Integrating students with disabilities in academia: A rewarding challenge

The percentage of youth diagnosed with disabilities is increasing steadily, becoming an issue that the society has to deal with in a lot of attention. Granting academic education to these young people enables them to become productive and self-supporting. University has opened its doors to these students, allowing them to study any subject they desire and we are ready to offer all the conditions that the students need. The intellectual capabilities of most of these students are more than sufficient for coping with the academic environment. The most difficult task is to teach students to achieve success. For most of them, it is the first time they are on their own and have to cope with basic issues as shopping, handling money, or doing laundry. The University is ready to provide a social mentor for each student that teaches trivial everyday activities, so that the graduate will become independent. All of these and much more is an essential part of this fascinating program that provides our graduates with the full capability of becoming an independent productive member of the society. In this article we show the way Ariel University is dealing with the goal of giving those students an opportunity to be a part of the society and the academic world.