Gateways guidance: 9.4 Selection

A disabled applicant’s merits should be assessed as though the reasonable adjustments required under the Act have been made. This is in line with the Act’s requirement to consider the need to take steps to account for disabled people’s impairments, even if this means treating them more favourably than non-disabled people. If, after allowing for those adjustments, a disabled person would not meet the competence standards for the course, a place does not have to be offered. This, however, can be highly problematical for two reasons:

• Interview panels may not be aware of an ‘invisible’ impairment or health condition and so decisions may be skewed.
• More importantly, it is highly unlikely that interview panels will be able to say with confidence what a candidate could achieve without a proper assessment and the implementation of reasonable adjustments.

Assessment of the need for and feasibility of reasonable adjustments therefore should not be made by the interview panel. It should only be done by individuals with particular expertise in this area and only after it has been decided that the applicant merits an offer of a place based on standard criteria. 

A disabled person should not be offered a place on less favourable terms than anyone else. An unacceptable condition might be, for example, that the disabled person has to have a personal assistant when they have not had one previously. 

One disabled person interviewed for this guidance gave this advice:

1. ‘Don’t generalise what a disabled person can or cannot do. Don’t assume everything will be a problem. There seems to be an assumption that disabled people don’t know what they can or cannot do! They know their skills better than anyone. Treat everyone as an individual.’
   Trainee

Interview panels should be careful about rejecting an applicant based on a judgement of possible barriers to achievement specifically associated with the applicant's impairment or health condition.