At the end of 2024 I sat down with the 2025 Students with Disability Officer Conroy Blood to discuss accessibility issues at UNSW, and how he plans to address them in his position.
Source: Meet your 2025 SRC – Arc UNSW Student Life
What does the Students with Disability Officer role entail?
The role has multiple functions. Firstly, you’re the point of contact for students, if they’ve got concerns. If they don’t know what services are available to meet their needs and they need help finding one, that’s a lot of the work that’s done. They’re also in charge of the Students with Disability Collective. It can be a space to have social and inclusive events. You can organise protests around disability relevant issues, and there’s also the disability safe space. You can run events in there or you can buy things for it or just make it a space that’s comfortable for disabled students to come in and visit. You don’t have a major say, but you have the ability to consult with the equity and diversity team at UNSW if you think there are gaps in policy, gaps in services. You provide student input as to what may be done better and what the university could improve.
Why did you choose to run for this position?
The main reason is to do specifically with the collective itself and how little’s been done. It was under control of students in the Labor Party and they basically weren’t doing anything with the collective.
They ran no events last year. Didn’t call any protests, didn’t have any social events, advocacy events, networking events, and it died. And it’s really disappointing for me. In that regard, I think, not enough people know about the space, know about what’s available, those sorts of things.
What is your current experience in the SRC and also with issues affecting disabled people?
I ran unsuccessfully last time, but this will be my first time on the SRC itself. I know the majority of people on there, so I’ve got good networks of people to help me.
I know Michael Rahme, [the SRC President], very well. He’s a long-time friend and he was the Disability Officer two years ago. I know he’s going to be particularly helpful for me. And Timothy, who is one of the past two Disability Officers, I know him well enough that it can be a good hand for me in terms of this specific work I’ve done in the space of disability activism.
I’m involved in the New South Wales Greens and as part of that I’m involved with the disability network, which involves formulating policy relating to disabled people.
I’ve spoken on behalf of some organisations to do with my disability such as Kookaburra Kids, which is a service that provides outings for people with disabilities. I was their ambassador a couple of years back, so I spoke for them at a couple of events and spoke about my own experiences. I also spoke in front of the board of New South Wales Health a couple of years back, specifically about my experiences within the mental health and disability health space, and what I thought was done well, what I thought could be done better, funded better, but also to give words to funnel people in to get help, to get encouragement.
You mentioned that you don’t have a very big say into changes in policy when it comes to disability issues. How can change come about then if this role doesn’t have much of a say?
It’s not necessarily that I don’t have a massive say, but there is a series of staff that I must get clearance from.
I’m not in charge of making the plans and being the architect, but the staff do. The sorts of things that are likely to make me successful are, one, getting petitions, having specific changes I want to make, getting students to sign it, getting student input, getting input from different disability organisations. I’ll be using my Greens networks to get in touch with and get feedback on what sorts of plans I want.
Getting [ideas] endorsed by the SRC, getting it endorsed by different disability groups [will help]. Also building networks with the diversity staff, with all those sorts of people and showing that I’m passionate about the issue, keen and informed.
What issues affecting students with disabilities do you hope to address?
The first thing is just more knowledge of what is out there. There are a lot of disabled students who aren’t on [Equitable Learning Service] (ELS) or aren’t accessing services they necessarily deserve because the university often might only have one stall at O-Week. And then at first year’s classes, they might have one slide about what sort of services are available, but so many people just don’t know what’s out there. For a start, I want to amplify what services are available, by putting more posters around the university, ensuring more courses make an active effort to tell students, ‘Hey, we’ve got ELS, we’ve got academic skills support, we’ve got counselling on campus,’. That would be a major priority.
In terms of what other needs the university has, there are some gaps in accessibility.
For a start, I don’t think the university has particularly brilliant crowd management plans. It can be quite frequent that walkways are just completely full and it limits people’s ability to get across campus. I’ve noticed with activism and protests recently, university security has just been putting bollards in the middle of walkways, or they’ve been confining students into a really small area, which means they have to block walkways. I don’t think this necessarily meets proper accessibility standards.
I speak as an able-bodied person, and I do want to consult more with those who experienced those sorts of struggles. But I do know from friends who have mobility issues that there are gaps across campus in lifts, in terms of accessible walkways, and in terms of information on accessible walkways. There’s no real website which navigates accessible routes to get from A to B.
Are there any other issues in terms of accessibility that have been raised to you or that you’ve noticed?
In terms of the grievance procedures for clubs and societies through Arc, disabled people are more likely to experience exclusion and bullying. I think there is more to be done to have better grievance procedures, which I know there’s work being done in the SRC, but also to have better mediation processes and ensure that clubs are following standards when executives do the wrong thing or allow bullying to go on.
Also, I think in terms of clubs, when they’re organising events, there’s a lack of information on accessibility, whether the venues are accessible, whether the noise levels might be particularly stressful, whether they will be in quite a cramped space.
Arc should be, at the minimum, encouraging clubs to provide this sort of information. Hopefully when clubs have events [Arc can] have more requirements around disclosing where events are being held, whether the venues are accessible and suitable for all students, so people can go to an event without having anxiety.
We’ve talked a little bit about people with physical disabilities. Are there any issues that have been highlighted more specific to people with invisible disabilities?
No one has raised significant concerns about the actual services that are available. There are a few small things that should be instituted, in my opinion, like more short extensions. Although ELS is pretty good, a lot of students don’t access ELS because they don’t know about what services are available for them.
I’ve heard from others that there are gaps in counselling, and it can be a little bit difficult to access these services, often with long wait times and you may only be able to have a certain [number of] sessions per year. So that’s something I’d like to explore, possibly expanding the counselling services available because student life can be incredibly difficult.
How are you planning to address these issues?
I know I’m the officer myself, but I’m limited to my own experiences. Firstly, I want to ensure that the Students with Disability body is strong and thriving. But from that, I want to ensure there is as much input from students as possible so I can formulate an informed plan. And then from there, I’ll be bringing these plans to different disability organisations, getting their input, getting their approval, getting their tick.
And then, from there, it’ll really be engaging with the relevant team in the office and bringing these proposals and doing my best to advocate for them.
Looking back at previous Students with Disability officers, what are some changes that they have brought about?
Michael Rahme has done a good job when he was the Disability Officer at increasing the visibility of services by creating a landing page. It was much more visible, what services were available. But I think that kind of initiative mostly stopped last year. Michael Rahme also ran some good events last year around neurodiversity.
But in terms of what’s been done in the past 12 months by Timothy and Jeffrey, [the 2023 Students with Disability Officers], very little is what I’ll say. I haven’t noticed significant changes. And there have been changes to the short extension policy, but from what I understand, that was mostly the work of Michael rather than those two.
I know Geoffrey and Timothy have done a little bit of work at making the actual collective space better and have more things available for students. But in the past 12 months, I think the kinds of changes and initiatives that have been made have been quite limited and quite poor.
The other thing is I have noticed UNSW rolling out the Sunflower Initiative for people with invisible disabilities. I think that’s a good initiative and I hope Arc continues to push it like it is, but I don’t know if that was Disability Officer initiated or staff initiated, and that’s something I’d have to confirm.
We’ve talked a lot about increasing awareness for services and some initiatives. When it comes to changes to the physical campus, is that something feasible in your role, or is that above your level?
It’s feasible if staff are willing to buy in to the changes I’m proposing. Obviously, universities are for-profit institutions and there’s been massive cuts to Arc in the past year. There’s been massive course cuts in the past and course cuts coming up. I think management as a full business enterprise may be particularly difficult with pushing for anything that’s going to cost money and obviously elevators, lifts and more accessible pathways do cost a lot of money for the university, councillors in particular.
I don’t imagine it’s going to be particularly easy to achieve, but I’m willing to get the work started. To start having petitions ready, to start formulating plans that can be brought in the future and to get the Students with Disability Collective meeting, doing things together, building networks and starting that progress. I want to build a movement because other collectives like the Queer Collective are very active, they do things together and they’re able to make petitions and actually create action as a result.
And the USyd Disability Collective is a little bit more active. I know the two Disability Officers there, and they’re good friends of mine, and I’ll be working with them. [I’ll be] working with people like that to start a general movement of increased engagement by disabled students with the system to actually make these changes more meaningful and more likely.