Disability Initiatives at City College Norwich

City College Norwich aims to be a college we can all access with equal ease and dignity, enjoy a sense of belonging, and where learning and working have been designed with all of us in mind.

Accessibility

City College Norwich has been working with DisabledGo.com, the UK’s most popular Accessibility Checker, for 6 years. DisabledGo.com is totally free to use and has loads of detailed information about the accessibility of all kinds of places across the UK, including colleges, universities, hospitals, restaurants, tourist attractions, shops and more.

The Guides provide useful information, such as the location of accessible parking spaces, entrances, toilets, together with measurements and photographs. There really is lots of detail and the information isn’t just about physical access, it covers things that people with visual impairments, hearing impairments, autism, dementia, learning disabilities and mental health issues have all said are important. Each Campus has been visited and assessed by a trained surveyor, so you can get all the facts.

The guides are available on the City College Norwich website https://www.ccn.ac.uk/accessibility and through DisabledGo’s website http://www.disabledgo.com/organisations/city-college-norwich/main-2.

Sensory Area 

Young people with profound and multiple learning difficulties who attend City College Norwich are reaping the benefits of a new sensory area thanks to a grant from the Wolfson Foundation.

The new space is located within the college’s specialist centre for students with profound and multiple learning difficulties (PMLD) which opened in September following a successful joint bid between the college and Norfolk County Council to the Education Funding Agency.

The highly interactive sensory area features colourful bubble tubes, fibre optics and other visual stimuli including mirrors, a kaleidoscope and a star gazer. An interactive floor panel, linked to an omni-projector, is soon to be added to complete the facility.

Mental Health

A week of activities to raise awareness of mental health, organised entirely by students, saw over 200 City College Norwich students make mental health pledges and got many more talking about the issue.

The series of events, held in the StartUp Lounge at the college last week, was organised by four groups of Health & Social Care and Health Studies students.

Highlights included the pledge wall (where students added their own personal pledges to the 95,000 that have been made through the national ‘Time to Change’ campaign), a ball pit, mindfulness room, cake sales, colouring competitions and games.