Peter Farrell

From September 2002 the Special Education Needs Disability Act (SENDA, 2001) required that reasonable adjustments be made in further and higher education so as not to place disabled students at a substantial disadvantage. There is an anticipatory duty on Education Institutions ? it is not acceptable to wait for disabled students to arrive and then think about how to make reasonable adjustments. The research focuses on students with sight loss, hearing loss and mobility difficulties. However, the principle of universality applies; good practice for one disability becomes good practice for all. The paper will report on outputs from Project ABECAS (Accessible Built Environment Careers for all Students). It will present a series of action points for built environments departments and individual tutors to help make teaching and learning more inclusive and thus ensure compliance with SENDA. Since judgements will vary about whether action points are valid, discussion that arises is also given. The research methodology is based on drawing best practice from disability literature in other disciplines, and applying it to the built environment. This is supported by a robust verification process including feedback from subject specialists, accessibility specialists, disabled students and practising construction professionals. It is concluded that there is much work to be done in the built environment to fulfil the requirements of SENDA. Some practices are noted as adjustments for disabled students; but an alternative view is that they are merely good practice, and if rolled out across whole departments they will substantially improve SENDA compliance.