Disability campaigners have called on the government to halt plans to cut funding for specialist tech support for tens of thousands of disabled students in England.

Almost 10,000 people have signed a petition opposing Department for Education (DfE) proposals to withdraw funding for specialist assistive software available as part of the Disabled Students’ Allowance (DSA).

The petition says it risks “widening the attainment gap for disabled students, increasing student withdrawals, worsening mental health pressures, and reducing progression into employment”.

The DSA is a grant that helps students with additional costs they may face in higher education because of their disability. In 2023-24 more than 88,000 students benefited, at a cost of £203m.

According to the DfE, funded support for specialist software is no longer needed – except in “exceptional circumstances” – because advances in technology mean free, mass-market tools can do the job just as well.

“Where a student requires support that can’t be met through widely available free tools, they will continue to receive funded software through DSA,” a DfE spokesperson said.

However, the British Assistive Technology Association (BATA) has said free, general-purpose tools “do not provide equivalent functionality” to individually assessed, clinically recommended specialist tools.

“For many disabled students, specialist assistive technology is the difference between participating in higher education and being unable to do so at all,” a BATA spokesperson said.

The assistive software currently funded as part of the DSA includes specialist tools for text-to-speech, speech-to-text, mind mapping and composition functions, as well as software to aid research, note-taking and time and task management.

Sam Wood, 19, a second-year criminology student and disabled students’ officer at Edge Hill University, Lancashire, said living with a severe visual impairment meant he already faced significant barriers to learning. “DSA-funded specialist tech is what levels the playing field for me,” he said.

“Because of my condition, reading takes me much longer. Tools like Scholarcy are vital because they summarise long journal articles into key points, saving me from wasting hours on irrelevant literature. I then use MindView to break that information down into manageable visual chunks that I can easily refer to when writing.

“Forcing us on to clunky, free alternatives adds an unnecessary layer of stress and academic stigma, while creating a huge burden of proof for students to qualify for ‘exceptional circumstances’.”

Helena Mok, 22, is in her final year studying neuroscience with data science at Keele University. She has fibromyalgia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and uses tools such as Genio, Grammarly, Read&Write and Tailo to support her studies.

“The government’s proposal to strip away specialised software and replace it with generic, mass-market AI tools like ChatGPT or Copilot completely misjudges how disabled students learn,” she said.

“While specialist tools like Tailo use tailored AI to give short, relevant educational explanations, asking a generic chatbot a scientific question just results in a long-winded, inaccurate wall of text.”

Chris Purcell, who co-founded CareScribe, an assistive technology company, said: “Replacing specialist assistive technology with untested free alternatives is abandonment.

“It strips away the adjustments that make study possible and exposes disabled students to failure that is entirely avoidable. Ministers should halt these proposals, publish a full impact assessment and protect disabled students’ allowances so talent is not lost at the university gate.”

A government consultation on the proposed changes to the DSA closes on 18 June.

The DfE spokesperson said: “As technology has moved on, much of the functionality in the tools DSA currently funds is now freely available and already widely used by university students.

“We want to modernise the system to reflect this, while ensuring that all students continue to receive further specialist help if they need it. No one will be left without the support they need to study with confidence.”