ADCET Podcast: Barriers Before Entry - Improving Pre-Admission Guidance for University Applicants with Disability

This ADCET podcast is the audio version of our webinar: Barriers Before Entry - Improving Pre-Admission Guidance for University Applicants with Disability. What messages do our admissions pages send about who belongs in higher education? Through a systematic review of medical school websites this study highlighted gaps between inclusive policy and everyday practice. Despite sector wide guidelines, disability is often framed as a problem to manage rather than a valued dimension of diversity.Laura Gray and Bryony McNeill, from Deakin University, shared the details of their study as well as identified practical opportunities for educators to create clearer, safer, and more inclusive pre-admission communication. (February 2026) 

Transcript

DARREN BRITTEN: Hello and welcome to this ADCET podcast. This episode is an audio recap of a recent ADCET webinar titled “Barriers Before Entry - Improving Pre-Admission Guidance for University Applicants with Disability” presented by Laura Gray and Bryony McNeill, from Deakin University, In this webinar Laura and Bryony shared the details of their study as well as identifying practical opportunities for educators to create clearer, safer, and more inclusive pre-admission communication. We hope that you find this presentation interesting and engaging and you can find additional information to support this podcast on the ADCET website. Now over to you Laura.

LAURA GRAY: Thanks so much, Darren. Hi everyone, my name is Laura. I use she/her pronouns. I'm a middle‑aged Caucasian woman with blonde hair wearing black today, and I'm really happy to be here.

BRYONY MCNEILL: And hello from me. My name is Bryony. I also use she/her pronouns. I'm also a middle‑aged white woman wearing black today, and it's a privilege to be here presenting to you.

LAURA: Thanks, Bryony. So today we are going to be chatting about an aspect of our courses in higher education that we can too easily overlook which really shapes the experiences of disabled students before they even become students. And if you're like us, up until quite recently, we didn't really think about our course website that much, other than checking the details that were factually correct.

But we've come to realise that course web pages and the other information we provide to prospective applicants is often the first insight that they have into the culture and the practices of our course. And when our course information is unwelcoming or exclusionary, we're sometimes putting up barriers to disabled students before they even step foot in the door. And what we hope we'll leave you with today is some practical steps that you could take to address these barriers before entering.

BRYONY: I'd first like to acknowledge that both Laura and I are joining this webinar from Wadawarrung country, which is pictured here on the slide. We're showing a sunrise over a beautiful part of the coast near to Geelong which is where we're located at Deakin University. I pay respects to Elders past and present, and extend those respects to any Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people joining our webinar today.

As we come together to discuss disability access and inclusive education, I really want to acknowledge the deep knowledge and leadership of First Nations peoples in this space and their ongoing contributions to learning and teaching which have taken place on these lands for many thousands of years. I really hope our conversation today can be guided by that tradition of knowledge sharing and community.

And so like all projects, this one was very much a team effort, and it's important to acknowledge all of the contributors to this work whose names we have listed here on this slide. We come from a range of different institutions across Australia and Aotearoa, and we share a deep commitment to inclusive education and we take a disability‑affirming approach in our work.

So our group includes higher educations and health professions, leaders and researchers and education. Some of our group have lived experience of disability and some are carers of disabled people. We recognise that our positionality as educators and that insider status as university staff members can shape the way that we have approached our work.

And before we move into the main presentation, I really wanted to make note of the language that we'll be using in this webinar. So we're primarily using identity‑first language as we move through the presentation, although we may also use person‑first language at times. We acknowledge that language preferences are deeply personal and we do recognise that the terms that we're using may not reflect everyone's preferred terminology.

Okay. So we're going to start our discussion today by introducing our fictional student, Ashley, who is pictured on the screen. She's a young woman sitting in a library somewhere working on her computer. Although Ashley is fictional, her experiences are very real for many people who are exploring their options for studying at university. So Ashley's 17. She's in year 12 and she's thinking about next year and feeling that usual mix of excitement and some nerves that go along with that transition from school to university.

Ashley also lives with a chronic illness. So some days her energy levels are pretty high but on other days her symptoms can flare up and she manages fatigue, chronic pain and sometimes a need to rest unpredictably.

She knows from her experiences at high school that she's going to need some flexibility around attendance, deadlines and maybe assessment formats when she gets to university. Ashley knows that she can succeed academically, and she really wants to find out which university is going to support her to thrive in her studies.

So as we move through the webinar today, we're going to come back in, check in with Ashley and accompany her as she navigates that process of choosing which university she's going to study at next year.

LAURA: Thanks, Bryony. So we'll keep Ashley in mind as we explore this project and, as Bryony said, we'll come back to her. And I think it's safe to say that I'm probably preaching to the converted when we say to this particular audience that at the core of this work is the recognition that all students have a right to access inclusive tertiary education and that we should be upholding that in everything that we do.

However, we also have a focus on health professions in education, in particular medical education and, again, maybe it's self‑evident, but we really need a health workforce that is reflective of the community, including disabled practitioners. And, yes, this is important because everyone has a right to both education and a meaningful career, but also because we know that there are significant disparities in health outcomes for disabled community members. And if we can increase the representation of disabled people in the healthcare workforce, we might be better equipped to address that gap.

So what are we actually talking about here? So if we really truly value that principle of including students with a disability and ensuring that they thrive, we actually need to look across all stages of the student lifecycle. And the image that's currently on screen is a model of what we mean by a whole‑of‑student lifecycle approach. This model is reasonably complex, so bear with me a little bit, but it encompasses many different elements, of course design, delivery, organisation and management. And at the centre of this flower‑shaped diagram is disability inclusion, what we're trying to achieve. And proximal to that are some foundational aspects of tertiary education, including the educational culture, staff capabilities and policy and governance. And beyond this, the petals of the flower we can see the sequential steps in a student's journey, starting from when our students might be just thinking about tertiary education, all the way through admission, teaching, assessments, through to graduation and beyond.

And we can use each of these points in the diagram to prompt us to reflect on where we currently stand and where we might like to get to. Ideally though, disability inclusion will be a consideration at all points in that cycle.

But it's also important to think about where to start. And a good place to start is at the start. And that start of the student's lifecycle is the point of where we're marketing courses and sharing of that information about those courses with people who are not actually yet our students but who are prospective students. And then thinking about how we support them to make decisions about where they're going to apply.

And for this work, we focused on medical courses, because that's where we've been working, but also because we know that many thousands of people apply to medical school every year in Australia and Aotearoa, and the stakes are really high for those applicants. But, first, we're just going to go back to our student Ashley.

BRYONY: So, yeah, let's come back and check in with Ashley. She set aside an afternoon to explore some university websites to try and find out which one might be the best fit for her.

So she sits down at her laptop, opens up the main web page for three different universities which are located in her home state, and starts to look at what she can find on those websites.

Before I get into describing the websites, I just wanted to flag that while these are based on real data, these are fictional universities which are a conglomeration of data which we've gathered from different sources.

So looking at the first web page, Ashley finds it and it looks pretty nice. It's polished. The interface is pretty easy to read. But Ashley starts to explore a bit further into the website and she specifically wants to look for some information about disability support. Ashley starts to struggle to find anything that feels really relevant to her circumstances.

So there is a page on disability services, but it mainly describes support for mobility, vision or hearing‑related access needs. She can't find any mention of chronic illness. There isn't any reference to fluctuating symptoms or flexible attendance. The language feels a little bit vague and it's quite generic. Ashley also isn't really clear on who she can contact from that university to get a bit more information.

She then moves on to the next website from our second fictional university. This university has a lot of information. Actually, there's pages and pages of policy documents, forms, detailed procedures and multi‑step processes. There's a lot there but it's quite exhausting to sift through. Ashley feels a bit overwhelmed but she does manage to find an email address for the disability support team. She makes a note to email the team but she is a little bit worried about whether contacting them prior to her enrolment could have any implications for her application and her likelihood of being successful in being accepted into her chosen course.

She also does wonder how she would manage to keep up with her studies at this university if she's already struggling just to navigate their website.

Next, Ashley opens the website for the third university. On this website the main home page has a link which takes her directly to another page entitled Accessibility and Inclusion Support. And the page that opens is really clear and she finds it easy to navigate. It speaks to a wide range of disabilities, including chronic illness. And what Ashley finds is that it explains some really important information in plain language. So things like ‘What is a learning access plan?’ ‘How can adjustments support students with fluctuating needs?’ And it also provides some examples of flexibility options. So modified attendance requirements or extended timeframes for learning and assessment.

It also explains how to book an appointment with the team, and gives an indication of what to expect from that meeting. The information is written in a warm and respectful tone. Ashley feels a sense of relief and she immediately feels like she would feel quite welcome at this university.

So even though these three universities are fictional, we know that Ashley's experience is quite reflective of what we found when we started gathering data from real universities as part of this project.

So let's now imagine that Ashley's interested in attending your university and she's opened up your university's website on her laptop. What do you think her experience might be? Would it feel welcoming? Is the website easy to navigate? Would she be able to find those contact details and get in touch with someone for more information? So let's find out. I now invite you to have a look at your own institution's website, if you are able to do so, and imagine that you are in the position of Ashley or another prospective student who is thinking about coming to study with you next year. We'll just give you a couple of minutes to look at your websites and see what your first impressions are. If you want to pop any of your observations in the chat, you're welcome to do so. Otherwise we hope to have some time at the end where we can have some discussion.

And I really want to emphasise here that the intention of this activity is not to name and shame any particular university or institutions but really just to encourage you to take a step back and think about that very first interaction that a prospective student might have when they're considering attending your university. So in most cases that's going to involve looking at that public‑facing website. So please go ahead and take two minutes to have a look at your websites and see how you go.

LAURA: So I suppose in the interests of time we will keep moving. But I think this is a really useful exercise to do and we really want you to be thinking about how you might apply some of what we're talking about today to your own institutional web pages, and even more specifically at the level of course pages. So any courses that you're associated with, what does that actually look like?

I'm guessing that some of you found some really useful and welcoming information on the website that you looked at, but I'm also guessing, and perhaps it seems in the chat, that some of you didn't, and that's certainly been our experience.

So for the study that we conducted, we ran an audit of the public‑facing websites of all 23 medical schools across Australia and Aotearoa. We asked several questions of each website, starting with the language regarding disability that each used; whether the relevant information was easy to find, whether it was clear, whether our applicants needed to disclose anything regarding disability, and how they were provided with information about the requirements of the course. But all of this is really critical information that applicants need prior to applying to a medical program.

So what did we find? Now, on the table I'm about to share I purposely removed the text so that you can focus on the colours, and think of this as a heat map where the darker blue colours are domains where we rated schools more highly. So essentially what we would like to see, or the ideal situation, is that each of the 23 schools that are listed on the left‑hand side is dark blue across all of the columns. We'd like to see a whole page of blue. But as you can see, that wasn't exactly what we found. And there are some schools who have quite a bit of dark blue there and high ratings but there's also quite a lot of white and lighter colours where the ratings were much lower.

So it's fair to say that some schools did well in some of the domains but every school, and ours included, had room for improvement.

So I'm just going to focus on some of the particular elements of our results. And there is a bit of text on these slides, but if you prefer not to read, then that's fine because I'll be going through them verbally.

A key area was the language used regarding disability on course websites. And this table shows the ratings that we gave on the left with a definition and example on the right. And I just note that these aren't taken word‑for‑word from any particular website. These are synthesised examples.

So what we actually found was that on many of the medical school websites disability wasn't mentioned at all. The word "disability" itself didn't appear on either the course page or any of the linked pages, particularly those related to admissions. And instead, there were general statements, perhaps around the use of inherent requirements or information that will help you work out whether you're suited to pursue this degree, but there's no explicit mention of disability.

We also saw many pages where disability was really only mentioned in the context of a deficit. They were often statements like this one, which states that students with disabilities might not be able to complete their program if they can't meet the essential requirements.

In contrast, a smaller group of courses framed disability in a positive light and many of these made an affirmative statement around their desire to explicitly include students with a disability, making commitments to inclusivity or encouraging applications from students with disabilities, and then also referencing the need for students to understand the course and providing information regarding support services.

And if you think back to our student Ashley, I suspect you'll agree that she might feel quite differently reading these different websites.

What we also found was that the requirements of courses were generally presented in one of two ways. One focused on how students undertake tasks. And there's a paraphrased example here: "Good gross motor skills are essential for performing healthcare tasks efficiently and safely. These skills include lifting, carrying, pushing, pulling, standing, twisting and bending."

What's really striking here is the very explicit nature of these requirements and how little room there is for adaptation or adjustment. There's no mention at all of doing things in different ways or using supportive technologies or assistance to achieve these tasks. And of course, every higher education institution has a legal responsibility to provide adjustments to their courses to enable students with disabilities to undertake them. But that's just not visible in this example of an inherent requirement or information statement that uses this kind of framing. And a student with a particular disability reading this might not see themselves in this phrasing and might not see that they've got the capability to take this course and might elect not to apply.

As a contrast, other courses describe their requirements in a way that was focused on the outcome of tasks. Why tasks need to be done, what the purpose of the task is, rather than the way in which the student does the task. And here that's gathering information, performing procedures, assisting in an emergency. It's the why rather than the how. And in the context of a medical course, this would encompass interacting with the patient, perhaps using text to speech to ask questions, using a digital stethoscope to listen to their chest, or giving directions to a colleague during a resuscitation. And this approach is really different. It allows students, or potential students, to identify where they could potentially employ accommodations or assistive technologies and it's a much more inclusive approach.

What we also identified is that some schools were much better than others at informing applicants about what steps they could or should take next. Some schools just didn't provide any information, which we rated, obviously, at the bottom of the scale for clarity and transparency. Others suggested that applicants take a look at the information provided and reach out to the university. And I don't know about you but I wouldn't find that hugely helpful or welcoming. Which part of this massive organisation should I reach out to? What's the email address or the phone number? And what should I say to the person that I reach?

Other courses were a bit clearer, noting that making contact before applying might help applicants decide what courses would best suit them, and to better understand what adjustments or supports might be available.

But only the highest rated courses made it clear to potential applicants whether or not they had to make contact with the course prior to application. Often applicants were told that they should reach out or they were encouraged to discuss their circumstances. But very rarely was it acknowledged that an applicant with a disability might not be willing or comfortable disclosing their circumstances. And almost never was it made completely clear that disclosure of a disability would not impact on whether an applicant would be accepted into the program. And this is really important in the highly competitive context of medical programs but it's important for all applicants with disability to understand that when they disclose their personal information, what's going to happen to that information and how is it going to be used?

So our key findings. Unfortunately, as we have seen, no medical school scored consistently well across all domains, including our own. But we undertook this work, this analysis, a little while ago now, and I think things are already changing, because this work identified many areas where relatively minor adjustments to language or accessibility of information could actually have a big impact. Simply labelling information as being relevant to applicants with a disability and using nontechnical and non-discipline specific language would be really helpful, for example.

So we found many areas where things could be done differently, but what we've also seen is change is possible and many of these adjustments don't need major restructuring of course information.

In our own institution, I've been able to work with course teams across our faculty to review course web pages and in most cases make fairly small tweaks to language which could actually have a really big shift in the experience of disabled applicants. To do this with leveraged regular review processes, sometimes accreditation processes or internal formal review processes, but sometimes just those regular cycles of annual page updates. So those little changes of phrasing or provision of contact details at the right point, clarity around confidentiality ‑ all of these adjustments could have a really significant impact.

BRYONY: So let's return to Ashley and see what the next steps in her university journey might look like. Just on the previous slide, Laura highlighted some small, achievable changes that she was able to implement at our institution, and earlier we invited you to have a quick look at your own websites from that perspective of an incoming student. So was there anything that stood out, maybe some simple improvements that you noticed already that could be something that you might be able to implement? Even just some small changes could potentially make quite a big difference for a prospective student such as Ashley.

I think what I've noticed is that most of us have some really excellent support services and inclusive learning practices in place at our various institutions, but students can only benefit from these if they are able to get past those initial hurdles of navigating enrolment and actually come into our courses.

So we realise it can be quite hard to know where to start sometimes and so to help you with this process we've put together a list of reflective questions, which might help you to identify where you're doing well and maybe where there could be some room for improvement. We'll go through these now.

So our first question is around the ease of finding information. So in higher education we're often very guilty of using jargon and having lots of language that can be quite difficult to understand, especially for people who are coming in without that experience of university and maybe without family members or friends who have navigated that enrolment process. So as Laura touched on, one of the things you could look at is whether your course requirements and the key assessment information are written in plain language for prospective students to understand. So I'm from medicine and we're particularly guilty of having lots of complicated language. So just an example, instead of saying something about your medical course like students must demonstrate OSCE competency, meet WAL prerequisites and fulfil the program's threshold learning outcomes, we could communicate that same information in a much more straight forward way. So something like, "As part of this program, students take part in practical learning activities, including supervised clinical simulations and workplace experiences." That's going to give applicants a much clearer understanding of what the course entails, and also what might be expected of them as a student in that course. And that could help guide a conversation about possible support needs for that student as well.

So our next question is quite straight forward but, nonetheless, it's really important. So in this question we ask whether prospective applicants can gain access to all the information that they need through that public‑facing website, so before they actually apply. And one of the things we found in our research is that sometimes the information is locked behind university log‑ins. So there might be some great information and support services there but unless you're already established in that institution you can't actually access them. So that's another quite easy thing to check is whether or not you can access all of that information as an external party.

Our third question ‑ and just noting too we do have these reflective questions in a document for you to take away and use, which hopefully will be a hopeful resource. So the next question we're really thinking about some other small steps that can make quite a big difference to the applicant's experience. And in this question we ask whether there's a clear process for applicants to follow, including the details of an actual person that they can contact if they need for further information.

So I'm sure we've all had that experience of going on to a website and searching around trying to find the right person to contact, and then if we've found the person's name, trying to find their email address or their phone number to actually get in touch with them. It can be quite frustrating and really time‑consuming if this information is not readily available, or if it's out of date and you end up with a broken link or somebody that's not there anymore.

LAURA: And so the other thing that we need to think about is whether we say really explicitly and really clearly to applicants that if they reach out for more information, that they aren't compromising their chances of getting into a course. As we've acknowledged, it's particularly important for competitive courses like medicine, but I think it applies across the board. It's important that applicants know that we will treat these discussions as confidential and separate to admissions processes. And, importantly, that they'll be empowered to make choices for themselves with the support of the institution. And are we completely transparent in stipulating whether and when they might have to disclose disability, and if that's the case in your context? And conversely, what the possible benefits of disclosure might be, why might it be useful for applicants to reach out to the institution before they apply. And often it's the case that that conversation is a really rich source of information for students or for applicant that helps them make informed choices, that helps them get a read on their perspectives and practices of their institution and those conversations or that information provision step is a really important process before students apply.

I think this last point is particularly important. If a potential applicant does reach out for further information or to discuss their circumstances, who will they be speaking to? Will that person or that team have the knowledge and the skills and the appropriate perspective to respond to their inquiry in a welcoming and informed manner? Do they have the resources and time to manage those queries? And will queries go to the disability support centre who have got that really deep understanding of adjustments? Or will inquiries go to the course team who can really understand the course deeply? Who is best equipped in your context to talk to students or applicants about both the requirements of the course and future career pathways as well?

The answers to these questions will really vary depending on the course context, the institutional context and the resources available within the different units. In our institution, many initial inquiries are directed to prospective student advisers who have got broad information across courses, but also who know who to refer more complex cases to. Importantly, course teams are getting much better at planning ahead to support these conversations, making sure that the right staff have the right training, the right understanding of the legislation, the right contacts within the disability support team to be able to have constructive conversations with potential applicants.

So I think we've covered quite a few topics in this. If you'd like to know more of the detail behind this work there is a QR code on screen which will link you to the publication, the details of this work. And we also have the handy one‑pager which you'll be receiving which contains the reflective questions that we've just outlined and which, yeah, the amazing ADCET team are going to share on our behalf.

I know we've covered quite a lot here, but hopefully we've left you with the message that the first things that we can do to ensure the first encounters that prospective students would have with our courses are positive and it's so important.

But there are often really simple things we can do to ensure that those encounters don't create barriers for students before they even join us. And you're, of course, very welcome to reach out to us to continue the conversation.

DARREN: Fantastic. Thank you, Laura. Thank you, Bryony. Please join me in thanking Laura and Bryony for their time and insights today. Thank you both very much. 

LAURA: Thanks for having us.

BRYONY: Thanks so much.

DARREN: Thanks for listening to this ADCET podcast. We hope that you learnt something new about making tertiary education more inclusive and accessible for students with disability. You can keep up to date with our future webinars and podcasts by signing up for our fortnightly newsletter at our website adcet.edu.au/newsletter. Thanks again for listening to this podcast from the Australian Disability Clearinghouse on Education and Training - supporting you supporting students.