The Library: Library Disability Support

On this page you will find help and guidance for neurodivergent students to use the Library and its resources. For further support please book an appointment with the Library Disability Support team, by clicking on the Book an Appointment button.

The Skills for Learning website contains advice, resources and activities on university study, academic writing, maths and IT skills. It covers different study topics, including:

• Critical Thinking
• Editing & Proofreading
• Essay Writing
• Finding Information & Reading 
• Independent Learning & Time Management
• Presentation & Group Work
• Referencing

The Workshops page contains links to On Demand Workshops, which are recorded sessions that you can watch to help you improve your academic skills.The On Demand Workshops cover a range of different topics, including Referencing.

The Disability Resource Areas provide silent study space for independent study. There is a Disability Resource Area in each campus Library. In addition to the Disability Resource Areas, the Library has a wide variety of study spaces, including Silent Study, Group Study and Student Meeting Rooms. Please see the Disability Resource Area & Study Space page for further information.

There is a range of assistive software that can help you with your studies. Further details, guides and videos showing you how to use different packages and tools are available on our Software page, including:

• Mindmapping can help you focus and process information, plan and get started on new projects. It can help you ward off distraction and stay on track with your work. Mindview, a mindmapping software package, is available on all Library PCs.
• Texthelp Read&Write can help you with your spelling and grammar. It can also make your resources more accesible, with read aloud and screen masking tools. It is available to use on all Library PCs.

Microsoft Office 365 has a range of accessibility tools that can help you read information aloud, change the appearance of text to make it easier to read (Immersive Reader) and type as you talk (Dictate).

Please book an appointment with the Library Disability Support team for an introduction to using these and other assistive software packages, to help you with your studies.

The Study Support Software Finder will help you to identify Disabled Student Allowance (DSA) software, Library software or free software which will help with a range of needs or tasks. For example if you are looking for software which will read text aloud to you, or change the colours of your screen.

You may need to adapt Library resources to make them accessible for you, for example by using software to read text aloud or by changing the background colour of a page.

If you need to access books online, you may find the Library’s ever increasing collection of eBooks useful. See the Accessibility help link for each eBook supplier on the eBook Collections page for advice on how to make eBooks more accessible. 

You can read aloud webpages and change the formatting of webpages (Immersive Reader) using Microsoft Edge:

• What is "Immersive Reader" and how do I use it?
• What is "Read Aloud" and how do I use it?

The Accessible Resources page has more information about making Library resources accessible, including:

• Requesting resources in alternative formats
• Sensus Access - convert your documents into accessible formats

If you need any further help making your resources accessible please contact the Library Disability Support team.