Students as Partners

A sector-wide approach in higher education that elevates student voice by enabling students to have a collaborative, meaningful input into their university experience through a values-led approach. In disability and accessibility contexts, Students as Partners is particularly important because it shifts disabled students from being passive recipients of accommodations to active co-designers of learning experiences, resources, and institutional practices. When students with lived experience of disability are treated as partners in designing employability resources, career services, and learning materials, the resulting outputs are more authentic, relevant, and genuinely accessible than those designed without disabled perspectives. The approach challenges the traditional power dynamic where institutions design for students rather than with them.