Granting an extension to a piece of coursework for a disabled student may constitute a reasonable adjustment under the terms of the Equality Act 2010.

Examples of where disability may give rise to a good cause for an extension request:

• A student’s disability has impacted their studies and they have not yet accessed or been provided support from the Disability Service
• A student’s long-term medical condition (physical or mental) has recurrent/fluctuating symptoms which may impact from time to time, beyond anyone’s control, on their ability to study
• An unexpected failure or delay in a student’s support arrangements (such as assistive technology, specialist mentoring, BSL interpreters, personal assistance, and so on) has impacted their ability to study.

Staff considering extension requests require an understanding of what constitutes a disability under the terms of the Equality Act, to be able to identify where a reasonable adjustment may be required when a student does not identify themselves as disabled.

Any long-term (physical or mental) medical condition or impairment may constitute a disability. For the avoidance of doubt, staff should consider any disclosure of a medical condition that is not obviously short-term (colds, flu or other viruses, short-term injuries) as potentially constituting a disability.

Disabled students should not be asked to provide evidence to support an extension request that relates to the impact of their disability – including flare-ups of recurring long-term medical conditions. If exceptionally long extensions (greater than five working days) are requested on grounds of disability, Module Leaders or Programme Leaders may contact the Disability Service for advice.

Disabled students requesting an extension should always be signposted to the Disability Service and encouraged to engage with the support on offer if they have not previously done so or if their circumstances and needs have changed since their initial needs assessment.

The Disability Service does not routinely recommend automatic coursework extensions for disabled students. Disability Advisers will instead support students to manage the predictable impacts of disability on study, for example by providing strategies and tools to aid productivity and efficiencies for students whose disability means that certain study-related tasks will inherently take longer to complete.