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Stemming from the doctoral research, the purpose of this paper is to comment on disabled international students’ experiences of using assistive technology and transcription services in facilitating an equal educational experience to that of non-disabled students.

By using such qualitative research methods as interviews and a focus group, the aim has been to discuss the benefits gained as well as difficulties encountered whilst utilising these facilities.

Thus, a range of barriers to disabled international students in the area of technological support and adaptations based on their identities as “disabled”, “international” and “disabled international” students is identified. This has lead to a further discussion of the extent to which the barriers to the disability services concerned are created, reinforced and exacerbated by the interplay of students’ different identities.

The absence of any academic research into such unique experiences of disabled international students, particularly in the British context, highlights the original and timely nature of this work.

This study aims to determine the design factors that may affect the design of disabled students. Additionally, this study assesses and compares the reality between the public Jordanian universities’ built environment and international universities based on the Americans with Disabilities Act checklist – version 2.1 – to provide an accessible built environment for physically disabled people. Furthermore, this study examines the satisfaction degree of physically disabled people with the built environment in selected universities. Besides, this study examines the relationships/interrelationships between the students’ demographic factors, design factors and the degree of the disabled students’ satisfaction.

This research used different data collection methods to answer the research questions: literature review, observation and questionnaire. Additionally, this study used different analytical and statistical methods, such as comparative analysis between the local cases and the selected international case study based on the Americans with Disabilities Act checklist, version 2.1, descriptive analysis and Pearson r correlational statistics.

This research found that the Jordanian public universities did not apply all required design factors to achieve a high degree of the built environment of accessibility and provide all the requirements and needs of physically disabled students like international universities. Additionally, half of the physically disabled students respondents were satisfied with the availability and quality of pathways, ramps, doors and corridors, non-slippery materials, elevators, accessible entrances, entrances doors, methods of openings, adequate spaces for wheelchair students at the configuration of the entrance and the availability of railing. In contrast, they were unsatisfied with the availability of parking and bathrooms for each gender and signage systems. Moreover, this research found no significant differences between gender and educational level and all factors that may impact the students’ satisfaction with campus environmental design. Furthermore, this research found that there was a strong to very strong positive linear association and a significant correlation/intercorrelation between the availability and the design quality of parking, entrances, doors, lobbies and corridors, bathrooms, signage systems and information, ramps, elevators and stairs and the disabled students’ satisfaction degree.

This research tends to help disabled students participate entirely and independently in the built environment and all aspects of society, involve them within the community and facilitate their access to universities’ urban space. This research considers guidelines and checklists for architects and policymakers to apply through all design and retrofitting processes to meet disabled students’ requirements. This research provides a vital understanding of the needs of disabled students in educational spaces to create a barrier-free campus environment.

Inclusive design is a relatively new architectural concept. It provides means to ensure access and equal participation in the built environment, offers the opportunity to improve and design new equivalent solutions in architecture simultaneously and covers the way for a broad clarification of equality. Applying the concepts of inclusive design is a step toward eliminating the barriers imposed on the built environment in public universities and creating an accessible built environment. In addition, this research can guide future research in other institutions.

This chapter is an overview of the status of international education with regard to services for special needs students and more specifically learning disabled students in international schools. While some 1,000+schools describe themselves as international, being international does not necessarily describe the services provided to students and families, the philosophical stance of the school or school board, nor does it describe the intent of being international for teachers and students alike. International schools have a very mixed history of serving special education students. This chapter provides a review of the situation for learning disabled and special needs students in international schools, examines the current status of services and provides examples of sponsored projects, professional development programs and international schools created to embrace special needs students.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze a group of disabled students’ views and feelings on disclosing the nature of their impairments by applying via Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS, 2016), using a numerical coding system. The adequacy of “disability” categories on both university and UCAS forms, and related sensitive issues will be central to this paper.

Thus, the author will visit the debates surrounding the two contrasting models of “disability”, namely, the individual medical and the social model of “disability”. The associated advantages and disadvantages that are ensued will be examined.

This paper will conclude by offering inclusive solutions to disclosure, which are sensitive to both impairment and cultural-related issues and encourage disclosure from students with a wide range of impairments. The benefits of all-encompassing inclusive practice and the resulting wider implications for the student population at large will, therefore, be highlighted.

There is an acute shortage of similar kinds of research conducted on disabled international students’ experiences of disclosure, which make the current work timely and original.

The purpose of this study is to examine the satisfaction aspects among disabled students in some universities in the Middle East and to examine the impact of socio-demographic factors on such satisfaction with regard to the services provided by their universities.

The sample consisted of 251 subjects from Oman, Qatar, Jordan and Yemen. Comparative means were used to examine the importance of satisfaction aspects and analysis of variance (ANOVA) as well as multi-analysis of variance (MANOVA) were used to examine the role of the socio-demographic factors in explaining the disabled students’ satisfaction. Satisfaction aspects included: social, psychological, educational, environmental and health, while the socio-demographic variables included were: country, specialization, kind of disability, gender GPA and degree of disability.

The findings revealed that social satisfaction was the greatest, followed by psychological, educational, environmental and health satisfaction in order. The results of the ANOVA revealed that all socio-demographic factors impacted significantly on the satisfaction of disabled students, except gender and the degree of disability. While, the MANOVA findings reported that Jordanian and Qatari students had higher educational and psychological satisfaction than Omani and Yemeni students.

The present findings can be considered as limited and hard to generalize on all regions’ universities because the gap between them in disability services is very large. Some of universities have very good services, while the disability services of other universities are very limited or not existed.

The findings will be helping the educators and administrative people to offer more services to disabled students.

This is the first comparative study in the Middle East area.

This study examines the relationship between entrepreneurial passion, entrepreneurial support programs and entrepreneurial intention, and the moderating role of entrepreneurial support programs in the relationship between entrepreneurial passion and entrepreneurial intention, among students with physical disabilities in Nigerian tertiary institutions.

This study used a closed-ended questionnaire survey, composed of previously validated scales, to sample 209 students with physical disabilities at tertiary institutions in Nigeria. Hierarchal regression was performed to assess the relationships between the variables and test the hypotheses.

Both entrepreneurial passion and entrepreneurial support programs were found to be significantly positively related to entrepreneurial intention, and entrepreneurial support programs also moderated the relationship between entrepreneurial passion and entrepreneurial intention.

This research paper identifies that developing entrepreneurial passion and providing accessible and inclusive entrepreneurial support programs are valuable in supporting and facilitating a passage into entrepreneurship for those with disabilities.

This research paper addresses calls for further understanding of how those with disabilities can be supported into entrepreneurship, by identifying supporting factors. The research paper provides further understanding of the entrepreneurial passion and intention nexus by exploring the relationship within those with a physical disability, where significant barriers exist and within a developing country context where entrepreneurship might be a necessity rather than driven by passion.

In other words, LD can affect the way in which a person takes in, remembers, understands, and expresses information. Typically, a person with LD is of average intelligence, based on his/her intelligence quotient (IQ); however his/her academic performance is different from how they should be able to perform. People with LD are intelligent and have abilities to learn despite difficulties in processing information; however, they require specialized interventions in home, school, community, and workplace settings, appropriate to their individual strengths and needs, including but not limited to (a) specific skill instruction, (b) the development of compensatory strategies, (c) the development of self-advocacy skills, and (d) appropriate accommodation. Typically, a student with mild LD, who is identified and provided learning-disabilities instruction, can enhance his/her academic achievement, however, a student with undetected LD can struggle with low grades, low self-esteem, a loss of interest in higher education, and later reduced employment opportunities as an adult (Burkhardt, Obiakor, & Rotatori, 2004).

Access to services for consumers with disabilities (CwD) has gained increased attention from researchers and service providers in recent years. Consequently, ensuring that services are designed and maintained in a manner that is more inclusive and accessible to CwD has become imperative. However, academic literature is fragmented and thus, this study aims to provide a state-of-the-art synthesis for further theoretical development.

This study reviews 77 relevant articles in the domain using a multidisciplinary review following the PRISMA protocol, and a thematic analysis was conducted.

The study thoroughly synthesizes the theories, contexts and methods used in the extant literature. Next, the study presents a new theoretical framework with four broader dimensions: beyond regulations, towards accessibility, value co-creation, inclusion of CwD and role of stakeholders. Furthermore, it highlights the related sub-dimensions attributed to the service design stages (planning, usage and post-usage). Based on this, the study offers critical avenues for future research using the Double Diamond framework.

The study contributes significantly to service design literature for CwD and transformative service research by developing a new consolidated theoretical framework. The findings should direct service providers towards better service designs in related fields. Socially, the study has implications for promoting accessibility and inclusion for CwD, while providing them the freedom of choice.

Consideration can be defined as the process of giving careful thought to something. When an IEP team considers the instructional programming and related goals and objectives for a student identified eligible for special education services, the process gives careful attention to a multitude of factors from different perspectives that result in individualized instruction for that student. Similarly, when assistive technology is considered for students with certain learning characteristics, careful attention must be given to ensure that the recommended assistive technology is required for the student to be successful and reflects an appropriate match between him/her and the tools (Zabala, 1995, 1996). For example, given that prescription eyeglasses can be considered assistive technology, and that a certain degree of visual acuity is generally needed in order for an individual to visually access print, one can see the importance of ensuring that the prescription is indeed required for an individual to perform and is appropriately matched to the visual needs of the individual. If eyeglasses are arbitrarily assigned to an individual, they may serve as an obstacle for the individual to see properly, thus, hampering his/her overall performance.

The purpose of this paper is to address how virtual learning environments (VLEs) can be designed to include the needs of learners with multiple disabilities. Specifically, it employs AI to show how specific learning materials from a huge repository of learning materials can be recommended to learners with various disabilities. This is made possible through employing semantic web technology to model the learner and their needs.

The paper reviews personalised learning for students with disabilities, revealing the shortcomings of existing e-learning environments with respect to students with multiple disabilities. It then proceeds to show how the needs of a student with multiple disabilities can be analysed and then simple logical operators and knowledge-based rules used to personalise learning materials in order to meet the needs of such students.

It has been acknowledged in literature that designing for cases of multiple disabilities is difficult. This paper shows that existing learning environments do not consider the needs of students with multiple disabilities. As they are not flexibly designed and hence not adaptable, they cannot meet the needs of such students. Nevertheless, it is possible to anticipate that students with multiple disabilities would use learning environments, and then design learning environments to meet their needs.

This paper, by presenting various combination rules to present specific learning materials to students with multiple disabilities, lays the foundation for the design and development of learning environments that are inclusive of all learners, regardless of their abilities or disabilities. This could potentially stimulate designers of such systems to produce such inclusive environments. Hopefully, future learning environments will be adaptive enough to meet the needs of learners with multiple disabilities.

This paper, by proposing a solution towards developing inclusive learning environments, is a step towards inclusion of students with multiple disabilities in VLEs. When these students are able to access these environments with little or no barrier, they will be included in the learning community and also make valuable contributions.

So far, no study has proposed a solution to the difficulties faced by students with multiple disabilities in existing learning environments. This study is the first to raise this issue and propose a solution to designing for multiple disabilities. This will hopefully encourage other researchers to delve into researching the educational needs of students with multiple disabilities.