ADCET Podcast: What We're Learning - Empowering Disability Services in Australian Higher Education

This ADCET podcast is the audio version of our webinar: What We're Learning - Empowering Disability Services in Australian Higher Education. 

Despite supporting more than 98,000 students with disability, there is limited understanding of the experiences and needs of disability practitioners in Australian universities. In this session, Darlene McLennan shares early findings from her ACSES Equity Fellowship, exploring what disability support looks like across the sector, the realities of practitioner roles, and what students say matters most. 

Drawing on national surveys, interviews, and sector consultation, this webinar highlights emerging insights into service structures, workload challenges, professional development needs, and the balance between compliance and meaningful inclusion. It also examines the tensions between individual support and systemic change, centring the voices of both practitioners and students. 

These early findings offer valuable perspectives for practitioners, service managers, university leaders, and students, with important implications for the future of disability support in higher education. 

We hope you find this presentation interesting and engaging and you can find additional information and resources supporting this webinar on the ADCET website.

(March 2026) 

Transcript

ANNABEL LAUDER: Hello everyone and welcome to this ADCET podcast. This episode is an audio recap of a recent ADCET webinar titled “What We’re Learning: Empowering Disability Services in Australian Higher Education”. 

Presented by Darlene McLennan, ACSES Equity Fellow, this webinar provided an update on her fellowship research examining disability support in Australian universities. It explored what disability support provision looks like across the sector, the experiences and capacity of practitioners, and what students with disability say matters most. Drawing on national surveys, interviews, and sector consultation, the session shared early insights into service structures, workload challenges, professional development needs, and the complex relationship between compliance and genuine inclusion. 

We hope that you find this presentation interesting and engaging and you can find additional information to support this podcast on the ADCET website. Now over to you Darlene. 

DARLENE MCLENNAN: Hi. My name is Darlene McLennan. My pronouns are she/her. I'm a woman with grey-brown hair with glasses. I'm wearing a black shirt today and I'm probably well, this is my 59th year. I'll turn 60 at the end of the year, which is, I must admit, quite daunting, but I wouldn't want it any other way. 

I also just want to talk a little bit about my lived experience. I have an adult diagnosis of ADHD and learning disability of dyspraxia. And in this research, I reflected why this research was important to me. I've always been passionate around people with disability and have worked in the disability sector for 40 + years. But when I came to the tertiary sector, probably 21 going on 21 years ago in May, it I suppose hit home about the challenges and struggles I had accessing education, especially further education. And it's only in the last couple of years that I've actually been comfortable enough to say that I actually never succeeded in an undergraduate degree. I had probably three attempts of doing a Bachelor of Arts and a social science degree, but I never got through because I really struggled with what I felt was this secret language. I could never understand academia and the way it's writing. I was very fortunate that the university put on a post grad qualification around business on the northwest coast, and I started that education where it was more applied learning. I even passed a finance unit, which I thought I'd never be able to do, but it was that we ran a factory and we made widgets, and that real hands on experience enabled me to kind of unpack and to succeed in that study. 

And then I was also able to undertake a grad cert in careers education. Once again, that applied learning. So it really made me reflect on the challenges that many students have, especially those with a learning disability in language and writing, and, yeah, so that kind of put me in good stead. 

But then it has also thrown up a huge challenge for me undertaking a Research Fellowship. Anyway, we'll hear more about that now. 

So on this screen we've got the title of the research, which was what we're learning, empowering disability services in Australia higher education. On this image is three people sitting around a table in a campus library. It's actually the library in Launceston, which is fabulous. And the students have laptops, and one person is in a wheelchair. We also have the University of Tasmania logo, ACSES, and the Curtin logos. 

As I stated, I'm an ACSES Fellow. And this project or this Fellowship has been supported by a whole heap of people. So I want to personally thank Ebe Ganon, who has been my Research Assistant throughout this, with the stops and starts, which is fabulous; Merrin McCracken, who many of you may know who was a previous manager at Deakin University; and David Swain, who was an NDCO. So those three people have held me in strong stead throughout this project. 

And then also, I have all the other people, the wind beneath my wings that support me. Jane from ADCET, who has done some of the admin work for me; the whole ADCET team; and my advisory committee and I'm not going to go through all those, they will be a part of the research report but I have an amazing advisory committee with some great students and people with lived experience, people doing the work. It's just been absolutely empowering to have such a group behind me. 

I also want to take the opportunity to thank everybody who has taken the surveys, who have been interviewed, and have been happy to meet with me. I've had some amazing conversations in the last 13 months, absolutely amazing. And also just want to also thank Rebecca Morris, who has managed ADCET while I've been away so well. I feel that it has been in good hands, and it's been great meeting with the team just before this presentation and saying, "I'm coming back", which they said is good and bad. I take that. I understand that. And I also just want to thank the Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success, ACSES, the acronym ACSES, who have enabled this Fellowship to happen. Next slide. 

So on this slide is an image of a photograph of students sitting in a row at a desk engaged in writing and using laptops and tablets. And that kind of talks about the Fellowship has examined how disability service in Australian universities can better support students with disability, especially as demand grows. What the Fellowship aims is to understand what the sector needs, and it aims to drive real systemic change. What we learn will shape the next phase of the work, including development of practical tools for benchmarking and self-assessment and creating educational opportunities for disability practitioners. 

It was really difficult to define what I was going to research. Anybody I spoke to, when they saw what I was trying to do, kind of laughed and said I was trying to do too much. Naively going into this I thought, "Oh, that's not a lot." I've learnt the hard way it is a lot. But I'm getting quite excited about hopefully what we're calling those practical tools we'll get to develop from this research as the next phase and what they'll do and how they can impact on the sector as a whole.  

So why is it important? The current Labor Government undertook the Accord, the Universities Accord, and through that it had given a commitment to improve access, for equity cohorts, including those with disabilities, access to further education. And from the Jobs and Skills Report, the Australian workforce it says that 90% of the roles in the next 10 years will require a post-secondary qualification. And the reality is we have to ensure that people with disabilities are not left behind in that. We have to ensure that access is really available to them and that they can succeed in their qualifications. 

From the sector we know that the numbers are increasing. So 98,000 of domestic undergraduates identified in 2024 with a disability. That's 13.5% of all undergraduates. That's a significant number. The number has doubled since 2012. And the rates do vary across universities. Some universities reporting, or the student numbers are reported at 5% and the highest is 23%. 

I think Kylie will have put in the link to the report that ACSES has undertaken around the dataset on disability. I encourage you all to read that. It really affirms the busyness of your work and how hard the disability practitioners are working because of those increased numbers.  

There's also drivers of change beyond the Accord. The Accord was one, but in recent times we also had the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Exploitation of People Wwith Disability. There wasn't overly a lot that probably impacted on the university sector, but there was certainly a lot of evidence in that report around the experience of people with disability, especially around discrimination and probably what we'd call ableism, so I think that can now inform the sector on what we do. 

There's been a recent Autism Strategy, which has been fabulous. As I said, the University Accord. Currently, the government is reviewing the Disability Discrimination Act. We're getting excited that hopefully that will include a positive obligation for providers. That's what many advocates are fighting for. 

Also, and hopefully people are aware of this, there was a consultation from the Higher Education Standards Panel around the framework, and there were questions around disability, which was absolutely fabulous. And I can thank my fabulous colleague Paul Harper for fighting who sits on the panel, but for fighting for those questions to be there. 

ADCET has put in a submission. I didn't actually provide Kylie with a link for that, but hopefully those submissions will be made public soon and people can read what people have said. 

I put in my own submission, and I certainly highlighted the importance of disability services within universities and how they're perceived. If we hold them in higher esteem, I think people with lived experience of disability will have a better experience within their universities. 

We've also had an increase in funding, which is absolutely fabulous. The Disability Support Fund, the National Priorities Pool and the Capacity Building Fund. So I'll talk a little bit about those in a minute. 

We also have a higher education disability roundtable, which the Australian Tertiary Education Commission facilitate, which have a number of people with lived experience and peak bodies on, to help inform around some of the policy decisions that are being made within government at the moment. 

We also have a student support policy, which all the universities are now having to uptake, and the department are looking at ways to ensure that disability is included in that, and ensure that students are not struggling, that there are strategies in place to ensure students succeed. If you haven't read your institution's student support policy, I encourage you to because they are all meant to be live on universities' websites. 

Going back to the funding, and hopefully most of you will know, that there was a quadrupling of the Disability Support Fund from 13 million to 53 million in 2025. That's having a huge impact, and probably needs a whole research project on the impact of the DSF and what it's doing. Many universities are using it to increase services, to support innovative services, and also to ensure universal design for learning is embedded in the institutions. That's quite exciting to see. 

ADCET also received funding through the National Priorities Pool Program in 2025 to support additional activities and develop a sustainability plan for a collaborative model to support the work of ADCET. 

And then the Capacity Building Fund was provided to ACSES to translate its strength in strategic engagement, trialling and evaluating initiatives and translating research from all identified equity cohorts to higher education with an additional focus on disability initiatives. And in the next six months you'll hear more about what has been achieved through that program.  

There's also a new oversight and accountability that has come into play. So the Australian Tertiary Education Commission you've heard me say ATEC before that's going to be an independent body to oversee the sector. It's currently in an interim stage. And the legislation is before Parliament going through Parliament. 

And then there is also the National Student Ombudsman office, which we're seeing significant changes within culture within universities. A number of people have reported that universities are taking it quite seriously and improving their complaints systems through this process. There is a publication, the annual report from the NSO office around the complaints that they received in '24 25. Kylie is going to put the link into that. And if you can search I couldn't quite get the link directly to the publication itself, but if you search for the 2024 2025 publication, you will get to see the annual report. But what it says is that the 12% of students who contacted the NSO identified as a person with disability or had accessibility requirements. And just under 5% of all complaints received related to a disability discrimination issue. So 41 complaints were received. There was inadequate support, 15 complaints. Disability learning access plan issues, 28 complaints. 

So students also spoke of providers not accepting their medical documentation in support of their adjustments, not putting in special complaints, the complaint and appeal procedures were a challenge. Some students discussed inconsistency in what documentation was needed and the lack of clarity from the provider as to why these documents were considered unsuitable. 

So, yeah, it's quite amazing and probably from this research it's what we heard from students as well. So I encourage you to read that report.  

So the challenge for me is when I decided on what to do, there's a hundred things I could have researched or looked at within this Fellowship. There's been a lot of things that have come about in the last decades of service. One of the challenges I find is sometimes especially middle managers come into this sector and think, "Why isn't it done this way?", or "Why do you do it this way?", or "What evidence there is that this is the best way?" And it's hard because it's how we've always done it. Disability practitioner, the sector has a strong history of supporting one another to building our capacity together. For those who aren't a practitioner, we have what's called a listserve, an AustEd listserve, where questions around some of the challenges that a practitioner may have around an inherent requirement of a course, with somebody with their disability, what do other people do? So kind of what we'd call moderating within that listserve. 

We also have ADCET and we also have ATEND that have supported the practice. But we have morphed out of this, probably maybe informally, but we're also not alone. The USA, Ireland, the UK, all similar, don't have a formal or professional structure. So it's just how it is, but what I'm proposing through this Fellowship is maybe some more structure to how it is so that we also have more evidence, I suppose, of why it is good practice and what we do. Because what we're seeing when the practice is good, it can impact positively on students with disability. 

So throughout history, we've had people, fabulous people, that have come from the sector that have done some great work. The first one is Students with Disabilities, A code of practice for Australian Tertiary Institutions. That was written in 1998 by Barry O'Connor, Des Power, Rhonda Watson and Judy Hartley. All four giants within the sector many, many moons ago. It was absolutely fabulous at the last Pathways in Brisbane, Barry O'Connor was there and taking photos. It was lovely to see him and what he, you know, so many years after he had left the sector. 

So Kylie is putting these things into the chat as we go. But that code of practice doesn't necessarily people may not necessarily know about that code of practice. So these kinds of things are there but have kind of got lost in time. 

The biggest influence to me was a paper that was written by the fabulous Trevor Allan, who many of you will know passed away a couple of years ago. Trevor at the Pathways Conference in 2002 proposed a paper called Professionalising Disability Services in Tertiary Education. It's a very powerful paper and that's also going in the link. And it was quite disheartening reading Trevor's paper and thinking maybe things really haven't changed since 2002, but that's probably what pushed me to actually do this Fellowship. 

So Trevor made a case that the sector needed a professional association, a code of ethics, a code of practice, clear minimum standards for staffing and resourcing, and a structured accreditation pathway so practitioners could build a genuine career. He was concerned that without these things, universities could continue to view disability services as a generalist administrative function, something that could be filled by anybody at the lowest possible cost. He worried, rightly, about skilled people burning out and leaving, about wild disparities in resourcing across institutions, and about a workforce that was highly capable but had no formal way to demonstrating that to the people making decisions about their budget and status. 

And this has happened since 2002, that many universities have changed. Most of us know that disability practitioners, we would hope, would be at a higher education level of 7 and above, but we do hear of some universities that put them at 5 or 6. But we haven't been able to demonstrate why we need the level of professionalism that is required for the sector, and I hope this Fellowship will help inform that. 

The commitment and the progress has come about because of how people are working in the sector. So that's why we actually are in the good stead we are, but I don't know if we can actually rest on our laurels without professionalising the sector. Yeah, Trevor's work has really informed this Fellowship. So please read the paper. It's really, yeah, quite amazing to hear that a lot hasn't changed. 

The other one I'm putting up is the university's what was the Australian Vice Chancellor's Council, the guidelines relating to students with disability which was produced in 2006. So that's Universities Australia. They've changed their name to Universities Australia. It's no longer used by universities. ADCET continues to house it as an historical record. But I suppose it's just to say that in 2006, the governing body of Universities were committed to students with disability and produced guidelines. 

There has been a couple of attempts in the last decade to revisit those and get them done again, but that will be one of the recommendations that are made by this Fellowship. 

And then we also have the ATEND Members Professional Standards of Practice and Code of Ethics. And that was developed in 2013 by, once again, committed members of ATEND, to undertake those standards and code of ethics. And if you are a member of ATEND, you actually sign and say you're committed to those. 

So that's the sector kind of as it stands now. 

So with this research project, to collect the evidence and to understand what was happening currently in the sector. So we undertook a manager’s survey to kind of benchmark, I suppose, or do what I'm calling later the numbers game of where the sector is now, as far as staffing numbers, et cetera. 

We did a student practitioner survey. We did in depth interviews and we've also done some semi structured interviews, especially with a couple of Vice Chancellors, Chancellors, people that kind of govern, people that inform policies, and we've also undertaken some in depth interviews, which has probably been one of the most powerful things I think I've ever done in my career. The student stories and practitioner stories were very powerful and impacted on me greatly. And then we've also undertaken some workshops.  

So the data and insights collected, we had well over 90% of the response from managers. And we collected data on service operations, leadership, effectiveness and practitioner staff, capacity and capabilities. We had 220 + responses from students and practitioner on their experiences. And some questions around professional development. 

As I said, I undertook in depth practitioner and student interviews. One of the positive things it's terrible putting this in light, but with my mother passing away and with the program needing to be extended, I actually got to undertake all the interviews, just because I didn't have a research assistant at the time. And it was a really powerful thing. One of the challenges for me or probably one of the positive things about me is if I hear stories, I probably go to trying to find solutions, which I tried not to do that within the interviews because it's not what the interviews were about, but it really got my brain whirring about how do we solve some of the challenges that practitioners and students had. So it was lovely having those conversations, and I, once again, can't thank the students and practitioners enough for sharing their wisdom and their experience. It's a game changer for me in understanding those, but also hopefully a game changer for the Fellowship. 

We also had workshops and engagement, and we connected with 80 + participants across several workshops and engagements. And as I said before, I have had an advisory committee that has supported me along the way.  

Okay. I'm now going to show some of the quotes that were from the student data. We got a huge amount of quotes, and it was really hard to kind of choose what I was going to share within a 50 minute presentation. So this just touches on the surface, but I've pulled out some of the key themes that the research will be focusing on.  

I'm going to read out some of the quotes that we heard from students. One of the key themes was that documentation, often the burden falls hardest on those least able to carry it. Students consistently described a process that is exhausting, expensive and poorly designed, particularly for those with conditions that affect executive functioning or students without access to affordable healthcare. 

So the two quotes I pulled out and I could have pulled out quite a lot was the first quote, "The executive function of that is so hard. Like, I need assistance and adaptations in actually getting those forms filled out". It was quite interesting, somebody who was diagnosed with ADHD, just found the struggle it was taking her six months to organise her documentation required by her university. And she was really struggling to manage that with her disability. 

The other quote here is, "I have to get a specialist, my doctor, or a psychiatrist, or a psychologist, to write down, fill out a complete document of everything I need for my university study by someone who has no idea of someone in a university needs or even is available". 

So that was something else that people identified, that sometimes the medical person is going, "Well, I don't know what you need." 

Look, here it's not saying that all universities do this. I know there are many practitioners we spoke to that work with a student identifying the need. It's hard because some of these quotes are quite negative, and I'm not wanting to portray the disability practitioner sector in a negative light. It's just this is what some students experienced in some universities and what we want to try to solve through some of the things we're recommending from this research though, that the experience can be better for students. 

So yeah, it has been quite hard because I know the disability practitioners who are online, you work really hard, and I don't want this to be seen in a negative light for any of you. 

I couldn't quite not have a couple more quotes for this. So one student says, "I have diabetes, you know, and that's not a temporary thing. I've had it since I was seven. Please". Like, she was actually required to get new documentation every semester. So she was having to front up to her doctor. But then she actually discovered there was this tick box on the form that probably would have meant that she didn't need to do that but no one told her or her doctor that if they ticked that box she wouldn't need to go back regularly. She found that so frustrating. 

Then another person said, "In the city I am studying, the wait lists are so incredibly long. You can be waiting years. Some people just can't afford it. So they just don't". So that was one of the challenges that were presented. 

So students often don't know what supports are available or what to ask for. Almost every student in the data made the point that they couldn't ask for what they didn't know existed. Yet many services defaulted to asking students to identify their own needs. And it was a challenge because I think we do have that ethos that the student knows themselves best, that we want to empower students, but some students said like a practitioner would say, well, what do you need, and one student had gone to a school that was very small, was very well supported by her teachers, and she didn't quite understand what the university environment would be like or what was needed. 

So the quotes are the first quote, "There's no parameters of what help is available. I have no idea what to ask. I've never done an exam, so I can't anticipate what I might struggle with until I'm already struggling with it". 

And another quote, "What can I ask for? What is the most I can get? What is the least I can get? What do people in my institution typically get? I had no idea".  

The other challenge was that self-advocacy is quite a tiring thing for students. And once again, I know as a sector we try to empower students, but many students reflected that they felt very stretched sometimes by having to continue arguing or to continue to fight for the services. Many of them spoke the reason they often do advocate for themselves is for other students, not for themselves. That they want other students' experiences to be better. 

So students are expected to chase academics, re explain their needs, to follow up when adjustments aren't implemented, even when it's technically the institution's legal responsibility. The two quotes here that I chose, "Having to send four emails every semester feels like an extra task that my peers don't have to do". And then, "I had an extension knocked back but every appeal was found in my favour, but it was not a pleasant experience. I had to, again, provide details and justify my disability".  

This one I named up as computer says no. And I know that Little Britain is probably a bit on the nose now, but I just kind of felt like that encapsulated what was being said here. Students and practitioners alike noted that an academic can simply refuse an adjustment and there is often nothing they can do about it. The reasons academics may say no is varied. Once again, I'm not wanting to speak negatively of academics, because I know their workload and expectations is immense and I certainly don't want this to be a blaming game, but it was really what was coming up clearly, that computer says no. 

So the quotes here are, "They simply just say no, I don't think so. There's no mechanism at the university to make them follow it up". So that was kind of they were answering is there anything you can do around following up. Another person said, "One academic takes it upon themselves to decide which adjustments are needed and which ones are not. 'Well, you don't need that one, do you?'" So there they are reading an access plan with a student and deciding what adjustments they can and can't have.  

Experiences vary enormously between institutions and between practitioners at the same institution. So students spoke about one quote was, "Adjustments at one university were called 'unrealistic' at another". Or somebody also said, "Someone will have the same condition but one person will get 10 minutes because they only asked for 10 minutes and the other will get 20 minutes because they asked for it, but shouldn't they be the same?" Next slide. 

And then ableism at universities. So a lot of students communicated that they didn't see that they belonged. The quote is, "I think that they think they can either hack it at university but it should be exclusive and disabled people fall outside of that exclusivity. And the more accommodations they give, the less exclusive and less hard or rigorous university becomes". 

Another quote from a student is, "I was once told by a unit chair that she despises disability support plans because 'You Gen Zers can't handle your anxiety because you didn't get your matcha latte this morning. Grow up and live in the real world!'". Yes, ableism is within the university too.  

I will just quickly go through the slides now from disability to practitioners. One of the quotes that came up is, "We're seen as more advisors rather than knowledge holders", which I felt rang true. That often the expertise of disability practitioners aren't sought out by university management in understanding the student cohort, which I think is a lost opportunity. 

Practitioners are caught between the values they hold and the systems they operate. And this was a tension between the social model or the different models of disability and the medical model that we work in in regards to asking for medical documentation.  

So the first quote is, "We try to be strengths based but then we ask students to provide all this documentation that is all deficit based. And so we're constantly doing this flip flop". And another quote, "We definitely still sit in the medical model with this aspect of our service delivery. However, when we conduct an appointment we very much ask about impact, not about diagnosis, so I guess we try and steer clear of medical type questions and explore the functional impact and student needs".  

Documentation is the thing practitioners most struggle to justify. So practitioners understood the burden of documentation and experience from students. And the quotes that I pulled out here is, "When it comes to medical documentation I usually frame that as, 'I'm not doubting what you're telling me in any way, but in order for us to best support you we do need some information in writing'. And people are fine with that. I guess the ones that are not fine we probably don't see". 

The other quote is, "We ask for supporting documentation but we're quite flexible about what the documentation can be. Students don't need a diagnosis. We make our own decision on adjustments". 

Academics are the biggest obstacle practitioners face, they felt. And once again, not wanting to pile on academics, but practitioners described having the expertise, having done the work and having an agreed plan, but then watch it being ignored with no consequences. So the quotes I chose are, "ADHD, for example, some unit coordinators get really annoyed with that and they say, 'Oh well, if they know they struggle with time, why don't they just start a week earlier?" 

Another quote, "Academic staff will say they are supportive of students with disability but then complain about resourcing to implement adjustments".  

There were other themes that came out that I just didn't have time for. There was a tension at advocacy around the role of practitioners and advocating for students, and the boundaries that needed to happen because of the institution they were working with. There was a lot of information around professional recognition, like practitioners come from varied backgrounds, such as social work and education, health, but the roles lack a shared professional identity. Many feel their expertise is not recognised by their institution and as I think this time of the year, many practitioners are feeling the workload and under-resourcing with high student numbers, under-resourced teams, with high student numbers, under-resourced teams and high staff turnover. It's not new to anybody.  

So with all this information, I've kind of come up with a diagram which is on the screen now which is a circular diagram showing three interconnected segments representing the three levels which the Fellowship outputs are aimed. Service, which is benchmarking; institutional values and levers for change; and individual professionalisation. In what I'm providing today is probably more focused on the benchmarking and professionalisation. The values and levers for change will be added to the report.  

So one of the ideas is coming up with a what I'm calling at this stage and this could all change in the report once we get everything down in writing but a disability services toolkit. The toolkit, I'm looking at dividing into components. The first one is the numbers game; the second is a service standards or good practice guide; the third is service benchmarking; the fourth is moderation and student voice; and the fifth is student voice. 

I'm going to just showcase or talk about three at this stage. More will be in the report. 

The numbers game. We haven't quite landed on how or what this will look like, but in the research we found that number game isn't that important, as something like benchmarking, but the people still really value it. We in the sector have an informal spreadsheet that we use to kind of identify how many practitioners there are, student numbers, et cetera. So I wanted to see if we can formalise that in some way. 

Kylie was going to put in the chat an example of what ACSES has done with their interactive tool. The challenge with this tool is it is public information. So the information we want isn't necessarily public knowledge. So you can see well, when you actually access that interactive tool there's participation and performance data, and recently added has been a student experience data. And hopefully ADCET will have ACSES present on that data tool soon because it's really wonderful to see. 

So I don't know if this will come off or how we can do it, but it's something that we really would kind of love that there's some way we, as a sector, can understand the numbers game across the sector. And I just want to thank Gemma from ACSES for her support and guidance with this piece of work. 

The other piece of work is service benchmarking. We were really fortunate in our research to come across the Australian Council of Open and Digital Education, ACODE. They are a peak Australasian organisation for tertiary institutions engaged or interested in technology enhanced teaching and learning. Once again, Kylie is putting a link into the chat. 

ACODE developed benchmarking about their teaching and learning practice. There's currently nine access areas in their benchmarking, and they're doing their 10th one this year which is around accessibility. ACODE were very generous in allowing me to observe how they were working on developing those benchmarks. Professor Stephen Marshall, who has been pivotal in that work, who is a Director at the Centre of Academic Development at Victoria University in Wellington, facilitated a workshop for disability services managers to start the process of designing our own sector benchmarks. So that will be one of the recommendations, that that work continues and that we look at developing a benchmark for the sector. 

And then the last one I want to talk about was moderation. One of the things that came out clearly was there was inconsistency around what some people call Learning Access Plans. There is research that is currently underway around how many names there are for access plans. It can, in some ways, cause a challenge too. 

So one of the ideas that was sparked through those conversations is that we don't actually some universities moderate their access plans internally but there's no process around that. And also there's not a lot of moderation that happens across the sector to ensure quality assurance in the adjustments that are consistent, fair and equitable. 

So we researched a number of different tools that are being used in moderation. And I wanted to provide an example for the sector, which once again Kylie will put in, to the national consistent collection of data. They have a number of resources there in how schools are to impute disability and the moderation tools. So that's something again that hopefully comes out as one of the outputs.  

Professional standards and professionalisation. So professional standards framework for disability practitioners is being developed through this research project. We have drafted from survey insights on the skills and attributes practitioners consider the most important. We've redefined that in consultation with practitioners, managers and students, and will look at having some consultation workshops in the future, and we also hope to develop a professional development framework that will sit alongside the standards. 

Naively, at the beginning of this I thought we'd come out with these all done and dusted and would also have a grad certificate in disability practitioners ready to go, but I've learnt that things move very slowly. But these are one of the things that will be in the recommendation of how do we professionalise the sector. Watch out. There's more to come. 

So the next steps are progressing the development of practitioners' professional standards through testing workshops. We're consulting on and finalising the professional development framework. We're looking at benchmarking, developing, consulting and testing, and I'm really excited that Stephen from ACODE, or from the University of Wellington has agreed to come along on that journey with us and support us as a sector. 

The final report is due at the end of April 2026. So that will have all the findings, all the information and all the recommendations for what to do in the future.  

Thank you.  

ANNABEL LAUDER: Thanks for listening to this ADCET podcast. We hope that you learnt something new about making tertiary education more inclusive and accessible for students with disability. You can keep up to date with our future webinars and podcasts by signing up for our fortnightly newsletter at our website adcet.edu.au/newsletter. Thanks again for listening to this podcast from the Australian Disability Clearinghouse on Education and Training - supporting you supporting students.