Within the 36 pages outlining the Government's consultation into the funding of assistive software through the Disabled Students' Allowance is the following statement:
Anecdotal feedback has indicated that in some cases, students are now being recommended so many different assistive software products through DSA that some find it overwhelming and end up not using assistive software at all.
At first, it may be easy to dismiss this as a cynical way to justify a cut in funding, but pause for a second before doing so. If, as a needs assessor, you have met students who have previously received software through the funding programme, what tends to be more likely – that they used everything they received and found it all beneficial, or that they found a small number of products genuinely useful and quietly abandoned the rest?
In my experience, the second of these was nearly always the case.
To understand why, it helps to unpack the DSA process a little. The software a student receives has to be recommended by their needs assessor following the needs assessment, which typically takes place at the very beginning of their course. The busiest period for assessors is August to October, with students booking assessments either once their university place is confirmed, or after starting and being referred by their Disability Adviser.
This means that in the assessment, the student and assessor are essentially anticipating every potential area of difficulty across an entire course – often before the student has attended a single lecture or submitted an assignment. That front-loading of support is, arguably, where the problem begins. Software gets recommended for challenges that turn out to be less significant than expected, or that the student manages differently in practice.
With that in mind, would the better solution be to cut funding for assistive software, or to look again at the needs assessment process? I'll let you decide.
Given the landscape of potential changes to funding and, perhaps, process, what follows is less a call for change and more the start of a discussion, but also, perhaps, something that might be worth keeping in mind next time you're sitting with a student wondering where to begin.
Focus on primary challenges
In looking at research on the experiences of neurodivergent learners, a number of recurring patterns of difficulty emerge across different neurodivergent profiles, and with it, a clearer sense of where support is most likely to make a difference.
Organisation, planning and time management sit at the top of this list, though maybe not for the reason you might expect. It isn't necessarily the most frequently cited challenge in the research, but difficulties here have a tendency to cascade – missed deadlines, skipped lectures, work left until the last minute. For that reason, it's arguably worth treating as the highest priority, regardless of how prominently the student raises it themselves.
Extended writing and structuring written work comes next, and it's the area that appears most consistently across the research on neurodivergent learners in higher education. After that, reading volume and text processing due to the sheer weight of academic reading, and the disproportionate time and effort it takes. Fourth is note-taking and processing information in real time, where the challenge runs in both directions: capturing information during a lecture and then being able to use those notes afterwards.
Finally, there is assessment preparation – revision, retrieval, the cognitive demands of exams and presentations. Effective preparation draws on planning, organisation, task initiation and working memory simultaneously, making it an area where many neurodivergent challenges converge, and where the impact on performance can be significant.
In practice, these often emerge as some of the most significant areas where neurodivergent students benefit from support:
Organisation, planning and time management
Extended writing and structuring written work
Reading volume and text processing
Note-taking and processing information in real time
Assessment preparation – revision and retrieval, impacting exams and presentations
Focusing on these areas, rather than attempting to anticipate every potential difficulty, can help direct support where it’s most likely to make a real difference. The aim here isn’t to reduce support, but to increase the likelihood that students genuinely engage with the support they receive.
One tool per challenge
Rather than recommending multiple products for the same challenge, it's worth considering whether a single, well-chosen recommendation might serve the student better, at least to begin with. The student's learning preference can be a useful guide here. Of course, every student’s experience and support needs will differ, and recommendations should always be guided by individual context.
Take reading volume and text processing as an example. For a student who processes information more easily through listening, text-to-speech software is the obvious recommendation. For a student who prefers to engage with written material visually, research software that helps them find, filter and organise sources may be more useful. Both address the same primary challenge, but in ways that fit how the student actually works.
Rather than this feeling too restrictive, perhaps it’s helpful to look at it from the student’s point of view. Imagine the difference between opening a laptop to find six unfamiliar software icons versus opening it to find one. Less overwhelming (where do I even start?!), less guilt-inducing (I’ve been given all this stuff, and I’m not using it!), and more engaging (I know what this is for and how it can help). The student gets the help through the software, but also feels empowered, and that’s not a small thing – especially if education has typically made them feel the opposite.
One possible exception worth noting is assessment preparation. Revision software and presentation support software occupy different categories, so a student who faces both exams and presentations may genuinely benefit from two tools here. Across five challenges, this gives most students a maximum of six software recommendations, and often fewer.
Further reductions
The number can come down further depending on the student's course and institution. Many higher education courses don't use formal exams, making revision software unnecessary. Some institutions routinely record taught sessions and make the recordings, with transcripts, available to all students, in which case note-taking software is unlikely to add much. Factor these in, and some students may end up with as few as three recommendations.
What could make this work
This kind of approach works best when students understand from the outset that the initial recommendations are a starting point, not the full picture. The DSA process does allow for additional recommendations to be requested later during a student's course, but many students either don't know this or aren't sure how to go about requesting further support.
Two things could help with that:
Being clear in the needs assessment itself that recommendations are being focused on primary challenges, that a single tool is being suggested for each area, and that this can be revisited if needed
Including in the assessment report a brief list of secondary recommendations – products that weren't recommended initially but might be worth exploring if the student finds themselves struggling in a particular area later on
Framing it this way turns the assessment into an ongoing conversation rather than a one-time transaction.
A caveat worth noting
This way of thinking works most naturally with neurodivergent students, precisely because the research shows a broadly consistent pattern of difficulties across conditions. For other disabled students, a more bespoke approach will often be necessary, though the underlying principle of identifying primary challenges and starting with one tool per challenge could still, in most cases, provide a useful frame.
A final word
Whatever the consultation produces, some version of change is on its way. That's not necessarily a bad thing if it prompts a genuine rethink of how the DSA funding can best support disabled students. But for that to happen, I suspect that the people best placed to shape that rethink aren't in Whitehall. They're the ones asking students about their course, their difficulties, and how they prefer to work. That expertise shouldn't just wait to receive instructions. It should be part of the conversation.
References
Gibson, S. and Leinster, S. (2011). How do students with dyslexia perform in extended matching questions, short answer questions and observed structured clinical examinations? Advances in Health Sciences Education, 16(3), 395–404. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10459-011-9273-8
McKendree, J. and Snowling, M.J. (2011). Examination results of medical students with dyslexia. Medical Education, 45(2), 176–182. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2923.2010.03802.x
McLoughlin, D. and Martin, A. (2024). Dyslexia and working memory: A scientific and practical lifespan perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mortimore, T. and Crozier, W.R. (2006). Dyslexia and difficulties with study skills in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, 31(2), 235–251. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070600572173https://doi.org/10.1002/dys.1484
Richardson, J.T.E. (2009). The academic attainment of students with disabilities in UK higher education. Studies in Higher Education, 34(2), 123–137. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070802596996
Smith-Spark, J.H. and Lewis, E.G. (2023). Lived experiences of everyday memory in adults with dyslexia: A thematic analysis. Behavioral Sciences, 13(10), 840. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs13100840