Kia Ōrite Achieving Equity
Part 5 - APPENDICES

5.1  Glossary [36]

Access - Ability to join and participate in all facets of life in tertiary education institutions or organisations (e.g. access to: buildings, programmes and facilities; courses; educational materials and other relevant social/cultural information; ceremonial events; communication access).

Accommodations - Adaptations that remove barriers to enable equal participation. These are based on the premise that students with impairments should be neither disadvantaged nor advantaged relative to other students. Students can be treated differently if it is achieving equity.

Assistive Technology - Equipment or software designed or modified to enable people with impairments to meet their information, communication and mobility needs.

Barriers - Social and environmental processes preventing or disadvantaging access, participation and achievement of students with impairments in tertiary education.

Best Practice Standards - Steps that a tertiary education institution or organisation can take to create a fully inclusive tertiary education environment for people with impairments. These may be enhanced through quality reviews.

Codes of Practice - A guide for tertiary education providers detailing what is expected of their inclusion of students with impairments. Similar codes are found at the following websites:

• Australian Code of Practice (www.qut.edu.au/pubs/disabilities/national_code/code.html)
• British Code of Practice (www.qaa.ac.uk/public/cop/copswd/contents.htm)

Equitable Learning Environment - Reasonable accommodations have been made to enable students with impairments to participate in a course and compete on equal terms with other students.

Equity - Principles that ensure fairness to people with impairments in providing the opportunity for them to participate in and successfully complete studies in tertiary education.

Flexible Delivery - Adoption of a range of teaching strategies in a variety of learning environments to cater for differences in learning styles, learning interests and needs, and variations in learning opportunities.

Inclusive Educational and Learning Environment - One in which diversity among students is valued and procedures are implemented to facilitate equitable access, participation and outcomes for all students.

Staff - Everyone employed by the tertiary institution or organisation, including teaching staff consisting of lecturers, tutors, teachers, instructors, workplace trainers, assessors and mentors.

Student - A person who is enrolled by a tertiary institution or organisation to participate in any educational activity.

Tertiary Education Provider - A tertiary education provider means all or any of the following, but does not include an industry training organisation:

1. an institution (i.e. a university, polytechnic, college of education or wananga);
2. a registered private training establishment;
3. a government training establishment; and
4. any organisation that provides tertiary education and receives government education funding ( a community education provider for example).