Disability offices work better when they are visible, trusted, and joined up
Updated Jun 27, 2026
A disability office can exist, answer emails, and still leave students doing most of the institutional translation alone. Students usually experience support more simply than policy documents do: could they find the right office, did someone help them navigate the system, and did support actually make university feel more manageable? That is why Gilda Biagiotti, Rosa Bellacicco, Anabel Moriña and Laura Tontini's Studies in Higher Education paper, "Experiences and recommendations for disability offices: a qualitative study in Italian and Spanish universities", matters for universities using student voice to understand whether support feels accessible, credible, and connected across the institution.
Context and research question
Most universities now have disability or accessibility services, but students rarely experience support through one office alone. They move between disclosure processes, module leaders, professional services, wellbeing routes, assessment adjustments, and informal conversations with staff. That makes disability office feedback strategically important for UK higher education teams, because it shows whether support works as a coherent system or as a chain of separate handoffs.
Biagiotti and colleagues examine that question through semi-structured interviews with 62 graduates with disabilities, split evenly across Italy and Spain. The study focuses on three practical themes: why graduates engaged with disability offices, how those services contributed to university success, and what they would change. That design makes the paper especially useful for Student Experience leaders, disability teams, and Market Insights professionals, because it captures support through students' retrospective accounts of what actually helped and what still created friction.
Key findings
Disability offices mattered because they did more than process adjustments. Graduates described using them for guidance, emotional support, and mediation with academic staff. That is a useful reminder for UK institutions: support services are not only administrative gateways. They often become the part of the university that helps a student interpret rules, explain needs, and keep moving when the wider system feels difficult to navigate.
The paper puts that point plainly:
"most attended disability offices for guidance, emotional support and mediation with faculty members"
The value of the office therefore sat in relationship as much as procedure. Students did not only need a form approved. They needed someone who could help translate institutional processes into something workable in real study conditions. For universities, that matters because service quality cannot be judged only by turnaround time. If students leave with paperwork but still face confusion or repeated self-advocacy, the support model is only partially working.
The study also links disability office support to university success and emotional wellbeing. That is significant for UK teams because it moves disability support out of a narrow compliance box. When students receive helpful guidance, effective mediation, and support that fits their needs, the benefit is not only legal or procedural. It affects whether they can participate confidently and sustain progress through the wider student experience.
Graduates still wanted two things improved: greater visibility and better staff training. In practice, that means a disability office can do good work internally and still fail students once support has to travel through academic and professional teams that do not understand how to respond. It also means services cannot help early enough if students do not know what is available, when to disclose, or what kind of support is realistic to expect.
The paper's final recommendation is more ambitious than better casework alone. The authors argue for support that is both tailored to individual needs and informed by universal design. That makes the study especially relevant alongside recent work showing that belonging needs more than reasonable adjustments. The broader issue is not only whether an institution responds to individual requests, but whether its systems reduce avoidable barriers before students have to ask.
Practical implications
For UK universities, the first implication is to treat disability office feedback as evidence about the whole student journey, not only one service team. Ask students not just whether they were satisfied with a support office, but whether they could find the service easily, whether academic staff acted on agreed support, and whether the process reduced stress or added to it. When teams triangulate those answers with wider support and belonging evidence, student survey data works better when universities benchmark and triangulate it. The benefit is sharper diagnosis and fewer false assumptions about where support is breaking down.
Second, universities should separate process, relationship, and outcome when analysing disability-related comments. Process covers visibility, disclosure, response time, and clarity. Relationship covers trust, respect, and whether staff make students feel heard rather than burdensome. Outcome covers whether support improved participation, confidence, and progress. That structure helps institutions move beyond a generic "support" label and identify which part of the experience needs attention first. The benefit is more proportionate action.
Third, institutions should design feedback routes that disabled students can use without extra effort. If students have to rely on one annual survey and one generic free-text box, many useful signals will be lost. Short targeted prompts, well-timed pulse feedback, and routes co-designed with disabled students are more likely to surface practical barriers early, a point that aligns with evidence that student voice gets more inclusive when universities redesign how participation works. The benefit is earlier warning before a support issue turns into withdrawal, mitigation, or sustained disengagement.
Finally, UK teams should read disability comments as both operational and strategic evidence. Repeated themes about staff mediation, service visibility, and inconsistent implementation often reveal institutional patterns, not isolated cases. This is where Student Voice Analytics fits naturally: it helps universities group disability-related comments across support, accessibility, teaching staff, and wellbeing themes, so teams can compare recurring issues at scale without flattening them into one category. The benefit is a stronger basis for service redesign and leadership decisions.
FAQ
Q: How should a university review its disability office after reading this paper?
A: Start with the student journey, not the organisational chart. Map how students first hear about the service, how quickly they get advice, where academic staff are brought in, and whether support still works once it leaves the office. Add one or two open-text prompts that ask what helped and what created friction, then review those comments alongside formal case data.
Q: What should UK teams keep in mind before generalising from this study?
A: This is a qualitative study based on interviews with 62 graduates with disabilities from Italy and Spain. It is strong practice-oriented evidence about how support is experienced, but it is not a sector benchmark for prevalence. UK universities should use it as a guide to what to listen for locally, especially around visibility, mediation, emotional support, and staff capability.
Q: What does this change about student voice more broadly?
A: It reinforces that disability-related feedback is not just about adjustments. It is also about whether students experience the institution as navigable, respectful, and designed with them in mind. That makes it closely connected to wider work on belonging, inclusion, and how universities interpret support comments from different groups of students.
References
[Paper Source]: Gilda Biagiotti, Rosa Bellacicco, Anabel Moriña, Laura Tontini "Experiences and recommendations for disability offices: a qualitative study in Italian and Spanish universities" DOI: 10.1080/03075079.2025.2573214
Request a walkthrough
Book a free Student Voice Analytics demo
See all-comment coverage, sector benchmarks, and reporting designed for OfS quality and NSS requirements.
- All-comment coverage with HE-tuned taxonomy and sentiment.
- Versioned outputs with TEF-ready reporting.
- Benchmarks and BI-ready exports for boards and Senate.
UK-hosted · No public LLM APIs · Same-day turnaround