An increasing number of students with disabilities attend institutes of higher education (HE). Among this group are persons with Asperger syndrome (AS). Persons with AS have a cognitive impairment that can interfere with their studies and the ability to describe their needs and ask for support. This study deals with an assessment of the support services for students with AS from the perspectives of the students' relatives and the students' service providers at the universities they attend. The aim of this study was to investigate (a) earlier experiences and events in relation to the transition of students with AS to higher education, according to the relatives' perceptions of how these experiences and events affect university studies; and (b) the perceptions of both the relatives of students with AS and the coordinators for students with disabilities with respect to the study environment and support for students with AS. The approach is a case study methodology involving relatives and university coordinators for three students with AS. The coordinators' way of working with students with disabilities is primarily based on the coordinators' own ideas. No specific organizational routines exist for students with AS. The results reveal that the needs of students with AS have to be made explicit and must be incorporated into the support system. Relatives lack information about the situation and opportunities to engage in collaboration. Universities must adapt the support system to the cognitive impairments experienced by AS students and the difficulties of their everyday lives. The relatives of students with AS may play the central role in supporting the students and in understanding their impairment.
Students with AS need varying accommodations to be successful in higher education. In the future, ICF-based code sets, including demands on student roles, can be used as checklists to describe functioning and needs for support.
Students with disabilities in higher education frequently need support to succeed in their studies. Perceived problems in managing studies and everyday life may be the same for students with different disabilities although the reasons for support may vary between them. In this pilot study, a questionnaire aimed to survey everyday functioning in students with disabilities was tested. Thirty-four students with Asperger syndrome (AS), motor disabilities or deafness/hearing impairments were asked 55 close-and open-ended questions regarding participation restrictions and available support programmes. One aim was to test the usefulness of the questionnaire. Another aim was to identify students' perceptions of their everyday student-life and the support they are offered, with a special focus on comparing perceptions of needs and support between student with AS and the other student groups. The results indicate the need to plan recruitment of participants carefully and that the questionnaire was useful. The descriptive analyses conducted, indicated that the groups primarily reported the same difficulties, but the open-ended comments indicated that the reasons for the problems vary between the groups. It indicates that likert type responses to questions concerning perceived difficulties need to be supplemented by open-ended questions concerning perceived reasons to problems.
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