After a few months of setting up the Autism&Uni toolkit, the University of Chichester launched it to their new intake of autistic students in August 2025.
Helen Dignum, Disability Advisor in the Student Support team, alongside Ella Knight, Student Journey intern, spent time between January and July 2025 adapting and personalising the toolkit, including linking it to the new university wellbeing website and incorporating signposts to other relevant information on the university’s intranet.
We are always looking for ways to be more inclusive, and are enriched by the diverse population of students who join and belong to the University of Chichester. This project has given us the opportunity to refresh and restructure the information provided to autistic students. We really value the fact that autistic people are at the centre of this project and involved at every stage, as it matches our university ‘with us, not to us’ approach.
The toolkit has enabled us to highlight further the experiences of current autistic students’ of life at our university, based on an existing project led by the Autism Support group and compiled on their behalf by one student.
The next stage is to seek student feedback on the information as it is currently presented and refine it further. The first step linked with this project has been taken, but there is more to be done. We know it is important for us to get the right information available for this fabulous cohort of students, who offer so much to life and learning at our university.
We would like to thank Dr Marc Fabri and all contributors to the Autism&Uni Toolkit project – their work is making a significant difference to many.
Helen Dignum
Disability Advisor
University of Chichester