefit from all the available support options, as early on as possible.
There are advantages to disclosing your disability, for example:
- we can help you to get appropriate support and reasonable adjustments for your studies, e.g., in lectures and examinations.
- we can give you information on potential sources of funding to pay for your disability-related requirements as a student, e.g., the Disabled Students' Allowance and the UH Disability Fund.
- we can provide you with specialist information that might be of interest to you e.g., disability services that you could use.
All students who disclose a disability are encouraged to contact their Disability Adviser. They will agree with you any disability-related support or adjustments you can receive for your studies and record information in a Study Needs Agreement.
Information in your Study Needs Agreement will only be made available to other people if you give your permission for this to happen. You might talk to your Disability Adviser about your disability and agree with them that there is nothing of relevance to tell other people, in which case information will go no further. Alternatively, you might have disability-related requirements that you want people to know about and your Disability Adviser will agree with you who is informed of these and what they are told. For example, you might agree that your lecturers are told about the adjustments that need to be made, but not the nature of your disability.
It is ultimately for you to decide whether you contact your Disability Adviser, but we strongly recommend that you do, even if it is just to confirm with them that you are not in need of any support or adjustments. If you choose not to contact your Adviser this means we could be restricted on what we can do for you, should any disability-related support be required.
We understand that disclosing your disability may not always be the easiest thing for you to do. We would like to reassure you that if you do disclose your disability, we will only use the information you provide in accordance with our Data protection and confidentiality guidelines:
- Data Protection Policy and Privacy Statement (UPR IMO8)
- Student Mental Health (UPR EQ07)
- Equality and Diversity Policy (UPR EQ03)
If you want to discuss any queries or concerns about disclosing a disability, you can speak in confidence to your Disability Adviser.
Student should self-refer into our service via this link and if you have any questions do contact us via: studentwellbeing@herts.ac.uk or call us on: 01707 284453