By Lilja Flohr
Finding a lecture venue, living in a residence or attending a sports event is something that many students navigating Stellenbosch University’s (SU) campus rarely have to think about. For them it is routine. For students with disabilities, however, these everyday activities depend on whether buildings are accessible or learning materials are available in suitable formats and support systems are in place.
Over the past two decades, SU has significantly expanded disability support through improved infrastructure, specialist services and growing awareness across campus. While accessibility has come a long way, students and staff agree that creating a truly inclusive university requires continuous effort from the entire institution.
One of the key drivers behind this development has been the Disability Unit (DU), one of the support units within the Centre for Student Counselling and Development (CSCD) at SU. Beyond providing accessible accommodation for students with disabilities, the DU works with faculties, residences and professional, administrative and support staff to promote disability inclusion through training, awareness programmes and academic support, according to SU’s website.
Having experienced campus both as a student with a visual impairment and now as Marketing and Training Co-ordinator at the DU, Luigia Nicholas has witnessed significant changes in accessibility over the past decade.
Reflecting on her own student experience, she said that when she arrived at SU in 2014, “there was less tactile paving on campus, less visibility of the bollards and not all faculty buildings were accessible”. Today, she has seen “tactile paving across most of campus” as well as more accessible faculties and residences, she said.
Having worked in disability sport at SU for decades and being a wheelchair user himself, Wentzel Barnard, manager of disability sport at Maties Sport, has witnessed the university’s transformation first-hand. Before the establishment of the ParaSport Club in 2006 and the DU in 2007, students with disabilities largely had to navigate university on their own. “The struggle and fights were your own,” he said.
Today, Barnard said that accessibility has become a far greater priority across campus. “Access is now a must-do box in any development at SU,” he said, explaining that new developments increasingly consider the needs of students with physical, visual and hearing impairments.
For first-year BMus student Carly Piater, who has been blind since birth, accessibility at SU has made it possible to thrive academically and socially. She said support from lecturers, residence staff and the DU made her transition to university much easier. “They are really inclusive,” Piater said. “They are doing their best to make me comfortable and to help me take part in as many academic activities as possible.”
The DU converts learning materials into accessible formats, including readable Word documents and Braille. “If I ask them to put a PowerPoint into a Word document that I can read, they do it immediately,” she said. “I’ve never had to beg for something to be changed.”
Living in Monica Ladies’ Residence, Piater described the environment as “super accessible” and said the people are welcoming. Its ground-floor room and proximity to the Conservatory, where the Department of Music is situated, have made daily life easier for her to navigate.
Second-year BSc Sport Science (Biokinetics) student Simoné Kruger, who has cerebral palsy affecting the right side of her body, competes as a para-athlete and was named Sportswoman of the Year with a Disability for the third consecutive year in May, having been a first-year student when she won her national South Africa (SA) Sports Award in August last year.
In August, Kruger was named Para Sport Star of the Year at the 2026 gsport Awards, adding another major one to her growing list of achievements in para-athletics.
Kruger said she has generally felt supported throughout her time at SU. “The university has looked after me well,” she said.
Beyond infrastructure, Nicholas believes another major breakthrough has been the shift in people’s attitudes. “There has been a big shift in attitudes from both students and staff throughout the years,” she said, describing both the students and staff as “more vocal and accepting of the needs of disability inclusion”.
Nicholas said the university’s understanding of disability has also broadened over the years, with greater recognition of students with non-visible disabilities alongside improvements in physical accessibility.
“There is a variety of support through the CSCD for students that many students are still not aware of,” Nicholas said, adding that the Disability Unit also “offers training and programmes for students and staff who want to learn more about disability inclusion and awareness”.
Barnard believes sport remains one of the strongest drivers of inclusion because it changes how students are perceived. “The student can move from being seen as a person with a disability to a sportsman or sportswoman doing sport,” he says. “The disability fades.”
However, he said misconceptions remain. “Most people outside [in] the world still think sport for the disabled is on a Mickey Mouse level. Definitely not,” he said.
Kruger also hopes disability sports will receive greater visibility. “We have to find ways to make people interested in watching our sports,” she said, adding that inclusion means recognising that “people with disabilities are not dumb or fragile”, but “live normal lives with slight adjustment”.
For Piater, openness is key to inclusion. “Feel free to come say hi and ask questions and socialise,” she said. “I don’t bite and blindness isn’t contagious.”
Nicholas, however, said one of the biggest misconceptions is that disability inclusion is the responsibility of the DU alone. “The biggest misconception is that students and staff think that only the DU is responsible for disability-related matters,” she said.
While students and staff agree that accessibility at SU has improved significantly, they also point to areas where further work is needed. Kruger, who has not experienced many mobility-related barriers herself, points to infrastructure that still needs attention. “Some places I have seen, the elevators do not work for wheelchair users,” she said. “Make the elevators work, if there is a disabled student or not.”
Despite improvements in physical accessibility, Barnard said some of the greatest barriers now lie within the academic environment. “The disability limits you, not your ability,” he said, explaining that delays in converting study material into accessible formats can take valuable time away from students’ academic and sporting commitments.
Nicholas also believes continued investment remains essential. “The biggest improvement we need is an increase in the budget for disability inclusion,” she said, adding that funding is needed for both accessible accommodation and further improvements to accessible infrastructure.
For Nicholas, the ultimate goal is “a truly accessible university where someone does not have to disclose their disability and the space is universally accessible for everyone.”
The progress at SU is clear, but the voices of students and staff suggest that accessibility cannot stop at infrastructure. For Nicholas, the goal is a university where accessibility is built into every environment, rather than something students have to ask for.
As Nicholas reminds staff and students, “Disability inclusion should be the responsibility of all environments,” requiring awareness, collaboration and shared responsibility across the university.
