Providing adequate handicap accessibility, especially on a college campus, can often be a very difficult problem to solve because of the need to accommodate a wide variety of students’ disabilities. Shepherd University has improved over the years in regards to accessibility for those with disabilities, but there is still room for improvement.
The school does meet the standards set forth in the Americans with Disability Act (ADA), although that means that they only need to do the bare minimum required by law. Many of the things that are a hassle aren’t so much huge problems, just minor things that Shepherd didn’t think of.
There are numerous steps that could be taken to make the campus more accessible. Shepherd University has done a good job at implementing improvements to make the campus more accessible. However, much of the infrastructure and the buildings found on campus are decades old, so when they were built, many of the standards that existed to aid and assist those who are handicap did not exist.
Moreover, one problem the campus has in regards to handicap accessibility includes non-responsive handicap accessibility buttons on automatic doors. Recreation major Henry Shea said, “Like 30 percent of the time the buttons don’t work. They are either malfunctioning or they were turned off and no one ever turned them back on.”
The buttons get turned off for events such as late night in the zone or for security reasons. Also, people may be just ‘joking around’ when they press the button to open the door, don’t use it, and then let the door just stay like that. These doors should have maintenance checkups routinely and the power supply to these critical buttons must be ensured.
The abundance in snow days and class cancellations presented another problem in recent months. While the snow was cleared away from the sidewalks and the roads for the most part, campus was actually less handicap accessible because of snow.
Shea said, “It’s not intentional, but when the roads and sidewalks are cleaned they get pushed into the curb cuts, and it’s impossible for someone in a manual chair to get through there.”
Maintenance crews should keep people with disabilities in mind when performing snow removal and dedicate a little more time to try to push all the snow onto the grass. Students with disabilities could be offered another way to make up their missed class if they wish, so they would not have to journey into bad weather at all.
Shea also went to explain how the older buildings on campus are a lot harder to retrofit than the newer buildings. For example, it’s much easier for someone with a disability to get around in the Robert C. Byrd center compared to the Snyder Science Hall even though they are still connected. More recently built buildings have more room in the hallways and more handicap accessible entrances. They are also constructed to meet the latest handicap accessibility standards. I don’t see why we can’t work with students’ schedules and try to put those with disabilities in as many new buildings as possible.
These problems at Shepherd aren’t so much a lack of consideration for students with disabilities, they are things that Shepherd may not be aware of. In addition, many of the buildings on campus were built many years ago so they do not meet many standards set forth by the federal government to provide accessibility for handicap individuals.
Shea said, “It’s not that Shepherd didn’t try, they just didn’t think it through. It is a mistake of omission.”
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