Equality and Diversity issues to consider in developing or reviewing a programme proposal
Deb Viney, Diversity Advisor (Email diversity@soas.ac.uk )
You may want to give some thought to equality & diversity issues in relation to both the content of
your programme and the form(s) in which it operates.
The UK now has the Equality Act (2010) which identified 9 “protected characteristics” many of
which we all have:

Age – this encompasses both being older and being younger, any aspect of age.

Civil partnership and / or marriage

Disability - the law uses a very broad definition which encompasses people with specific
learning differences such as dyslexia & dyspraxia; people with developmental differences
such as Asperger’s Syndrome; people with mental health issues and chronic physical health
issues which may or may not be visible to other people (e.g. diabetes, asthma, epilepsy, heart
disease); as well as the more obvious people with sensory impairments (Deafness, visual
impairment) and people with mobility / dexterity impairments. See below for details about
the duty to anticipate.

Gender – including pregnancy, maternity, breastfeeding, childcare issues for all parents.

Religion / belief - encompasses people of all faiths and those people who have no faith
(agnostic or atheist)

Sexual identity including both those people who have gender identities which differ from
the standard male / female options and those who have undergone or are undergoing a sex /
gender reassignment process.

Sexual orientation including people who identify as bisexual, heterosexual and homosexual.
If any issues may arise, either for staff as course designers and course convenors or for students,
please discuss with the Diversity Advisor.
The duty to anticipate the needs of disabled students at large:
SOAS staff are required to make “reasonable adjustments” to accommodate the needs of disabled
students – and should consult the Student Disability Advisors for details of specific recommendations
for individuals.
However there is also a duty to anticipate the needs of disabled students at large – see below for some
ideas about how this duty might apply in programme development & review.
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In general - is any of the teaching material heavily dependent on video or audio?
If so, we should have a warning on the course documents and publicity materials saying that is the
case and that any disabled people who need them will need to be prepared to deal with alternative
formats, as far as it is possible to do so. Additional steps may need to be taken to improve access to
the material, such as providing subtitiles, BSL (sign) translation or an audio description. Such
processes can be time consuming, so staff will need to be prepared to co-operate with the Disability
Service in order to have alternative format materials ready on time.
Does the course (or related assignments) require access to specialist computer software (e.g. a
statistical package, a database of discipline-specific materials, etc.)?
If so, we should make information available about how accessible the specialist software is for
disabled students who may (for example) be using screen reading software or who may not be able to
point and click with a mouse. If the course team plans to replace / update that software, then such
accessibility issues could be among the criteria considered for selecting a particular program.
In section 21 of the Programme Planning: Internal Business Case form - you could suggest /
highlight some points which are all actions anticipating the needs of disabled students. Some
examples are listed below – you do not need to include all of these, but they can all be considered
good practice (and often this is true for all students, not just disabled students) and you may find you
are already doing some of them.
For example:

the course will utilise a range of different assessment formats (i.e. not all written essays) to
ensure those students with difficulties in writing or typing are not consistently disadvantaged;
such difficulties may arise from (e.g.) specific learning differences or physical impairments
such as injured hand/wrist.

the course staff will upload teaching materials and lecture notes to the virtual learning
environment BEFORE each teaching session so they are available to all in electronic format
and each student can convert to their preferred format;

all documents placed on the VLE site by the course staff will be in DAISY format (this is the
international standard format for accessibility, it can be produced quite readily with the right
software).

All electronic images used for the course and placed on the VLE will be appropriately tagged
with a descriptive label.

Reading lists will be annotated to indicate which texts are essential reading and which are
desirable but less than essential; where feasible academic staff will indicate on the reading list
specific chapters / sections of books so that students do not necessarily need to read the entire
text.
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
Reading lists will also be annotated to indicate which materials are already available in
electronic format and the weblinks for those.

For “face to face” teaching where teaching rooms are provided with microphone and public
address systems, the lecturer will always make use of this equipment (regardless of whether
anyone has disclosed a hearing impairment, since 1 in 8 people have some degree of hearing
impairment and it is less of a strain on the lecturer’s own voice).
Reducing unintentional discrimination against disabled students
- Methods of assessment
[This section was approved by Learning & Teaching Quality Committee May 2008]
Executive Summary
The use of the same format for all assessments (e.g. unseen written examination based on essay
questions) can unintentionally disadvantage certain groups of students and may advantage others.
The guidance provided [below] explains how that disadvantage may occur, particularly in the case of
people with particular forms of impairment.
Recommendation:
In the interests of good practice, and in order to reduce the risk of legal challenges, academic staff
may wish to consider incorporating into future editions of their courses and programmes, where
appropriate to the learning outcomes, some assessments which use methods other than written essays:
for example oral presentation; musical performance; practical activities (e.g. work placements); role
play / drama-based assessment; and assessments with lower dependence on writing, such as poster
presentations or numerical exercises or activities demonstrating competence in quantitative problemsolving.
Background
The following guidelines arose from a working group on disability-related issues involving the three
Associate Deans (Learning & Teaching), the Head of Learning & Teaching Strategy, the Student
Disability Advisor and the Diversity Advisor. This group was originally intended to develop a draft
Learning and Teaching section of the Disability Equality Statement Action Plan and has broadened its
remit to consider assessments.
Discussion
Possibly one of the most common, but seldom recognised, forms of discrimination against some
disabled students occurs in the use of the same assessment methodology for all, or almost all,
assessments on a programme.
Continued …/
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In most cases, the assessment methodology for a course unit is an essay + an unseen written
examination. Since both assessments are written, this advantages those with good writing skills and
those for whom writing is relatively low effort; likewise, it disadvantages those with poorer writing
skills and those for whom writing is a high effort or difficult task.
The amount of effort / difficulty associated with writing may result from:

physical impairments (e.g. poor muscle tone resulting in difficulty in either pen grip or
typing).

visual impairment (which can make the task of writing itself difficult and also impairs one’s
ability to re-read what has been written).

hearing impairment (people with severe to profound hearing loss typically have demonstrably
weaker skills in spelling, grammar and punctuation, probably because of a relative
inexperience with the full perception spoken language, including its prosody).

specific learning difficulties (e.g. dyslexia) which may affect working memory and
information processing speed, but also attention and concentration levels, as well as spelling
and grammar difficulties.

chronic medical conditions (such as diabetes) and associated medications may impair the
person’s ability to manage their stress hormones, which then interact with other hormones
(e.g. insulin levels) – producing consequences for attention, concentration, memory and
physiological state (sometimes these effects last many hours beyond an exam too, which may
have consequences for physical health and other activities, including other assessments).

mental health issues and the drugs used to treat them may affect concentration, attention
and/or memory, making the writing process effortful but also some people have strong
emotional reactions to the content of the material which was studied which can re-occur
during the exam, slowing down their responses.
The above comments demonstrate just some of the difficulties which can arise from written forms of
assessment.
On occasions where a specific student has disclosed a disability or medical condition to the School
and assessment-related needs have been identified, academic staff will be informed of any
adjustments which are necessary (e.g. extra time in examinations) by the Student Disability Advisor.
However in the Disability Discrimination Act Part IV (sometimes known as “SENDA 20011”) there is
also a requirement on Higher Education Institutions to anticipate the likely needs of disabled people
“at large” and to plan for those needs. Hence the following proposal addresses both the needs of
those students who choose to disclose their disability and those who do not.
SENDA was the “Special Educational Needs and Disability Act” in 2001 which amended the original
Disability Discrimination Act to include educational activities.
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No one is suggesting that written forms of assessment should be avoided entirely, as all forms of
assessment present difficulties for some people and not for others. However if a programme utilises
only written forms of assessment then at some point the academic staff may find themselves
challenged (e.g. via a disability discrimination court case) to justify the selection of all-written
assessments. A variety of assessments can permit different people to exhibit their understanding and
skills in different ways.
If it is possible to use a variety of assessment methodologies within the assessment strategy for a
programme, then this should mean that different people find each assessment more challenging –
which may even provide better differentiation, resulting in a more sensitive assessment strategy (i.e.
in which one can more readily distinguish “weak” from “good” responses).
Therefore the working group’s recommendation is that:
In the interests of good practice, and in order to reduce the risk of legal challenges, academic staff
may wish to consider incorporating into future editions of their courses and programmes, where
appropriate to the learning outcomes, some assessments which use methods other than written essays:
for example oral presentation; musical performance; practical activities (e.g. work placements); role
play / drama-based assessment; and assessments with lower dependence on writing, such as poster
presentations or numerical exercises or activities demonstrating competence in quantitative problemsolving.
This guidance will be made available to academic staff via the School’s website and included with the
documentation for course / programme development and review.
Deb Viney, Diversity Advisor,
on behalf of the working group
May 2008
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