In Part One: Reading and Writing in School, Without Losing the Thread we looked at how ADHD can affect reading and writing in school. At university, the demands change shape.
School often provides more external structure: timetables, regular check-ins and homework set in manageable chunks. At university, students are generally expected to organise more of this for themselves. Support varies between institutions, but most students need to follow hour-long lectures, work through long reading lists independently, keep track of deadlines that may be mentioned only once, and turn it all into extended written assignments. For some students with ADHD, the challenge isn’t only understanding the material. It’s capturing it, organising it and coming back to it without someone else holding the thread.
This is where the Disabled Students’ Allowance (DSA) can help. DSA can cover study-related costs that eligible students have because of a disability or long-term condition. Support is based on an individual needs assessment rather than a standard package, and a well-matched set of tools can take some of the load off working memory.
Lectures and seminars using Sensory Scribe: Taking notes in a lecture means listening, deciding what matters and writing it down, all at once. Some students with ADHD find that something has to give, and often it’s the listening.
Sensory Scribe records the session on the student’s own device and shows live captions as it goes, with captioning and transcription processed locally on the device rather than in the cloud. This can ease the pressure to listen and take detailed notes at the same time, while the recording and transcript give students a reference to return to if their attention drifts. When the lecturer mentions a deadline or a key topic, a single click adds a coloured marker to the recording. Lecture slides or other PDFs can be loaded alongside the notes and transcript, so everything sits in one place rather than across three folders and a notebook. Afterwards, the transcript can be searched, which is usually much quicker than replaying an hour of audio. As with any transcription, it’s worth checking key details such as dates and names against the slides or recording.
Sensory Scribe can also caption and transcribe computer audio, so it works for online lectures and group calls on Zoom or Microsoft Teams. Some students find that reading captions while listening helps them stay engaged in the first place. The free Sensory Scribe iOS app lets students record and transcribe on an iPhone or iPad and transfer the session to the desktop app later.
Before recording, students should check their university’s lecture-recording policy. Many institutions allow recording as a reasonable adjustment, but the arrangements differ, particularly for small seminars and tutorials. It’s worth agreeing the arrangements in advance and following any conditions on storing, sharing and deleting recordings.
The reading list with Sensory Readable; Long academic texts are where rereading can become a loop. Sensory Readable reads aloud the text on screen, and the Readable Banner shows a calm, scrolling line that follows the speech, helping students keep their place. Version 3 can also recognise and read text in many scanned journal articles, locked PDFs and photos of book pages, depending on the quality of the original. That removes one practical reason to put the reading off. Text can even be saved as an audio file to listen to on a walk or on the bus, which may suit students who prefer to listen while they’re on the move.
For assessors: Sensory Readable and Sensory Scribe are DSA approved. Text-to-speech, text recognition, transcription and writing feedback are all processed on the device rather than in the cloud. Single-user licences are perpetual, so there’s no annual subscription to manage. Sensory Readable and Sensory Scribe are available for Windows and macOS.
Together, the three tools can support three common study tasks: capturing spoken information, accessing reading and reviewing written work. Assessor information sheets setting out which barriers each tool addresses are on our information for assessors page.
For students: if you’re applying for DSA, think about the specific study tasks that take you longest or that you avoid, and bring those examples to your needs assessment. They help your assessor match the support to how you actually study.
In Part Three, we’ll look at the workplace, where lectures become meetings, the reading list becomes an inbox, and nobody hands out a deadline reminder.
Assessors and needs-assessment centres: email support@sensory-AT.com to request an assessor licence for assessment and demonstration, or to book a short overview session for your team. Students: you can try Sensory Readable or Sensory Scribe free for 30 days.