Studying with a disability / chronic illness

Students with a disability/chronic illness, students with children and students with relatives who need care have the opportunity to enrol in modules preferentially. This enables them to avoid overload and better coordinate regular doctor's appointments. For preferential enrolment, please contact the respective programme coordinator of your respective department or programme.

Submit the application for disadvantage compensation by 1 December for the winter semester and by 1 June for the summer semester. A retroactive application for disadvantage compensation after an examination is not possible. If you need assistance with your application, please contact Corinna Steinebronn. Otherwise, the application should be submitted in full with appropriate proof to the person appointed by your department (see overview below). This person will decide on the application. If the disadvantage compensation is granted, you must inform the examination coordinator and the lecturers concerned. A granted disadvantage compensation does not replace the registration for the examination, this must be done additionally in any case.

To ensure that the evidence meets the required standards, you can provide your doctor with the following information sheet to help you:

Contact persons in the departments:

Applied Computer Science

Electrical Engineering and Information Technology

Health Sciences

Food Technology

Nutritional, Food and Consumer Sciences

Social & Cultural Sciences

Social Work

Business

Technical aids

For students with disabilities/chronic illnesses, technical equipment and work aids are often a necessary basis for being able to study successfully. As a rule, students procure aids themselves, which must be adapted to special individual requirements. The financing of the necessary aids for studying is usually taken over by the supra-local social welfare agencies or, in some cases, by the health insurance funds. To a lesser extent, technical aids are also provided by the university. In most cases, these are aids that are provided on loan and can be used by different students in the same way.
Technical aids can be, among others:

• Microport systems for hearing-impaired students (a transmitter-receiver combination for wireless sound transmission)
• visual aids, magnifying glasses, etc. for visually impaired students
• Special computer equipment or reading devices with highly magnified screen display for visually impaired students
• Dictaphones or special typewriters, writing pads and computers for physically handicapped students.

At present, there is a microport system and portable workplace lighting in the aids pool. If you need technical aids for your studies, please contact the representative for students with disabilities / chronic illnesses in good time. It may take some time to find out who is responsible for financing the equipment and to purchase it.

Study assistants

Some students with disabilities/chronic illnesses require not only technical but also personal assistance in their studies. They can get a student assistant on an hourly basis to support them with low-threshold activities during the course of their studies. Student assistants are usually fellow students from the same semester. They are available for assistance such as copying work, accompanying students to the library and typing work, entering texts or similar.
Assistance with household chores, personal hygiene or leisure activities is not possible.

If you need a technical aid and / or student assistance, please contact the representative for students with disabilities / chronic illness, also if you have questions about financing personal assistance (personal hygiene, transport services, etc.) or a technical aid.

If you need support or aids in teaching, do not hesitate to contact your teachers.

Guide to Accessible Teaching

Brief information on creating accessible text documents

These versions are accessible with screen readers. (A screen reader is
software that reads screen contents for blind and visually impaired people).

On the topics of accessible online teaching and accessible documents, you can find further guides, documents and information material here
Informations- und Beratungsstelle Studium und Behinderung (IBS) des Deutschen Studentenwerks.
Handout on accessibility in online teaching by the Higher Education Forum on Digitisation

Teachers at Fulda University of Applied Sciences can find further information on our intranet