The A-Z of going to university

“The A-Z of going to university: written for young wheelchair users by young wheelchair users” was created by the Kidz Board. The Kidz Board is passionate about raising awareness of the issues and challenges that affect us as disabled young people every day, and our work means that we campaign to make a real difference for all young wheelchair users.

In our newly launched manifesto, education is one of our main points of action. As education is a key area in which we want to see changes happen through extensive research and surveys, we produced this A-Z guide, which is full of tips, tricks, ideas and things to think about when going to university. The purpose of this guide is for other young wheelchair users to know that they’re not alone and that there is support to guide everyone through their university journey. It's a support guide that we hope benefits students in their university journey from their first application to collecting their cap and gown at graduation.

The guide was created as the Kidz Board realised that support and information available for disabled young people at any point of their university journey can be hard to come by, outdated, and irrelevant to disabled students compared to what other students are offered. Through conversations about our own experiences and survey research, we also realised that communication and support from disabled students' offices within universities tends to be complicated and challenging. We want to change that and bridge that gap with the A-Z guide. Importantly we want current and future students to feel enabled and included within the university and successful in their education journey.

This guide not only aims to give disabled students advice on everything from applications to the student experience but it’s designed to be a supportive resource. That can be accessed at any time a student may need it. We hope this guide acts as a resource to allow students to expand and extenuate their university experience confidently, and it should be added to the network of support systems that a student can and will build throughout their time at university.

Whizz Kidz and the Kidz Board are working hard to support young wheelchair users in all areas of life, from employment to education, and we hope that this guide will help us in the next steps of this mission. As a Kidz Board member who has recently graduated from university and has been on the Kidz Board since the start of this project, I am incredibly excited to see the impact of change and movement that I know the A-Z guide will have!