Designing Facilities for Disabled School Children: Read OpeMed’s White Paper

Designing accessible areas for disabled school children is something that requires the consideration of the needs of the children specifically, as well as this there should be specialist advice given by an occupational therapist or other healthcare professional.

 

One child in 20 under the age of 16 is disabled. Some 60% of statemented children are now in mainstream schooling. Over 20,000 students have a disability- almost 6% of the student population.Yet according to research by the Bog Standard campaign for better school toilets, 57% of schools surveyed did not have any disabled toilets.

 

 

By law (under the Equality Act 2010, which replaces the Disability Discrimination Act) service providers are required to make reasonable changes – including to the built environment – where a disabled person would otherwise be at a substantial disadvantage; previously, such changes were only required if it would have been impossible or unreasonably difficult for the person to access or use the service.

 

A white paper collated by OpeMed, explores the boundaries that exist in current state and SEN schools for disabled students and looks at recommended and suggested methods for creating more accessible environments in order to cater for the existing and in fact growing population of disabled students.

 

 

Download the Designing Facilities for Disabled School Children white paper