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The reality of living with a disability had never been clearer to Alison Gilmore than when she came to Syracuse University.

Most people can identify the challenges people with disabilities face when a space isn’t physically accessible but can’t necessarily recognize the mental toll that accompanies it, said Gilmore, a first-year student who has cerebral palsy.

“When I go to a new building on campus, it’s always in the back of my mind of whether it’s going to be accessible or not,” Gilmore said. “I want to be able to use it for what it’s worth, and when a building is inaccessible, it takes away from my participation or from whatever I’m trying to do.”

SU’s Board of Trustees Special Committee on University Climate, Diversity and Inclusion noted in a March report that 10,000 obstructions of campus buildings and facilities could be considered accessibility code violations. The Americans with Disabilities Act requires institutions to update facilities to comply with the law, but it makes exceptions for cases where those updates aren’t “readily achievable.”

The list was first acknowledged by the Disability External Review Committee, whose recommendations university administrators have already endorsed and begun implementing.

Some disability experts said the university is “on the right track” to becoming more accessible and inclusive, but many students and faculty are still concerned about campus-wide inaccessibility.

Michael Schwartz, who is the director of the Disability Rights Clinic at SU’s College of Law and the co-chair of the Disability External Review Committee, said that the 10,000 obstructions likely include smaller barriers to access in many of the older buildings on campus.

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The ADA, which was passed in 1990 and prohibits discrimination based on disability, requires any new buildings on campus to be accessible. But any facility that was constructed before the act was passed is likely not accessible, Schwartz said.

“That’s 120 years of buildings without a law that was telling them that they needed to make the building accessible,” Schwartz said. “It’s a natural normal, that’s what we have — those 10,000 little incidents of obstructions. Things like bathrooms where the stall doors are too narrow for wheelchair users or a classroom that doesn’t have captioning when they’re showing a video.”

Gilmore especially faces challenges when stairs inside and outside of buildings don’t have railings. Stairs in Maxwell Auditorium, as well as the stairs in front of the Remembrance Memorial and Hendricks Chapel, don’t have railings, which can be extremely difficult to navigate for people with physical disabilities, she said.

The stairs and aisles in Maxwell Auditorium are also narrow, which Gilmore said makes it hard for her to move around during classes or club meetings.

“I don’t know what’s up to code and what isn’t, but I can tell you right now Maxwell isn’t,” Gilmore said.

Stephen Kuusisto — who is the director of interdisciplinary programs and outreach at the Burton Blatt Institute, an organization within the College of Law that works with civil and disability law — said many auditoriums on campus pose similar issues for people with disabilities. It also makes it more difficult for the university to host speakers who have disabilities.

“If you invited a scholar or artist who used a wheelchair to come to campus and give a speech, they couldn’t give a speech in those auditoriums because the speaker’s platforms are not accessible,” Kuusisto said. “And that’s an issue.”

The law behind disability accommodations doesn’t go far enough, said Aidee Campa, a part-time student at SU’s College of Law and vice president of the Disability Law Society. The ADA sets the floor for accessibility, said Campa, who is blind.

“Can people really move through the building and be integrated into the groups that they’re trying to be a part of? If they can’t, then something is not right here,” she said.

Katie Roquemore, who graduated from SU in August with a doctorate in cultural foundations of education and is now a part-time faculty member in SU’s Disability Studies Program, said some ADA-approved bathroom stalls on campus still aren’t accessible for her.

Roquemore, who uses a wheelchair, has worked with several groups on campus to install single-occupant accessible restrooms in university buildings that house disability-related programs, including on the third floor of Huntington Hall, where the disability studies program is based.

For Eli Blodgett, the university’s approach to accessibility often seems reactionary rather than proactive. SU handles disability accommodations on a case-by-case basis but sometimes overlooks wider-reaching accessibility solutions, they said.

“When one person comes to the university, they say, ‘Let’s create solutions for you and your situation,’ instead of saying, ‘Let’s work on this so we have more accessible solutions for everybody,’” Blodgett said. “The individual solutions are important, but it takes more than, ‘How are you going to get to class?’”

Some students and faculty also said that accessibility goes beyond just changing physical spaces.

Last fall, the law school failed to perform a disability audit before implementing an artificial intelligence proctoring service for final exams — a move that many law students criticized. This prevented individuals who were visually impaired from using the software, said Mercedees Rees, president of the Disability Law Society.

Professors often instruct students to display eye-catching visuals in presentations rather than writing exactly what they’re saying, which can make presentations inaccessible for people who are unable to hear what the presenter is saying.

Rees does not have a physical disability but said the university should ensure that its curriculums, in addition to its physical spaces, are accessible.

Some faculty on campus struggle to balance accommodations for students with their curriculum and “academic freedom” while teaching, Schwartz and Kuusisto said. Schwartz said all curriculums at SU — regardless of the subject — should include some aspect of disability studies.

“Some faculty say, ‘This intrudes on my academic freedom,’” Schwartz said. “And my response is, ‘No it doesn’t. It enriches your pedagogy and it enriches your curriculum.’”

Kuusisto recalls when one professor interrupted their lecture to call out a student who was using headphones in class. The student, who had autism, needed the headphones for class, Kuusisto said.

Fixing problematic attitudes and changing culture at SU can be more challenging than updating buildings, Schwartz said.

“Fixing the buildings is much easier than changing hearts,” he said.

The university’s efforts to improve accessibility show its willingness to improve the daily life of its students and make disability rights a priority, Schwartz said.

“The university is lightyears ahead of a lot of other universities,” Schwartz said. “It’s already demonstrated its desire to keep working at removing barriers, both physical and mental.”

The Disability External Review Committee is currently undergoing a tiered system of recommendations. Phase One recommendations, which include establishing the Office of Disability Access and Inclusion and consistently expressing support for disability rights, have already been submitted and accepted by the university.

Phase Two includes recommendations that are more complex and will take more time to implement. The committee will deliver the recommendations by spring 2021, according to an SU News release,

Sarah Scalese, senior associate vice president for university communications, said that Chancellor Kent Syverud endorsed the committee’s report in September and said the university would implement the recommendations.

“The hope is that all of these recommendations will provide a blueprint for change for making the campus accessible,” Schwartz said.

But there will always be changes that need to be made, especially given how many buildings are still inaccessible, Schwartz said.

“What’s left is hard work. We have to reinvent ourselves again and again. It’s an ongoing process, and I think it’ll never end. There will always be something that has to be done, has to be fixed, something needs to be changed or altered or reformed,” Schwartz said. “But I feel very good about where we are today.”

Still, Gilmore believes the university can do more.

A university’s main goal is to ensure that all of its students can succeed, Glimore said. But if campus spaces are inaccessible, students with disabilities can’t perform at their best, she said.

“If your campus isn’t inclusive for everybody, you shouldn’t even really be operating,” Gilmore said.

Published on March 21, 2021 at 11:53 pm

Contact Richard: rcperrin@syr.edu | @richardperrins2