Harriet Cannon

Harriet has over 20 years’ experience working in the field of disability within Higher Education.  She has worked in Disability Services at the University of Leeds since 2007, first as a Disability Coordinator, and now as the Disability Team Manager, having previously led on disability support for the University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education.  Harriet specialises in autism, holding a PGCert in Autism from the University of Birmingham and having worked with autistic students since 2005.  She regularly provides training on autism and neurodivergence in HE.  She manages a team of 13 Disability Practitioners responsible for 8000 disabled students.

Harriet has a particular interest in inclusive pedagogies and assessment, and the interaction of competence standards and reasonable adjustments, and leads on projects relating to these at the University of Leeds.  She has also led work on reviewing standards of evidence required by disabled students, believing that access to evidence of disability should not create an additional barrier to support.  She is a Senior Accredited Member of the National Association of Disability Practitioners, sits on the Office of the Independent Adjudicator’s Disability Experts Panel and the Department for Education’s HE Autism Advisory Group, and she founded the Association of Autism Practitioners in HE.