DISABILITY SUPPORT SERVICES (DSS)

DISABILITY SUPPORT SERVICES (DSS)

ABOUT US

The Disability Support Services is a Unit of the Student Affairs Division at the University of Zimbabwe.  It is the hub of academic social and inclusive services for all students with disabilities enrolled at the University of Zimbabwe irrespective of their disability, gender, race or religion.  The DSS offers a wide range of services to facilitate equal access to education and conducive living and learning conditions for students with disabilities.

DSS provides the following services to all students with disabilities:

• Constant researching on matters of disability.
• Assisting students with disabilities in registration process and accessing accommodation on campus.
• Assisting students with disabilities to find suitable students helpers for them during their life at UZ.
• Training new visually impaired students in mobility, orientation and navigation of the university environment.
• Offering inclusive support to all students with disabilities during their university lives.
• Removing all barriers to learning and increasing physical and curriculum access to all students with disabilities.
• Raising disability awareness so that the university community has a clear understanding of disabilities to enable them to work with all students with disabilities.
• Providing curriculum support to students with disabilities.
• Identifying and supporting to meet individual needs of students with disabilities.
• Providing suitable technology including hardware and software to students with diverse disabilities.
• Developing positive self-image in students with disabilities.
• Maximising use of ICT to ensure success for transition of students with disabilities to reach their potential and become flourishing citizens who make successful transition to adulthood.
• Providing learning and other materials into braille for use by visually impaired students.
• Transcribing or converting brailled material by students into print for lecturers and other stakeholders to enable them to read the material.
• Training sign language for students with hearing impairment to facilitate effective communication.

FACILITIES

Students with disabilities are provided with specialized assistive learning devices. This provision makes life easier, enjoyable, and manageable and fully empowers the students to learn independently and avoid over dependence on helpers. Empowerment goes with responsibility.  All students are required to be responsible citizens. Specialized software for academic purposes is also freely provided for these students.  The Disability Support Services has a Library furnished with appropriately customised furniture and laptops suitable for use by students with disabilities.  There are braille embossers, computers, laptops, hard copy books, book scanners, braille books, audio tapes, discs and brailler machines.