Most of the more than 400 buildings on the Ohio State campus have been upgraded to be accessible for students who are physically disabled, but an informal survey found that on any given day people with physical disabilities are not able to enter many buildings on campus, and restroom facilities are not as accessible as students would like.
Fifty-six automatic doors were inspected around campus, seven of which were broken, including the only handicapped-accessible entrance of the Ohio Union. Another nine automatic doors opened for only five seconds or less.
“No one is going around to inspect the doors,” said James Stevens, Jr., associate vice president for the department of physical facilities. “We depend on building occupants to report problems.”
Of the six buildings found to have broken automatic doors, three – Fisher, Mason and Pfahl Halls – are located in the Fisher College of Business complex on Woodruff Avenue, which is less than five years old.
Stevens said doors at the complex have been a problem since the building opened in 1999. They often do not lock and set off alarms, he said. The university is waiting for the state to release $700,000 to replace the door hardware at the complex. Stevens said the replacement is expected to be completed by October 2005.
Another problem evident in the 25 campus buildings surveyed was blocked paper towel dispensers in restrooms. Trash cans and furniture blocked the accessible paper towel dispensers, placed lower than other towel dispensers, in nearly one in every five restrooms surveyed.
“Not by design is this happening,” Stevens said. “We tell the custodians to watch out for it. They can get into a bad habit.”
Public buildings, by federal law, have to be accessible for people with disabilities.
“I have heard of many other cases around campus where something appears to be accessible, but it really isn’t,” said Annie Vaccaro, a senior in interior merchandising and president of Unity, a campus advocacy group for students with disabilities. “I think that OSU has done a lot to improve the physical accessibility of the campus, but we have a very long way to go.”
Brenda Brueggemann, associate professor of English and co-chair of disabilities studies, agrees.
“There’s hardly a week that goes by that I don’t get reminded in some way that I don’t yet or still have equal access to events, meetings or information in all the same ways completely able-bodied colleagues do,” she said.
Stevens encourages everyone to report building problems. A building service center is open 24 hours per day, and it can be reached at 292-6158.
OSU has been said to have a reputation for being an excellent university for students with disabilities because of its commitment to improving amenities and its dedication to valuing diversity. The university funds the Office of Disabilities Services, an academic resource for students with disabilities, and has added a disabilities studies minor to its academic program.
“Ohio State has been more than above par from what I know of many other colleges and universities in honestly addressing their environment – physically, intellectually, climate-wise – to make it better for faculty, staff (and) students with disabilities,” Brueggemann said.
Mike Kinney, a counselor at the Office of Disabilities Services, works with students who have mobility problems. He said the university is good about responding to complaints concerning buildings.
“There is not a ground swell of appointments being made to make complaints,” Kinney said.
There are roughly 120 students with mobility disabilities registered with the Office of Disabilities Services.
“For students, we have one of the country’s oldest and best offices for disability services,” Brueggemann said.
When a student tells Kinney about a problem with a campus facility, he reports it to Physical Facilities. In his experience, he said Physical Facilities has been very responsive and will adjust timers on automatic doors to increase the time they remain open.
The federal Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 requires all public buildings to be accessible. Ohio State’s ADA coordinator, L. Scott Lissner, oversees the university’s compliance with the law.
Lissner said ADA guidelines do not require buildings to have automatic doors, allowing individual institutions to implement what is best for their needs. Lissner said, for example, the University of North Dakota does not use automatic doors because they would freeze during the winter.
Even if a building meets the federal regulation, it does not mean the building meets what the student needs, Lissner said. Certain muscular diseases affect mobility differently, and OSU goes beyond the “minimum compliance,” he said.
“We can make a number of changes that make sense for the individual,” he said. Classrooms are often moved to first floors when students or faculty members have mobility problems.
There are simple fixes the university could make to improve accessibility on campus. For example, in a women’s one-person restroom in Dreese Laboratories, the door lock is above five feet high, preventing wheelchair-users from locking the door. However, the restroom is marked as handicapped-accessible.
The building with the worst restroom facilities for disabled students, compared to the others surveyed, is Bevis Hall, located in west campus and home to the Office of Transportation and Parking. Two accessible restrooms in the building do not have accessible sinks, towel dispensers or signs posted on the outer restroom doors, though they have larger stalls with handrails.
The Geology Library, located in Orton Hall, has areas inaccessible to wheelchair users. Some of the shelving and tables are pushed together, preventing access to parts of the collection.
The automatic door entrance of the Prior Health Sciences Library opens for two seconds, the shortest amount of time in the survey. Four others were found to have automatic doors open for five seconds or less – Mendenhall Laboratories, Newton Hall, the Ohio Union and University Hall.
The median time found for campus automatic doors to stay open was nine seconds.
“We can’t say (problems) are never going to happen, but the key is whether there is a response when there is a legitimate concern,” Kinney said.
Some members of the OSU community wish campus awareness of disability issues was more widespread.
“Ohio State has been working on physical accessibility for years,” Vaccaro said. “I would like to see OSU provide more academic accessibility in the classroom.”
Vaccaro said using programs such as WebCT in the classroom are useful for students with a range of disabilities because of the ability to provide lectures in sound, video, transcript and PowerPoint formats.
“What would happen if instead of bringing bad buildings up to minimum code on our campus, we thought about how to create a physical and intellectual learning environment where people with disabilities really wanted to do their best work?” Brueggemann said.
