From Student Voice to Institutional Change: A fourth space, user-led accessibility audit in higher education

Introduction

This case study describes the development and institutional impact of the User-Led Accessibility Audit Tool (ULAA-Tool) at Trinity College Dublin as a student-led, participatory model of accessibility practice. Developed and delivered by disabled students as paid auditors, the ULAA-Tool was designed to capture accessibility barriers that persist beyond regulatory compliance and to translate lived experience into actionable institutional evidence. While initially focused on student learning and social spaces, the tool has since been applied across staff work environments, informing estate planning, inclusive employment practices, and disability governance. Framed as a Fourth Space innovation, the ULAA-Tool operates across traditional boundaries between students, staff, and professional services, enabling shared responsibility for accessibility. The case study demonstrates how student-led auditing can move institutions beyond reactive accommodation toward anticipatory, systemic approaches to inclusion.

Context and Rationale

Across further and higher education, disabled students continue to encounter environmental and sensory barriers that affect participation, wellbeing, and belonging. While legislative frameworks and institutional policies have driven progress in access to teaching, learning, and assessment, many accessibility challenges remain embedded in the physical and organisational design of campuses. These barriers are often addressed only when individual students experience difficulty, reinforcing reactive and individualised responses.

At Trinity College Dublin, disabled students consistently raised concerns regarding the accessibility of lecture theatres, libraries, social spaces, and shared facilities. Feedback indicated a gap between technical compliance and lived accessibility, particularly in relation to sensory overload, wayfinding, fatigue, and cumulative access barriers. Existing mechanisms, such as individual reasonable accommodations, did not provide a systematic way to identify or address these issues at scale.

In response, the Trinity disAbility Service developed the User-Led Accessibility Audit Tool (ULAA-Tool) as a student-led mechanism to evidence accessibility barriers and inform institutional decision-making. From the outset, the tool was grounded in the principle that disabled students hold critical expertise about their environments and should be resourced and empowered to shape change.

Origins of the ULAA-Tool: A Student-Led Approach

The ULAA-Tool originated as a student-designed and student-delivered accessibility audit framework focused on teaching, learning, and social spaces. Disabled students were recruited, trained, and paid to conduct audits of campus environments, assessing spaces not only against regulatory standards but also against usability, sensory impact, and practical day-to-day experience.

Auditors examined factors such as circulation space, lighting, acoustics, furniture, signage, proximity to accessible facilities, and opportunities for rest or retreat. Alongside structured checklists, students provided qualitative commentary capturing aspects of access that are often invisible in compliance-led audits. This dual approach enabled the identification of barriers that were technically permissible but functionally exclusionary.

Early audits demonstrated that many environments met minimum standards yet remained inaccessible in practice, particularly for neurodivergent students and those with fluctuating or energy-limiting conditions. These findings challenged deficit-based models of disability support and reframed accessibility as an institutional design issue rather than an individual problem.

From Student Spaces to Staff Environments

As the audit programme expanded, many student auditors occupied dual or transitional roles within the university, including postgraduate researchers, interns, and early-career professionals. Through this lens, a clear continuity emerged between barriers experienced in student spaces and those present in staff workplaces, such as offices, laboratories, shared workspaces, and administrative buildings.

Student auditors began applying the same methodology to staff environments, documenting issues such as poor lighting, high noise levels, inaccessible rest areas, and layouts that exacerbated fatigue or sensory overload. Importantly, many of these spaces were fully compliant with existing standards, yet remained difficult to use in practice.

This transition did not represent a shift away from the student-led ethos of the tool. Instead, it highlighted how accessibility barriers persist across the student–staff lifecycle and how student-generated evidence can inform wider institutional practice. The ULAA-Tool thus evolved organically from a student-focused initiative into a mechanism with relevance across the institution.

How the ULAA-Tool Works in Practice

The ULAA-Tool is a structured, modular audit system that combines quantitative assessment with qualitative, lived-experience insight. Audits are conducted by disabled students or staff who are trained and paid for their work, often in collaboration with estates personnel and, where relevant, occupational therapists.

Separate modules exist for different types of spaces, including teaching areas, offices, laboratories, and rest or social spaces. Audit findings are prioritised according to impact and feasibility, distinguishing between actions that can be addressed immediately and those requiring longer-term planning or capital investment.

A core feature of the tool is co-design. Findings are discussed with relevant stakeholders, ensuring that solutions are both informed by lived experience and operationally realistic. This process reframes accessibility as a shared responsibility rather than an individual request.

A Fourth Space Innovation

The ULAA-Tool can be understood as a Fourth Space innovation within the university. Fourth Space practice operates beyond traditional institutional domains of teaching, research, or professional services, bringing students and staff together to address complex organisational challenges.

The ULAA-Tool occupies this space by creating a structured environment in which disabled students, disabled staff, professional services, estates teams, and senior leaders collaborate around shared evidence and shared responsibility. It is not a curricular activity or a research project, but a hybrid practice embedded within institutional systems.

Students are not positioned as consultees or beneficiaries. They act as paid auditors and contributors whose findings shape planning, policy, and delivery. This blurring of traditional roles is a defining feature of Fourth Space work and enables accessibility to be addressed in a more integrated and sustainable way.

This development also reflects the ULAA-Tool’s role as a Fourth Space mechanism, translating student-led and user-led evidence into formal institutional capacity. The creation of a dedicated Universal Access Project Manager embeds accessibility within estates governance and capital planning, moving it beyond ad hoc responses or individual advocacy. In doing so, participatory audit evidence is not only heard but operationalised, ensuring that lived experience directly informs delivery, prioritisation, and long-term planning.

Institutional Impact

Evidence generated through student-led audits has informed estates planning, disability action planning, and inclusive employment initiatives at Trinity. Audit findings contributed to the development of a multi-year accessibility enhancement programme, prioritising improvements across both student and staff environments.

The ULAA-Tool has also been embedded within Trinity’s Inclusive Internship Programme, where audits are conducted proactively at the outset of placements. This ensures that accessibility is considered as part of standard onboarding rather than as a response to difficulty, supporting smoother transitions into employment.

Importantly, the aggregation of student-generated evidence shifted accessibility discussions from individual cases to systemic risk and institutional accountability. This, in turn, supported the creation of clearer governance structures and dedicated roles to act on audit findings.

Recognising Accessibility as Skilled Labour

A defining principle of the ULAA-Tool is the recognition of accessibility auditing as paid, skilled work. Disabled students are employed and remunerated for their expertise, challenging assumptions that lived experience should be contributed voluntarily.

This approach reinforces the value of student knowledge, avoids extractive engagement practices, whereby disabled students are asked to contribute time, labour, and expertise without adequate recognition, compensation, or decision-making power, and embeds accessibility within institutional resourcing and accountability structures. It also positions disabled students as leaders and contributors to institutional change rather than passive recipients of support.

Lessons for the Sector

This case study offers several transferable lessons for the FE and HE sector:

• Student-led approaches can generate credible, actionable evidence that supports institutional change.
• Accessibility requires proactive, environmental assessment rather than reliance on individual accommodations.
• Fourth Space practices provide a practical mechanism for working across institutional silos.
• Resourcing student participation appropriately is essential for sustainable and ethical inclusion work.

Conclusion

The ULAA-Tool demonstrates how student-led, participatory accessibility auditing can move institutions beyond compliance toward collective responsibility for inclusion. By positioning disabled students as paid auditors and knowledge holders, and by embedding lived experience within institutional systems, the tool offers a practical model for creating more accessible and inclusive universities.