Disabled Students' Allowances: Assistive Technology
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate she has made of the savings to her Department from the withdrawal of funding for non-specialist assistive software through the Disabled Students' Allowance.
Answered by Janet Daby
Funding under the Disabled Students’ Allowance (DSA) is in general not available for goods and services that may be needed by the general student population, whether disabled or not. The department has withdrawn funding for non-specialist software as this falls outside the scope of the DSA. We will monitor the savings from the implementation of this policy.
This policy change relates to non-specialist spelling and grammar software only. The decision to remove non-specialist spelling and grammar software from DSA funding was made on the grounds that there are now free to access versions available with the required functionality to meet students’ disability-related support needs, and it is therefore not an effective use of public money to continue to fund this type of software through the DSA.
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