Disability disclosure, confidentiality and evidence in a Higher Education context: Guidance Notes

A Scottish Disability Team Guidance Note, published July 2004

This article is available to read online or for download:

Legal Note

These Scottish Disability Team Guidance Notes are intended to provide general advice only, and are not an authoritative treatment of the law. Professional advice should be sought before acting on any of the material contained in these Guidance Notes as it may not be appropriate to your circumstances. These Guidance Notes are intended to relate primarily to the law as it applies to Scotland, however colleagues from other countries and elsewhere in the UK may find it useful to refer to the information contained herein.

Acknowledgements

The Scottish Disability team would like to thank Gavin Simpson [gsimpson@dendrite.fsnet.co.uk] who devised and wrote this document. We would also like to thank all colleagues for their most helpful comments on draft versions of the document. In particular, we are grateful to Lesley Paterson, Thorntons WS Solicitors, for her legal input [lpaterson@thorntonsws.co.uk].

A note on Language: In these Guidance Notes we use the language of "impairment" and "disability" as defined by the social model of disability. It is also the preferred language of the disabled people's movement. Whilst people have impairments, e.g. deafness, blindness muscular dystrophy etc, disability is the outcome of the interaction between a person with an impairment and the environmental and attitudinal barriers s/he may face. The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA), however, uses the term "disability" to mean what the social model defines as "impairment", so it occurs in this way in these Guidance Notes when direct quotations from either the DDA or its associated Codes of Practice are used.

 

Contents

1: Introduction

Why should an institution encourage a student to disclose information regarding disability-related requirements? How can an institution ensure that it is satisfying all aspects of the law regarding confidentiality and the handling of personal, sensitive information? What evidence relating to a student's impairment should an institution be holding, and why?

Questions such as these highlight the complexities involved when dealing with matters of disclosure, confidentiality and evidence as they relate to disabled students. They also highlight the importance of institutions having clear policies and procedures in place to avoid the possibility of the institution finding itself in breach of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA), the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA), and the law of confidentiality.

These notes are an attempt to offer guidance on some of the issues surrounding the gathering and use of information about student and applicant impairments in Higher Education. They have been distilled from a more extended set of SDT guidance notes on the subject.

The open-ended nature of the legal obligations and the great variety of institutional arrangements in modern Higher Education make it very difficult to draw out general rules of procedure. These notes are not intended as a substitute for professional advice on an institution's legal obligations. Their aims are to note the main areas where problems can arise, to explain some difficulties that can occur, to give some examples of good practice and to make some general recommendations for procedure and the development of institutional systems. These notes also assume that the reader has some basic knowledge of the DDA. Further information regarding an institution's obligations under the DDA, is provided by the Disability Rights Commission (DRC). In addition, help, resources and other information will be available within your institution. If you are involved in making any type of decision about a student's disability-related requirements, you are advised to seek advice from those with expertise in this area.

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