A former teacher, who lost his eyesight 15 years ago, has accused Unisa of failing to cater for students who are visually impaired.
Zukisa Skoti, 46, of Ethembeni township outside King William’s Town, who was doing his BCom studies in human resource management at Unisa’s East London site last year, said the university failed to provide him with the necessary material to enable a blind person to study and write exams.
Unisa spokesperson Martin Ramotshela blamed the challenges Skoti experienced on a lack of communication, saying the university was unaware of the arrangements to be made for him.
Skoti said even though he had stated his disability on the application form, when his study material arrived, it was for sighted people.
“I relied on children and my wife to read it to me and I was able to do and submit my assignment,” he said.
Skoti said when he eventually received electronic study material, it was too late for him to get electronic textbooks.
At exam time in October, Skoti said he arrived at the exam site in East London 15 minutes before the exam, as per instruction, then after waiting for about two hours, was told that his paper had not been set and there were no invigilators.
“They told me that the requisition for an audio exam had been submitted late and there was no one to invigilate.”
Skoti, who wants to study psychology, said he has now been excluded from registering. “According to the university, I did not perform well academically and now they want me to write supplementary exams as if I failed. I did not fail; the university failed me.”
This is not the first Eastern Cape student to accuse Unisa of failing to accommodate visually impaired students.
In 2014 the Dispatch reported on then 38-year-old Thandile Gladile-Butana, who graduated with a bachelor of arts honours degree from Unisa without textbooks in Braille.
Gladile-Butana said when she wrote her exam, there was not a paper in Braille and she had to to ask a staff member overseeing the exam to read the questions.
She too, like Skoti, had to rely on sighted people to read textbooks to her while she recorded the sessions.
Ramotshela said in Skoti’s case, there had been a lack of communication regarding the special arrangements needed for the examination.
Ramotshela said they were trying to ascertain what could have gone wrong.
“In the meanwhile, Skoti has been contacted to establish his exact needs regarding the examinations. It has been agreed that his question papers would be prepared in audio format and he would be granted additional examination time and would answer by means of a computer,” said Ramotshela.
Ramotshela says Skoti has also been given an examination admission to complete the modules he could not submit due to a lack of accessible study material in electronic format.
Skoti said he was studying through an National Student Financial Aid Scheme-funded loan. “That loan has gone to waste, because it’s clear, Unisa never gave me a fair chance to actually study with them.”..