A2W (Access to Work) and DSA (Disabled Students’ Allowance) licences are special accessibility / assistive‑technology editions of Grammarly, typically supplied through education or government‑funded schemes. These editions do not use Grammarly’s normal Premium or Business licensing, and therefore don’t include every Premium feature.
There are three main reasons:
Grammarly’s Pro/Premium plan is designed for individuals and includes the full feature set (e.g., fluency suggestions, tone adjustment, plagiarism detection, full‑sentence rewrites, AI text generation, etc.).
But “organisational” versions—like those used in education, enterprise or specialist schemes—are subject to feature management controls, permissions, and sometimes content‑filtering or reduced AI tooling. Grammarly explicitly differentiates features such as:
These restrictions mean not every advanced writing or AI tool found in Premium is automatically enabled in institutional/DSA/A2W licences, or can be..
Advanced features such as:
are all part of Pro/Premium and above—not the baseline organisational tiers. Grammarly lists these as Premium‑only capabilities compared to basic tiers like “Free” or restricted environments.
Because A2W/DSA contracts often purchase a restricted educational variant, these higher‑tier capabilities aren’t bundled.
Government‑funded schemes must meet data‑protection, privacy, and safeguarding requirements, which means:
Because of this, A2W/DSA versions often operate closer to a controlled Business environment, where the institution or supplier cannot activate Premium‑only settings.
A2W and DSA Grammarly licences don't match Premium because:
No — not in the way you may expect.
The DSA‑approved Grammarly licence only supports English, because:
Grammarly’s core engine is built for English grammar, syntax, tone, and clarity
Multilingual support is limited to spell‑checking, not full grammar analysis. In some A2w, DSA or Uni supplied licences, a multi lingual option may not =be possible.
The DSA licence does not include the newer “Grammarly Multilingual” features that exist in some enterprise plans
So if a student writes in French, Spanish, Polish, Urdu, etc., Grammarly will:
underline spelling errors
but not provide grammar corrections, tone suggestions, clarity rewrites, or fluency checks
Assessors often assume Grammarly works like Microsoft Editor or LanguageTool, but:
Grammarly = English‑focused writing assistant
LanguageTool = true multilingual grammar engine
Microsoft Editor = basic multilingual grammar + spelling
This is why multilingual students sometimes feel Grammarly “isn’t working”.
While these pages never say “DSA/A2W has fewer features,” they do make clear that:
Institutional versions use admin‑controlled feature management, permissions, and optional AI access.
This is evident in their Enterprise/Education plan descriptions, which include:
Feature Management Hub, application & domain controls, managed mode, etc.
Education licences have optional generative AI, not always enabled.
Their Education page stresses “optional generative AI” and institution-controlled deployment.
This is exactly why certain schemes (DSA/A2W) receive locked‑down versions—their licences fall under organisational controls, not Premium individual licences.
The most explicit statement found:
“The generative AI features have been disabled for all student accounts. The ATI will reach out to account holders when this changes.”
This is a direct acknowledgement from the Assistive Technology Initiative (US‑based, but applicable to institutional licensing globally). It shows that:
DSA/A2W accounts fall into the same category of institution‑managed accounts, so this is the closest thing to an official confirmation of restricted feature sets.
While not about Grammarly specifically, the Department for Education’s SSIN (Student Support Information Note) states:
This helps explain why providers like Study Tech, Assistive Solutions or Capita supply education-tier versions instead of the full Premium version.
Assistive Solutions describes DSA Grammarly but does not mention AI rewriting, tone adjustment, essay grading, or other Premium features—another indirect sign that the DSA edition is not equivalent to Premium:
This doesn’t prove the limitations explicitly, but the absence of Premium features in their description is consistent with what you are observing.
No — Grammarly has no public page saying this outright.
However, the above links are publicly documented.
Because DSA and A2W licences are:
they inherently lack access to certain Premium or AI‑heavy features.
So while Grammarly themselves don’t publish a “DSA limitations” page, the restrictions are a consequence of how organisational licences work, and this is described in their published materials.