Dyslexia at university.

I have just started university and have been diagnosed with dyslexia, dyscalculia and developmental dyspraxia with weakness in cognitive functioning. I have booked a needs assessment next week and I would like to know what questions they ask you regarding your studies. Also my educational psychologist has outlined in the report that I would benefit from a note taker, study coach, writer and a reader in exams.

I would like to know is the needs assessment regarding what I have outlined above or is it just about equipment if so what equipment is usually available for students with dyslexia.

Hi,

Going to move this one to Disabled Student Forum. You're going to get betters answers there, I think.

Its about both in a way. Basically they ll ask you a serious of questions relating to how your dys effect you, for example on my needs assessment I was asked does it effect your ability to make notes, your ability to concentrate, can you notetake by hand efficiently, can you type, how does it effect you in exams/revision and lots of basic things like that. Then they ll suggest and let you try out different equipment that might help and potential suggest 1:1 support. Its very unlikely that after you read your ed pysch report that they would disagree with any of their suggestions really
As for what equipment is usually available there are quite a few options:

Laptops (if you re with sfe theres a £200 charge for them)
Printers/scanners
Dictaphones with microphones
Then software such as
Dragon (speech to text software)
Text to speech like read and write (those can have screen overlays and markers built into them and dictionaries and other useful little tools)
Mindmapping software

Then there's 1:1 support like:
1:1 study mentors, library assistants and readers (they can recommend readers for exams and extra time in their assessments too, although personally my uni provided extra time and a pc and seperate room for my exams without it being on my needs assessment but it varies).


(I have dyslexia and developmental dyspraxia myself so if there's any other questions you have about dsa/support or in general drop me a Pm and I ll do my best to help ).

Claire how do the laptops work because I don't actually have one at the moment I am happy to pay the £200 but what laptop would I usually get. The reason I ask is that I am doing an ICT degree and a basic laptop would struggle with my studies due to editing and programming etc. The laptop I would like preferable is an apple I don't mind paying for the apple however do they offer this upgrade or not?

I have had dsa twice and always stuck with my own pc I had as i was more comfortable with that (and a better spec than what they offered me in my needs assessments) .
But as far as I m aware they normally recommend something pretty basic that would be like an i3 processor and 500gb hard drive with a 15 inch screen type thing.
If you wanted a macbook you would have to pay an upgrade fee (but if you're willing to pay for that, most suppliers have a reasonable range to chose from) but then also the software they provide is cheaper in some cases for them to get the windows versions so you might have to pay to upgrade the software to the mac version. Normally, you can request any upgrades you wanted to pay for when you put the order in with the supplier

Do you know roughly how much an upgrade will cost? or is this different for different people. I think I would only get a mac if I needed certain software but I don't know what that would be. As I am sure they have stopped apple macs unless you need certain software however I don't know what that certain software could be.

I think it would depend on the supplier as they have slightly different prices between suppliers. I think they dont do macs at all unless you have something/some software you absolutely needed and its was only on mac (i dont think its down to needing it for your course anymore).Can you contactyour course leader and ask if you need a mac for anything for you course maybe?