The Campus accessibility tour occurred March 2 to give students and faculty a chance to participate in traversing the UH campus while disabled. The goal was to increase awareness of the issues that the disabled deal with on our 600+ acre campus everyday.
Participants moved about blindfolded or in wheelchairs.
I participated by touring the campus for two hours with a group of others, using nothing but a walking cane and a CSD member to guide me.
Participating as a blind student wasn’t easy. The loss of sight forced my other senses to pick up the slack.
Hearing was the primary source of direction, but construction sites at several areas on campus only made it more difficult.
Memorization was key. Knowing the correct steps, direction, and sounds to listen for are basically the replacement for looking around, something most people take for granted.
The participants who navigated in wheelchairs had a lesser time finding locations, but accessing them was the trade off.
Students who weren’t familiar with the difficulties of gravity either struggled up or flew down ramps.
Accessing buildings and walking around isn’t as much of an issue, as problems with getting around campus are reported and fixed rather quickly.
However, a social stigma still exists when it comes to the disabled. People hesitate in conversation to say handicapped, not knowing if the term disabled is better or worse.
Others have the “elephant in the room” mentality, where they ignore the disability of a person to avoid the awkwardness of discussing it.
And most students aren’t even aware how many disabled members of campus are around them. The director of the CSD, Cheryl Amoruso, explains why.
“If they aren’t registered with us we have no way of knowing if a student has a disability because you can’t ask that on a college application. And it‘s not always a physical disability.” Amoruso said.
This addresses one of the first things people mistake about disabled students: not all disabilities are immediately noticeable. Most students who have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder count as having a disability, as do students suffering from Bi-Polar disorder or severe depression.
People who aren’t disabled probably don’t think disabilities are a modern issue. On the one hand, it’s not.
Most disabled students out-skill the rest of us. They find solutions around obstacles and manage to function in a society built upon the premise that everyone can use a flight of stairs.
On the other hand, there’s still the social faux pas of outright mentioning that someone has a disability if they don’t mention it themselves. The only true way to remedy this is to step into their shoes, so to speak.
