Students with disabilities and volunteers evaluate disability services

Kota Malang--Students with disabilities and volunteers or peer support for the disabled students at UB gathered together on the afternoon of Friday, March 14, 2025. In addition to breaking the fast together, the purpose of the activity was mainly for hearing and evaluating disability services at Universitas Brawijaya managed by the Subdirectorate of Disability Services and Inclusive Education.

No less than 114 students attended the event, both those with disabilities and volunteers. This number is actually quite far from the total number of disabled students and volunteers, which alone reaches 101 active disabled students and more than two hundred volunteers recorded in the routine mentoring schedule. Nevertheless, according to UB SLDPI organizer Sulistyowatik, this opportunity is still a very good momentum to listen and collect students' concerns.

"It doesn't matter that the number does not match the main data, it is actually also very much," she said. The hope is that they can still maximize the momentum to convey important things to advance disability services at UB.

The SLDPI UB team recognizes that the month of Ramadan is the right momentum for joint evaluation of disability services at Brawijaya University. By directly involving students with disabilities and volunteers, as two very active elements in the big umbrella of disability-inclusion at UB, it will have a very significant impact in improving the quality of services.

Director of SLDPI UB, Zubaidah Ningsih AS., Ph.D., stated that the service evaluation at the moment of opening together will reveal more opinions that allow for service quality improvement.

"Breaking the fast together also makes it easier to gather them, volunteers and students with disabilities. Because besides this is the even semester, where they have experienced almost a year of service, it means that there are many findings in the field that we need to capture," she said.

In addition, according to him, suggestions and input from students with disabilities and volunteers are key requirements for maintaining and improving the quality of disability services.

"Without them, this disability service would be nothing. They are the main actors in the big project of disability-inclusion at UB," she said.

By being separated into different rooms, feedback between disabled students and volunteers is expected to develop into a productive stage. Two forums were led by at least two SLDPI UB board members to gather opinions based on experiences in the field.

"Friends are expected to be very open in this case, it's okay not to mention certain identities if it is necessary," said Diny Wahyu Sujannah, a lecturer at FIB UB who is also an SLDPI board member in the service sector.

If mapped, there are several common points that can be concluded by the SLDPI board in terms of service improvement, namely on the flexibility of service needs outside the existing service package, such as mentoring and tutorials, and an individualized approach to several disability conditions, especially mental and intellectual disabilities.

In response, Zubaidah Ningsih AS, Ph.D as the head of SLDPI UB emphasized that UB is also trying to improve services for people with mental, psychosocial, and intellectual disabilities.

"The invisibility of this disability condition greatly affects our knowledge. How to be served, and over time there are also many people with mental disabilities who reveal themselves as mentally disabled, even though they did not enter through the SMPD pathway," she explains.

Some volunteers also emphasized that disability awareness campaigns for educators at UB still need to be promoted. There are some cases where they think knowledge about disability is still low based on questions, teaching practices, or attitudes towards people with disabilities.