Students with Disabilities in Higher Education: The numbers in pictures
Every year AHEAD collects Ireland’s only verified statistics on the number of students with disabilities participating in higher education. Each year a survey is sent to the Disability/Access Officers of all HEA funded institutions covering many areas from fields of study to examination accommodation types and the information returned is collated into a written report and an accompanying set of interactive tables, allowing you to interrogate the data as you wish. The following graphics represent some of the key findings of our most recently published report covering the academic year 2013/14.
Students with Disabilities in Higher Education
There are now almost 10,000 students with Disabilities in HE in Ireland representing 4.7% of the total student body
Number of SWDS (Students with Disabilities) grown ten fold since 1994
Number of SWDS in HE by Year
| 1994 | 990 |
|---|---|
| 1998 | 1410 |
| 2006 | 3608 |
| 2009 | 4853 |
| 2010 | 6321 |
| 2011 | 6932 |
| 2012 | 7957 |
| 2013 | 9082 |
| 2014 | 9694 |
Breakdown
|
50.9% |
Specific Learning Difficulty |
|---|---|
| 10.9% | Mental Health Condition |
| 10.7% | Significant Ongoing Illness |
| 6.6% | Physical Disability |
| 4.1% | DCD/ Dyspraxia |
| 3.9% | ADD/ ADHD |
| 3.7% | Aspergers/ Autism |
| 2.8% | Deaf/ Hard of Hearing |
| 2.7% | Neuro/ Speech/Language |
| 2.4% | Blind/ Visually Impaired |
| 1.4% | Other Various Disabilities |
Concerns
While the total number of students with disabilities is up 7%, Deaf/Hard of hearing is down 6%
| Undergrads with a disability | 5.2% |
|---|---|
| Postgrads with a disability | 2.5% |
| Full Time Students with a disability | 5.4% |
| Part Time Students with a disability | 1.1% |
Unless stated, data referred to is for 2013/14.
To read the full report or play with the interactive tables, visit www.ahead.ie/datacentre. A text version of the data in this graphic can be found here: http://www.ahead.ie/journalautumn15-stats-textversion
