Study difficulties don’t need to hold you back
UDISAS Higher Education
is available now for students and institutions
From structured assessment to a personalised report, our first product edition is built to help students:
ASSESS the practical challenges affecting their studies
ADAPT their approach with well-matched support solutions
ACHIEVE their study goals and fulfil their academic potential
Individual students can purchase an assessment directly
Universities and colleges can provide access to students at scale
Complete the online assessment
At your own pace, work through questions about your study activities and the challenges you experience in practice, building an accurate profile of your needs.
Explore and select relevant support
Based on your responses, UDISAS surfaces appropriate strategies and solutions for you to review, compare, and select according to your preferences.
Receive your personalised report
UDISAS automatically generates a detailed report describing your circumstances, with written justification linking all support outcomes to your relevant practical needs.
Better information leads to better support decisions
Support decisions matter. The right strategy or technology can overcome a significant barrier, while a poorly matched intervention can consume valuable time, funding, and opportunity without producing the intended benefit.
Making the right decision requires more than identifying an immediate difficulty. It means understanding the full range of challenges affecting the individual, considering how those challenges interact across different activities, identifying relevant support options, and giving each option proper consideration. With assistive technologies and their capabilities evolving rapidly, these demands are increasingly difficult to reconcile within a single time-limited interaction.
UDISAS offers a new model of assessment. Our platform comprehensively investigates activities and difficulties, surfaces relevant support strategies from an extensive range of options, and provides clear, retrievable information to support meaningful comparison. Individuals have time to understand and weigh their options, while professional expertise remains accessible where it adds the greatest value.
The result is a stronger basis for getting support decisions right first time.
The consequences of failed support interventions
Service Disengagement
When a system or specific intervention fails, the recipient can experience burnout from help-seeking.
Rather than trying an alternative route, they are highly likely to drop out or refuse to re-engage with services entirely.
Service disengagement is rarely just a passive choice; it is an active response to interaction failures within society.
Learned Helplessness
When a person is exposed to repeated, unsuccessful interventions, they are highly prone to internalising the failure.
They can conclude that their problem is unsolvable, rather than recognising that the intervention was simply a poor fit.
The compounded trauma of failed support adjustments can lead to disempowerment, distress, and loss of motivation to carry on.
Capital Depletion
People have limited personal, emotional, and financial capital; support interventions draw upon these reserves.
When an intervention fails, they are left depleted without the positive outcome that makes the investment worthwhile.
There is an opportunity cost of wasted time and if the support is locked in, alternative pathways may become unavailable.
No support intervention can be guaranteed to succeed.
However, when an intervention fails, the consequences can be significant.
Minimising the risk of poorly matched interventions is crucial to the efficacy of a support system.
The UDISAS platform is designed to improve the prospects of success.
Our methodology
Build a complete picture
Investigate circumstances, activities, and barriers in breadth and depth, so that important needs are not overlooked.
Identify relevant options
Apply a consistent computational framework to connect needs with relevant support strategies and solutions.
Compare with clarity
Provide retrievable information about what different options do, how they may help, and how their functions and benefits compare.
Enable better decisions
Create the foundations for selecting support that is relevant, proportionate, and well matched to the individual.
Better-informed decisions create stronger conditions for students to select support solutions that are optimally effective in practice.
For individual students
Agency, control, and confidence.
Students build a detailed picture of the barriers affecting their studies, understand the options that may help, and take the time they need to make informed choices.
The process is focused on their lived experiences, without any gatekeeping based on diagnostic labels, enforced disclosure, or documentary evidence.
Detailed reporting empowers independent action while also supporting conversations with the university or college.
For universities and colleges
Capacity, consistency, and insight.
Support staff are empowered by a cost-effective system for considering support needs across an entire student population.
UDISAS reduces avoidable variation, makes detailed information available when it is needed, and allows precious contact time to be focused on the complex cases that need it most.
The platform management interface provides the reporting tools needed to analyse patterns and shape future policy.
Simple in operation, complex in design
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Adaptive question sequences
Graduated response options
Optional free-text responses
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Links to underlying challenges
Weighting based on practical impact
Consistent thresholds for relevant options
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Detailed functionality profiles
Guided comparison and filtering
Practical explanations and demonstrations
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Comprehensive documentation of circumstances
Rule-based narrative generation
Contextualised support justifications
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Engagement tracking and platform reporting
Configurable support options
User, licence, and assessment management
Professional Expertise Where It Adds Value
The UDISAS platform is designed to be comprehensive, but niche circumstances can be hard to predict. Some people have difficulties or needs that are unusual, highly specialised, or specific to their way of working.
When this is the case, help is at hand. The platform allows students to request contact with a UDISAS assessor when the available support options do not meet all of their needs. The platform also triggers professional review when a response identifies an unexpected difficulty that requires further exploration.
The UDISAS assessor makes contact to discuss the issue and determine whether it can be addressed within the platform’s structured framework. Where additional information or support needs to be recorded, the assessor updates the automatically generated draft report before it is finalised.
A bold new model, developed by experienced practitioners
The UDISAS platform is the result of decades of needs assessment practice, extensive research, and contributions from specialists across multiple fields.
This combined expertise has shaped the underlying methodology and the platform functionality, with close attention paid to clarity, accessibility, and the experience of completing the assessment.
Developed Through Practice, Research, and Collaboration
Our Founder
Robin Hodges conceived UDISAS and has led its design and development, drawing on 16 years of professional practice and over 4,500 needs assessments.
Research into disability, study contexts, and assistive technology, in collaboration with multiple specialist practitioners, helped test the relationships between user responses, identified needs, and relevant support outcomes.
Collaborative work focused on how user inputs connect to assessment outcomes, ensuring that platform development reflected a range of perspectives and systematised best practice.
Explore UDISAS from your perspective
UDISAS supports different people and organisations in different ways. Choose the pathway most relevant to you to explore the benefits, applications, and next steps within your context.
Students
Understand the barriers affecting your studies, explore support that may help, and receive a report that can be used during conversations with your university or college. UDISAS makes it simple to identify your needs and find clear, practical solutions — no diagnosis required.
Universities and Colleges
Explore how UDISAS can help disability services gather information consistently, provide accessible assessments across a range of student contexts, and extend team capacity. UDISAS helps you to meet rising student demand by tailoring solutions to your circumstances.
Assessment Providers
Discover how digital assessment can complement professional practice, strengthen consistency, and focus specialist time on circumstances requiring deeper exploration. UDISAS reduces admin and standardises outcomes to empower both assessors and students.
Government and Funding Bodies
Shape smarter, fairer disability support with a standardised framework for consistent, evidence-based assessments. As service demand rises, UDISAS offers a cost-effective approach to assessment that provides reliable data, reduces duplication, and helps deliver better outcomes at scale.
Choose the path that fits your circumstances
Whether you are considering an assessment for yourself or exploring UDISAS for an organisation, there is a clear way to continue.
For individual students
Purchase a UDISAS assessment
Complete the assessment online at your own pace, explore and select relevant support, and receive a personalised report that records your needs and explains how your selected strategies relate to them.
For organisations
Explore how UDISAS could work for you
Book a discovery meeting to discuss your objectives, ask questions, and consider how the platform could support your users, services, or existing assessment processes. Trial licences are available to test the platform in practice.