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Navigating a disabled campus
By Zoë Williams
williamz@mscd.edu

I rolled off of the bus into a mess of a detour. Signs sent me winding through a labyrinth of chain-link fencing and down a ramp straight into four traffic barricades and a parking lot. Thus started my test as a physically-disabled student on Auraria’s nationally acclaimed accessible campus.

My guide was Jenny Laird, a former student at Auraria and a board member for a disability advocacy group in Washington. She loaned me her manual wheelchair while offering her experience in an electric wheelchair.

As we attempted to enter the Tivoli the automatic door failed to work. Jenny later told me they rarely do. “I was always circling around buildings trying to find one that worked or hoping someone would open the door for me,” she said.

My able-bodied privilege came alive when I noticed the lack of Braille signage around the Tivoli. The complicated detour was unmarked, as are bathrooms and names of offices. There are no Braille maps of the campus. Some of the bumps on signs in the Tivoli were so worn down entire letters were missing. For a student with visual impairments, this means depending on peers, faculty and staff for navigation.

The greatest shock came with our visit to the bathrooms. Few restrooms on campus have automatic entrances. Upon reaching a stall, Jenny has to crawl out of her chair, leaving the doors wide open. While my smaller manual chair fit in the stall, there was no way to close the door. Sure, these facilities fit the standards set by the Americans with Disabilities Act, but as Jenny said, “ADA is the basic minimum for everything.”

Part of my mission was to find the fire-rescue point for people with disabilities to be evacuated by firefighters. I was able to locate one at the base of the Tivoli Tower staircase. A sign is located in the stairwell, though no others point to it, and in order to reach it, one must get up two stairs. I could not manage to get my chair to that point.

While students with disabilities can access testing rooms and computer labs in the campus Access Center to accommodate their needs, space is a major issue. For a student in a wheelchair requiring a scribe or reader and a guide dog – fairly typical accommodations – fitting into a testing room is not unlike cramming a reclining chair, golden retriever, two people and a desk into a broom closet. Computer rooms offer a similar challenge.

In addition to the size issue, Access Center computer labs – equipped with software for typing alternatives, reading small print and converting text to audio – are closed on the weekends. While the standard computer labs on campus offer accessible seating for students in wheelchairs, IT employees looked at me as though I were speaking Chinese when I inquired about accessible technology.

In order to get into a classroom without assistance I had to pull the handle, back up the chair with one arm, wedge my chair in the door and attempt to roll in. The doorway to the Health Center claimed several layers of skin off my elbows as I tried to squeeze myself in. Jenny handled these challenges with nonchalant disappointment. “You get used to it,” she sighed.

I grew increasingly upset. What does a national reputation matter when students cannot have privacy in a bathroom nor access a directory they can read? Granted, Auraria deserves praise for housing the largest population of disabled students in the state. Regardless, with hundreds of thousands of dollars being poured into remodeling the Central Classroom and building a new plaza, resources must be set aside for the constant pursuit of equity for all students no matter their physical ability.