How Effective are Interventions in Reducing Stress for Higher Education Students with Accessibility Requirements and/or Disability? A Systematic Review

The level of stress experienced by higher education students with accessibility requirements and/or disability (ARD) may be higher than those without ARD, even when students are receiving academic accommodations. This stress has implications for their learning, achievement, and health. Furthermore, where stress reducing interventions can positively impact students’ experiences and support educational equity, it is necessary that these interventions are inclusive and accessible, and designed to cater to the diversity of student cohorts. This systematic literature review explored stress reduction interventions trialled with students with ARD from 2011 through 2021. A total of 3,772 articles were identified through Academic Search Primer, Education Research Complete, Psychology and Behaviour Sciences, and CINAHL, and 23 articles were eligible for inclusion. Few articles focused primarily on stress reduction and a limited number of interventions were trialled with students with physical or intellectual disability, sensory impairment, chronic health conditions or specific learning difficulties. As such, currently little is known about what may be effective in reducing the stress which these students may experience in higher education. It is also not known how the interventions trialled in these studies would be equitably accessible and inclusive for students with a range of ARD, including sensory disabilities. Given proactive measures to reduce unnecessary stressors in the educational environment, pedagogies such as universal design for learning, are not yet being widely implemented, and this review illustrates that more reactive measures to support students experiencing high stress are also limited, there is a research and practice gap with potentially significant short and long-term consequences for students, which research and higher education institutions urgently need to address. Implications for future research are discussed.