Trust and clear support shape disability disclosure
Updated Aug 15, 2026
Disclosing a disability should open a route to support. For some students, it instead begins a new round of uncertainty about whom to tell, what to explain, and whether asking will change how others see them. Holly Chinnery's Journal of Further and Higher Education paper, "An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of students disclosing a disability within the United Kingdom’s university context: moving towards a relational pedagogy perspective", shows why disclosure is not a single administrative act. For universities using student voice to improve inclusion, the study suggests that support becomes accessible through clear processes and trusted relationships together.
Context and research question
UK universities often rely on disclosure to arrange individual support. Yet disclosure can carry risks for the student, including stigma, unwanted differentiation, and the effort of explaining needs repeatedly. A form may record a disability, but it cannot by itself create the confidence to seek help from a lecturer, personal tutor, wellbeing team, or disability adviser.
Chinnery asks how relational factors influence disabled students' disclosure within a UK university. The study used online semi-structured interviews with seven undergraduate psychology students who identified as having a disability. Participants studied full time or part time across different years and included mature, first-generation, and commuter students. Interviews lasted about 36 to 71 minutes and were analysed using the six-stage Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis process. The researcher also used member checking and a reflexive journal.
This method is designed to examine how people make sense of a shared experience, not to estimate how common each experience is. Its value for UK Student Experience teams lies in showing where policy, identity, communication, and staff relationships meet during disclosure.
Key findings
Disclosure was a journey through people and places, not one decision. Participants described routes from recognising a difficulty to diagnosis, disclosure, and support. A member of staff who noticed a student struggling, a wellbeing service that offered screening, or a clear referral could move that journey forward. This complements research showing how dyslexia classification and support routes can draw students towards help or push them away.
Diagnosis could require students to reinterpret their identity and past experience. Some participants had previously understood difficulty as laziness or personal failure. A diagnosis offered an explanation, but it also prompted demanding questions about self-concept, belonging, culture, and family expectations. Universities therefore need to recognise that disclosure can be emotionally significant even when the administrative request looks routine.
Trust influenced whether students felt able to ask for help. Participants valued staff who were approachable, welcoming, knowledgeable about disability, and able to point towards specific support. The paper frames this through relational pedagogy: care, mutuality, and responsiveness are part of the conditions that make disclosure possible. A support service can exist on paper and still remain inaccessible if students cannot identify a safe person through whom to reach it.
Some students had to advocate repeatedly before support became real. One participant described receiving recognition only after repeated contact with lecturers:
"I didn't really start getting that recognition, until I started making a lot of noise about it."
Self-advocacy could build confidence, but the study also shows its cost. When a student has to contact each lecturer, restate the same need, or force an issue into view, the institution has transferred part of its coordination work to the person already facing the barrier.
Clear processes and more than one support route mattered. Participants wanted earlier explanations of processes such as extenuating circumstances, accessible and flexible learning materials, visible disability contacts, and alternatives when a personal tutor did not feel like the right person. Their accounts suggest that consistency and choice are not procedural extras. They determine whether students can turn disclosure into usable support.
Practical implications
First, universities should map the disclosure journey from the student's perspective. Identify every point where a student must repeat information, interpret unfamiliar rules, or move between academic and professional services without a clear handover. Compare what application systems record with what departments, personal tutors, disability teams, and assessment teams can actually see and act on. The benefit is a disclosure route that reduces repeated explanation at each hand-off.
Second, institutions should treat relational capability as part of accessibility. Staff do not need to diagnose students, but they do need to respond without judgement, know the limits of their role, and make a confident referral. Training should include how to open a conversation, how to protect student choice, and what to do when the usual tutor relationship does not feel safe. Stronger personal tutoring relationships can give students another route to express concerns, which helps support begin before a difficulty becomes a crisis.
Third, teams should use open comments to test whether formal processes work in practice. Anonymous survey feedback cannot replace formal disclosure or trigger individual adjustments. It can, however, reveal repeated comments about unclear forms, inconsistent staff responses, inaccessible materials, or having to tell the same story several times. The lesson from pre-arrival disclosure gaps is that records and lived experience do not always align. Student Voice Analytics can group these recurring signals across large comment sets, helping teams distinguish isolated failures from repeatable system problems.
Finally, universities should co-design communication and monitor the burden placed on students. Useful measures include whether students know where to go, how many times they must disclose, how quickly a referral reaches the right team, and whether adjustments work consistently across modules. Pair those measures with disabled students' accounts, while protecting confidentiality and avoiding subgroup reporting where numbers are too small. This makes improvement visible, testable, and safer for the students whose experiences should shape it.
FAQ
Q: How can universities make disability disclosure easier without pressuring students to disclose?
A: Make routes visible, predictable, and optional. Explain what will happen to the information, who can see it, what support may follow, and which alternative contacts are available. Staff can invite a conversation and explain choices, but the decision to disclose must remain with the student.
Q: What are the methodological limits of this study?
A: The study draws on seven undergraduate psychology students at one UK university, and the researcher taught at that institution and knew the participants. Reflexive practice, member checking, and detailed analysis strengthened the work, but the findings remain a close account of one group rather than a sector-wide estimate. Universities should use the themes to examine local evidence, not assume every disabled student will share the same experience.
Q: What does this paper change about student voice practice?
A: It shows why institutions should listen for processes and relationships, not only satisfaction with support. Comments about trust, repeated explanation, unclear responsibilities, and inaccessible communication may describe one connected disclosure journey. Analysing those signals together gives disability, academic, and Student Experience teams a more complete basis for action.
References
[Paper Source]: Holly Chinnery "An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of students disclosing a disability within the United Kingdom’s university context: moving towards a relational pedagogy perspective" DOI: 10.1080/0309877X.2026.2634039
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