2025 Access Insights Report

The Annual Disabled Student Survey 2025, run by Disabled Students UK (DSUK) in partnership with Snowdon Trust, is the largest national survey of disabled students’ experiences of higher education in the UK. The 2025 Access Insights report draws on responses from over 1,100 disabled students across 110 UK higher education providers.

The findings show that while disabled students’ overall satisfaction with university is continuing to improve, access failures remain widespread and are still driving disruption, disadvantage, and withdrawal.

The report examines disabled students’ experiences across six core principles of accessibility, alongside analysis of institutional policies and systems. It tracks change over time, compares results with previous years and long-term goals, and highlights where progress is being made and where barriers persist. The focus is not on intentions or compliance, but on whether systems work reliably in practice.

Executive Summary

The 2025 Access Insights report shows a higher education sector that has become better at expressing commitment to disabled students, but not yet good enough at delivering access reliably in practice.

Disabled students in 2025 are more likely to report positive attitudes from staff and greater understanding of disability than in previous years. These cultural shifts matter. However, they coexist with persistent structural barriers that continue to undermine disabled students’ ability to participate, progress, and succeed on an equal footing.

Key findings

1. Support agreed does not mean support delivered
Most disabled students who disclose their disability have some form of individualised support agreed. Fewer than half report that all agreed adjustments are consistently implemented. Many go without support at least some of the time because the effort required to chase delivery is too high.

2. Fewer students are receiving support plans
In 2025, fewer disabled students are accessing formal, personalised support from Disability Services. The proportion of declared students with a support plan fell from 77% in 2024 to 66% in 2025 and fewer students met with a Disability Advisor, suggesting a shift towards more informal or automated models of support under growing capacity pressure. 

3. Pandemic-era accessibility is being rolled back
Measures such as lecture recording, remote or hybrid participation, and flexible engagement improved access for many disabled students. In 2025, access to these measures has declined. Rolling them back undermines anticipatory accessibility and disproportionately harms students with fluctuating conditions.

4. Physical access and accommodation remain major barriers
Disabled students continue to miss teaching due to inaccessible buildings and unsuitable teaching spaces. Many are not confident they could evacuate all buildings safely. Accessible accommodation is limited and often more expensive, creating ongoing inequity.

5. Administrative burden is itself a barrier to access
Complex, fragmented systems require disabled students to repeatedly provide information, explain needs, and manage delays. This burden disproportionately excludes students with less capacity to navigate bureaucracy and undermines access even where support exists in theory.

6. Escalation and complaints processes are not safe or effective
Awareness of complaints and appeals routes is low, and trust in those processes is weak. Some students report being treated worse after raising access issues. As a result, many failures are never formally recorded or resolved.

7. Culture has improved faster than systems
More disabled students report supportive attitudes from staff, but this has not translated into consistent practice. Goodwill is undermined by unclear responsibilities, limited training, and lack of accountability.

These failures create legal, regulatory, and reputational risk for institutions. Duties to provide reasonable and anticipatory adjustments are not met by policy alone. When agreed support is not delivered, assessment is inaccessible, or escalation is unsafe, institutions are exposed to challenge and scrutiny.

Financial pressure does not remove these risks. In many cases, it intensifies them by stretching systems and increasing the likelihood of failure.

What Needs to Happen Next

The evidence does not point to a need for further consultation. It points to the need for action. Institutions should prioritise:

• Making delivery of agreed support non-negotiable
• Creating dedicated capacity to coordinate and monitor universal design
• Reducing administrative burden as a matter of access
• Resourcing Disability Services to advise rather than compensate for inaccessible systems
• Making escalation safe, visible, and effective
• Assigning clear senior ownership and governance
• Protecting progress in times of financial pressure
• Measuring what matters

Disabled students are not asking for exceptional treatment. They are asking for systems that work. The responsibility to close the gap between commitment and delivery now lies with institutions.