Editorial: Accessibility is still a problem

Students with disabilities deserve physical and educational accessibility accommodations

The IC Editorial Board

You can’t open the door on your own. You can’t see the stairs in front of you. You can’t even hear your professor talking. For students with a physical disability, these are everyday problems.

And with about 500 students with disabilities on campus, the University of Toledo should be doing more to assure that these students don’t struggle any more than they already do.

Last year, the IC staff asked students if they noticed problems on campus for those with disabilities. After hearing the feedback, we wrote an editorial about this issue in February 2014. It turns out accessibility on campus was a problem then, and it’s still a widespread problem now.

Members of the IC staff traveled around ten buildings on main campus searching for potential accessibility issues. Buildings examined included the Student Union, Carlson Library, Snyder Memorial, Stranahan Hall, University Hall, Rocket Hall, the Law Center, the Center for Performing Arts, Wolfe Hall and Bowman-Oddy. Here’s what we found.

  • Handicap-accessible doors are limited mostly to main entrances, and many of them are incredibly slow to open, such as those in the Student Union by Starbucks. The doors leading into the interior of Carlson Library don’t have automatic access and neither do six doors in Rocket Hall or at least three doors in the CPA. Wolfe Hall and Bowman-Oddy have no automatic doors leading to the parking garage or the courtyard.
  • Handicap-accessible doors work on some days and don’t on others. During the time of our search, the handicap-accessible door for the Bowman-Oddy northeast stairwell and the Student Union fountain entrance didn’t open.
  • Not all elevators are easy to operate or provide ample room to enter and maneuver for wheelchair users, such as those in Snyder Memorial.
  • Handicap-accessible restrooms are few and far between with most located in the CPA. The Student Union, Carlson Library, Law Center and many other buildings have none.
  • Handicap parking placement feels scattered as Lot 10 has only one handicap spot near the sidewalk with all others located by the road on the far side of the lot. Area 25N by Rocket Hall has no visible handicap parking spots near the door.
  • Classroom accessibility is questionable in some buildings, as a few doorways aren’t large enough for a wheelchair to go through without opening both sides of the door. Bowman-Oddy has four classrooms (rooms 1045, 1049, 1053 and 1059) at the bottom of six stairs with no railing and no ramp in sight. The business computer lab entrance in the basement of Stranahan is comprised of a single door inside a cove that makes positioning a wheelchair while opening the door very difficult.

These are not new accessibility problems, and for students who call UT home, these issues disrupt their day-to-day routines and can be frustrating. For those who have to ask for help, it can also be embarrassing.

Accessibility issues are important to tackle because the U.S. Department of Education says more and more students with disabilities are choosing to attend college, meaning the number of such students at UT will also increase. This is a trend we need to embrace, not ignore.

UT’s compliance committee for the Americans with Disabilities Act is already working on improving campus. They’ve recently created a temporary task force focused on educational accessibility, which includes the delivery of note-taking services to students with disabilities, drafting a technology accessibility policy and notifying professors of students with disabilities in their classes.

That’s great news for the students in this community who have invisible disabilities like learning disorders and those with hearing impairments. Educational engagement of students with or without disabilities is important, period.

But from our experiences, there should be similar interest in the physical accommodation of students. We believe the mobility problems students with physical disabilities face on this campus warrant just as much attention as academic ones, and they’ve been sorely neglected for some time.

Let’s focus on what happens in the classroom, but let’s also focus on how students get to those classes in the first place.

If you notice a problem on campus, please report it by calling UT’s ADA Compliance Officer Wendy Wiitala at 419-530-5792 or emailing her at [email protected]. You can also anonymously call the UT ADA hotline at 419-530-1232. If you need academic accommodations, contact the Office of Student Disability Services at 419-530-4981.

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