Does It Count?
Disabilities can be visible or invisible – and most are the latter!
The Equality Act 2010 states that any long-term impairment – mental or physical – which substantially affects your ability to carry out normal daily activities counts as a disability.
Examples include depression, anxiety, cystic fibrosis, IBD, personality disorders, ASD, fibromyalgia, PTSD, chronic fatigue, IBS, chronic pain, diabetes, dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia etc, lupus, being hard of hearing, epilepsy, ADHD, and many more!
If you feel like you fit the above, you have the right to reasonable adjustments - you can book an appointment with the Disability Resource Centre, or speak to us/your college's Disabled Students’ Officer to find out more. The DSC can offer support and community as well - feel free to contact any of the committee, browse through the resources on our website, or attend our events! We also runs several online communities (usually over Facebook) – head over to our support group page to see more, and contact us if you have an idea for a new online community, or if you want to run an event.
This Year's Committee
The DSC has a student committee and a full-time DSC officer, any of whom you are welcome to contact if you have any questions. If you don’t know who specifically you want to speak to, the best way to contact the DSC committee is by messaging the Facebook page, posting in our private Facebook group (which has an announcement post with committee profiles tagged) or by emailing the DSO Elia who can forward your message to the appropriate individual.
Forums
The campaign is run through forums which are run twice a term by the DSO. This is the place where disabled students get together, share grievances, express solidarity, and use all this to fuel the work and policy of the Campaign.
Our History
The Disabled Students’ Campaign was founded in Lent 2010, with the aim of uniting and representing disabled students at Cambridge University.
After a long break the Campaign returned in Lent 2015 determined to tackle some big issues, with a small committee of 5 students. We had always known that in order to achieve anything substantial we needed the representation of a full-time sabbatical officer, and this was our end goal. In February 2016, after presenting a petition with over 350 signatories to CUSU, we triggered a referendum on the creation of the role. Over 4000 Cambridge students turned out to vote, with over 90% voting yes. We successfully campaigned for the introduction of a full-time Disabled Students’ Officer to the CUSU sabbatical officer team, proving the DSC’s revival to be an overwhelming success.