Earlier this year, Ed Gaither almost ran over a group of sorority pledges while trying to stop a wheelchair that was racing down College Street.
Gaither, non-traditional students delegate for Student Senate, was trying to experience the trek from Grover Center to Ellis Hall from the perspective of a student who uses a wheelchair.
Ohio University students, faculty and Athens residents exchanged perspectives like this one at a public forum hosted by the Presidential Advisory Council on Disability and Accessibility Planning.
Those attending the forum offered recommendations concerning campus-wide access for a document that will be presented to university officials in several years.
“We want to improve in as many places on campus as possible and make them as disability-friendly as possible,” said Laura Myers, co-chair of the council and executive director of the Office for Institutional Equity.
The plan should be adopted by January 2013, said Harry Wyatt, co-chair of the council and associate vice president for Facilities.
Lori Woods, an instructor in the Deaf Studies and Interpreting program at Ohio University’s Lancaster campus, spoke about being born deaf and said it is important that students on campus have access to everything they need.
These needs can range from having interpreters in class to having access to technology such as Communication Access Realtime Translation systems. A CART system comprises two laptops. An interpreter types the instructor’s words onto one, and the text appears on the screen of the student’s laptop.
“After attending a school that had no accessibility to attending college that had both interpreters and CART systems available, I can tell you it made all the difference,” Woods said.
Jessica Garten, a first-year graduate student studying early modern Europe with a focus in Italian Renaissance, also spoke. Garten, who has cerebral palsy, thanked OU’s faculty members for “going above and beyond to help and make (her) feel welcome.”
During the second half of the forum, the council members broke the audience into groups to discuss and gather feedback on four main areas of concentration: academic access, program and web access, architectural access and overall
campus climate.
Attendees discussed having people with disabilities test products to make sure they are up to par with their needs and spoke about the importance of quickly fixing automatic handicapped doors.
Recalling his trip across campus in a wheelchair borrowed from the Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine, Gaither said his inability to move from one building to another in the 10 minutes scheduled between classes gave him a greater understanding of the need for accessibility on campus for students and employees with disabilities.
“What is an inconvenience to us could be an emergency for others,” Gaither said.
jb351009@ohiou.edu
