In December, EDF and Fundación ONCE met in Brussels with experts, European Institutions and university students with disabilities to present the European Network of Inclusive Universities (EUni4All-Network). The project, funded by an Erasmus+ grant, started in 2019 to reduce the barriers to higher education for persons with disabilities in Europe, encourage international mobility and promote inclusion in the university community. Today, the Network counts 64 universities from 26 countries that have engaged to work on inclusion.
The event was also a celebration of the achievements of the EUni4All project and of the value of making higher education and international mobility inclusive:
- Alberto Durán López, Vice-President of Fundación ONCE, expressed how the international mobility of students with disabilities means also improving their autonomy, their professional skills and their employment opportunities;
- Maureen Piggot, EDF’s treasurer, highlighted that the right to inclusion in education, the core focus of the project, is an obligation for all Member States, stated by the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities;
- Fanny Lacroix-Desmazes, from the European Commission’s Directorate General for Education and Culture, pointed out that the barriers that students with disabilities face are also institutional, environmental and attitudinal. This project paves the way for more awareness, a change in mentality and attitudes, better targeted measures and more effective implementation.
How to participate
Participants discussed the tools in place to help universities participate to the Network and build a quality and inclusive environment for students with disabilities.
Cecilia Simón, professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, presented the first of three tools for participating universities – the Guide of Standards, a self-assessment questionnaire for universities that identifies key indicators of minimum expected compliance for the inclusion of students with disabilities.
The second tool is the Guide of Universities that Work for Inclusion, an analysis of the policies of the participating universities in relation to their compliance with the standards. Professor Emiliano Diez from the University of Salamanca stressed how “sharing information and best practices on how European universities are addressing inclusion of persons with disabilities is important to promote awareness and facilitate inclusion in the university community”.
Loredana Dicsi, from the European Disability Forum, presented the third tool, the training materials designed to raise awareness on inclusion among university staff and prepare them to reduce the existing barriers.
The web platform
The event was also an opportunity to introduce the new Web-Accessible Platform for Inclusive Universities, a tool designed for students to evaluate and compare the level of inclusion of universities across the European Union, and for universities to share good practices. Celina Handzel, PhD student at the University of Lublin who collaborated in the creation of the web platform, explained that its intended use is to provide precise information to students, such as where to look for a certain service, or what a particular institution has to offer to students with disabilities.
On the platform, the 64 participating universities can be searched by name, country and city, and are grouped by badge colour (blue or orange, depending on the quantity of information they provided about their services). In the future, students will also be able to search universities by their key institutional policies, access, university life and graduation.
Inclusive universities, in practice
The lack of inclusion awareness in the university environment, especially when related to mobility, is an issue with very tangible consequences. Balázs Markos, a Hungarian student with disabilities from the University of Groningen, Netherlands, described his mobility experience as both rewarding and very challenging: for him, the lack of coordination between Member States on the mobility of persons with disabilities meant that in the Netherlands he was not able to enjoy the same level of assistance and help as his Dutch peers. “Whose responsibility is it to take care of students on mobility?” he asked.
During the second part of the event, therefore, participants focused on what has already been achieved by national and European institutions in terms of inclusive higher education and mobility, and what more should be implemented.
The consensus was that, for higher education to be truly inclusive, persons with disabilities need to be fully involved in the design of inclusion strategies and in the monitoring and evaluation of the existing ones. This translates into more representation of students with disabilities in the management of universities, as well as monitoring mechanisms led by beneficiaries to provide feedback and measure the impact of the strategies themselves. Pete Kerchner, from Design for All Europe, stressed the importance of “including everybody in the baseline of the design process”, to make strategies and designs accessible from the beginning.
Additionally, it is essential to increase the communication and dissemination efforts to make sure that beneficiaries are informed about the legislation in place and the funding, support and assistance they are entitled to in their country.
Examples of best practices should also be propagated, to increase the understanding of what can be done to make the European university environment more accessible to students with disabilities and to create the potential to extend the successful strategies to other vulnerable groups. As María Soledad Cisternas Reyes, Special Envoy of the UN Secretary General on Disability and Accessibility, pointed out in her video remark, “inclusion and quality of education will benefit not only students with disabilities, but also the whole university world”.
Erasmus+ European Network of Inclusive Universities (EUni4All-Network) is an Erasmus+ funded project coordinated by Fundación ONCE in collaboration with the European Disability Forum (EDF), the Eastern University of Finland, the University of Trieste (Italy) the Lublin University of Technology (Poland), the University of Porto (Portugal) and the Spanish universities of Murcia, Autonomous University of Madrid, and University of Seville. The 3rd Multiplier Event was hosted by the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC).
For more information, please contact Loredana Dicsi, loredana.dicsi@edf-feph.org