Impact Through Research - A synopsis of AHEAD’s Research and Policy Team activities for 2025

Introduction: Dara Ryder, CEO AHEAD

2025 was a fruitful and busy year for AHEAD’s Research and Policy Team, and there are many examples of research activities and initiatives that could be described as having an impact on the lives of disabled learners, students and graduates, both from the perspectives of promoting equity of opportunity in tertiary education and in access to the labour market. From participating in Steering Groups, writing policy submissions and publishing credible and reliable research, one could argue that all our work has an element of impact in the lives of those we represent by working with and for disabled people to shape empowering and inclusive environments in tertiary education and employment (AHEAD, 2024a).

Many of these activities were outcomes of prior AHEAD research findings; for example, LaunchPAD (discussed below) was and is a strategic, evidence informed response to the persistently low number of disabled graduates engaging with postgraduate study, reported across a number of our Participation Rate Research Projects (AHEAD, 2024c, 2025). This article is drawn from each of the four members of the Research and Policy Team, who have chosen a facet of their work during 2025 to discuss, with a particular emphasis on impact. As such, each researcher from our Team will briefly describe one project, initiative, or research activity and discuss its potential in instigating change in the lives of disabled students, learners, graduates and early career researchers.

Dara Ryder - Research & Policy Team Manager

In 2025, I had the privilege of working with colleagues across AHEAD and the wider education and employment sectors on a range of impactful initiatives. Here, I want to share reflections on the first year in which tertiary education institutions could formally adopt ALTITUDE – the National Charter for Universal Design (UD) in Tertiary Education.

ALTITUDE imagines a future where all learners are transformatively included through universal design in education. It supports HEIs and ETBs to make steady, sustainable progress toward systemically embedding a UD approach - one that places human diversity at the heart of how tertiary education is designed and delivered, and that fosters success for all learners. At its core, the Charter encourages institutions to take deliberate steps so that structures, policies and procedures increasingly incentivise UD and help create a culture where inclusion is everyone’s business. You can find out more about what adoption means for institutions on the ALTITUDE FAQ page.

AHEAD, as Lead National Collaborator during ALTITUDE’s development phase, is a proud supporter of the Charter. In 2025, we worked with partners to promote it and encourage adoption across the sector. A major milestone was the first ALTITUDE National Adoption Day on April 9th, 2025, organised collaboratively by project partners and AHEAD. Our aim was for the first wave of institutions to publicly announce their commitment together and create a strong national call to action urging the sector to work collectively toward a more universally designed tertiary system.

With a shared communications pack and coordinated outreach, fifteen institutions and organisations announced their adoption on or around April 9th. This was accompanied by an intensive dissemination effort -  including sessions on ALTITUDE at eleven local and national events, alongside numerous meetings with institutions considering adoption.

Thanks to consistent advocacy from AHEAD and our partners, and the guidance we offered to stakeholders throughout the year, several more institutions adopted the Charter later in 2025. By year end, twenty tertiary institutions/organisations had formally committed to ALTITUDE and begun implementation.

Importantly, declaring adoption is not just symbolic – it commits these institutions to establishing a standing institutional committee with heads of key functions across the university represented, whose responsibility is to embed universal design over time in the institution and work towards the actions and goals contained in the Charter.

Already, we are beginning to see the innovative ways these committees are revising institutional policy and procedure to incentivise UD and take more strategic action to place UD at the heart of their work, and I am excited to see what they achieve in 2026 and beyond.

Dr Richard Healy, Research and Policy Officer - Reasonable Accommodations in Further Education and Training (FET) Project

The publication of Reasonable Accommodations in FET - A Scoping Survey Report (AHEAD, 2024b) is a notable example of tangible systemic change driven by empirical evidence derived from AHEAD research. Comprising of a suite of self-evaluation tools, the project (including the associated Groups that were established following publication) enabled Education and Training Board (ETB) staff to examine disability support provision in their ETB and help engender a consistent learner experience for all FET learners, as alluded to in the FET Strategy, (SOLAS, 2020), which is currently under review.

In 2024, AHEAD/ETBI published an analysis of disability support provision in Further Education. The research, which was entitled Reasonable Accommodations in FET-Scoping Survey Report (AHEAD, 2024b) aimed to gain a better insight and understanding pertaining to the recommendation, provision and delivery of reasonable accommodations across the 16 Education and Training Boards (ETBs) and the colleges/centres in their regions. We also examined current policies, practices, and challenges regarding the provision of reasonable accommodations for learners with disabilities in each ETB.

While the findings were relatively positive, with a culture of inclusion identified across much of the sector alongside notable pockets of good practice, the research also highlighted some significant (often crucial) areas that required development and improvement if ETBs were to align with the objective of the FET Strategic Priority of providing consistent learner support that is accessible to all learners engaging with FET, (SOLAS and ETBI, 2024). A synopsis of these areas included:

• Reasonable Accommodation policies and Needs Assessment procedures
• Some confusion among participants regarding how reasonable accommodations are funded across FET
• Staffing and staff training concerning disability supports (reasonable accommodations)
• Criteria for access to disability supports

For maximum impact, the Scoping Survey Research included a suite of tools to help ETBs examine disability support provision through re-iterative self-evaluation tools - Maturity Model - and Checklists.

The Maturity model is a robust, holistic review tool that is underpinned by 5 domains: Policy and Strategy, Infrastructure and Resources, Quality Assurance and Communications and finally Staffing and Professional Development. Each domain is self-reviewed using a clear scoring system to identify areas that require solution-focused interventions from ETBs. 

Following a Feedback Group involving stakeholders from SOLAS, ETBI and individual ETBs, a motion was passed by FET Directors which enabled AHEAD and ETBI to form a Review Group, in which each ETB was represented by two nominees, who would use the tools, in particular the Maturity Model, to self-evaluate disability service provision and identify areas of strength and those with room for improvement in their ETB. As part of the Terms of Reference of this Group, AHEAD introduced all group members to the tools and offered support in their use. Furthermore, AHEAD will have access to all internal reports from each ETB and the plethora of policy relevant data that will inform them. While this project has been relatively long-term, we believe it has the potential to transform the experiences of disabled learners in FET. The tools are not designed to be used once, rather the objective is that it should be embedded into FET’s normative practice and employed iteratively to trace progression in the delivery of disability supports. 

Moving forward, as we approach the latter stages of the Review Group, AHEAD/ETBI will employ these internal, local reports to write National Guidelines and Recommendations to assist ETBs, key stakeholders and actors to promote equity of opportunity for disabled learners to access and engage with their studies across the FET landscape.

Catherine Murray - Co-Lead Researcher of the Widening Inclusion of Disability in Employment (WIDE) Framework

In 2025, my work focused on addressing a longstanding and systemic challenge in Irish employment practice: the persistent exclusion of disabled people from equitable participation in the labour market. In Ireland, disabled people continue to experience disproportionate levels of poverty, with 24% living below the poverty line and requiring an estimated 52–59% additional income to meet disability-related costs such as healthcare, transport, and assistive supports (OECD, 2022). Structural and attitudinal barriers in workplaces further restrict participation, progression, and retention, despite robust legal protections under the Employment Equality Acts, the Irish Human Rights and Equality Act Public Sector Equality and Human Rights Duty, the European Accessibility Act, and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (European Commission, 2023; Irish Government, 2021). Addressing this employment gap is therefore both a moral, imperative and a strategic economic opportunity, particularly in Ireland, where 76% of employers report difficulty filling roles despite having one of the most highly educated workforces globally (Global Tech Talent Guidebook, 2025; ManpowerGroup, 2025).

Within this context, the WIDE Framework was eagerly developed and anticipated as a strategic, evidence-informed intervention to support employers in translating policy into practice, enabling organisations to hire, retain, and promote disabled employees while creating inclusive workplaces. Since its launch in October 2025, WIDE has already generated tangible impact.

Co-developed with AHEAD and Employers for Change, the WIDE Framework (a free online tool) which provides structured guidance across six domains to embed accessibility, reasonable accommodations, and inclusive practices while aligning ethical, legal, and business objectives (Accenture, 2023; Atescan-Yuksek et al., 2024). Evidence demonstrates that organisations prioritising disability inclusion report higher employee engagement, improved retention, and increased innovation, highlighting both the societal and business case for systemic change (Deloitte, 2024).

A defining feature of WIDE was its participatory design. Grounded in Open Responsible Research and Innovation (ORRI) principles (Wagner et al, 2024), it was co-created with 72 co-researchers - including disabled people, employers, and disability organisations - and informed by advisory groups that enhanced legitimacy and accountability. This collaborative process ensured that recommendations were grounded in lived experience and provided employers with actionable guidance. WIDE also created a one-stop shop across Ireland for resources and suppliers. Over the last three months, since its launch, the team has delivered ten induction webinars and collated more than 130 resources and suppliers in the resource library and supplier directory. Twenty-five Irish employers are currently registered, and website analytics show engagement across twenty-nine countries internationally, demonstrating both uptake and willingness among organisations to review and improve their practices (Global Tech Talent Guidebook, 2025).

While WIDE alone is not a final solution to systemic disability employment inequality (inclusion is everyone’s business), the WIDE Framework is the Roadmap to an Inclusive Workplace, supporting employers to translate legal obligations, ethical commitments, and research evidence into systematic transformation - with the potential to foster inclusive, accountable, and innovative workplaces well beyond 2025.

Nicole Bennett - Co-Lead Researcher of LaunchPAD

The past 12 months have been a frenetic scramble of activity for LaunchPAD. Founded in 2023 by the National Disabled Postgraduate Advisory Committee (NDPAC) in partnership with AHEAD and funded by the HEA, LaunchPAD is aimed at breaking down barriers and facilitating enablers to postgraduate study for disabled students. When I reflect on the impact we have had this past year, many things come to mind, such as the launch of our Voices in the Community research that explored the lived experience of disabled postgraduates, the formation of our LaunchPAD Ambassadors group, and the numerous conferences we have attended where we shared our research findings and built connections. But of all those examples, one stands above the rest when it comes to tangible and measurable impact for the disabled postgraduate community; our collaboration with Research Ireland on their standalone supplemental grant for postgraduate researchers with disabilities.

Lived experience was essential to building a policy that reflected the voice of the disabled postgraduates who would be availing of the service. Through feedback given in a series of focus groups with both disabled postgraduates and disability and access support workers, Research Ireland shaped and re-shaped the Supplemental Grant into what it is today. It acknowledges that researchers with disabilities may require additional supports to participate fully in the research endeavour and has provided support for eligible reasonable accommodations and costs where these costs are not available via other existing funding mechanisms (Research Ireland, 2025). The accommodations provided for are vast, varied, and unconstrained, from something as simple as paying for taxis to get a disabled researcher into the lab every day, to paying for ISL interpretation or text-to-speech software. The only accommodations the grant does not provide for are the changing of a building’s physical layout (capital works) to make it accessible.

It became clear through the various focus group discussions that there was a considerable burden placed upon disabled postgraduates (and disabled students in general) of disclosure of disability to prove a need for accommodations when engaging with their HEI’s disability support service. In recognition of this, Research Ireland has attempted to remove this burden and explicitly state on the application form that no personal health and /or medical documentation be included when applying. However, the applicant does have to be registered either with their university’s disability office or with Human Resources, as having need of accommodations. This person/s is then asked to tick a few boxes stating they are registered with them and that there is no other funding available to fund this accommodation.

While an impact evaluation will be undertaken by Research Ireland soon on the success of the policy, the policy itself is a step towards true equity of access for disabled researchers. It recognises that no one should have to prove they are disabled enough in order to be accommodated, but that they should only have to ask, and their needs be met. 

Conclusion

The primary objective of meaningful, valuable research should always be impact. For AHEAD, this translates into creating inclusive environments in employment and education for disabled people. When one combines the four activities chosen by our researchers, we have participated in and led activities, initiatives and research that have the common aim and potential to foster equality and equity into the lives of all the cohorts we represent: students of Higher Education, FET Learners, Early Career Researchers and graduates seeking to enter the labour market. Moreover, the WIDE Framework also supports employers who employ disabled people. 2025 was a fruitful year for AHEAD’s Research and Policy Team. However, we are not ones to rest on our laurels and bask in past glories. Bring on 2026, we say!!