How being temporarily injured changed the way I thought about accessible infrastructure
As a mostly recovered obsessive compulsive who’s still retained some germaphobic habits, I love pressing buttons to open doors.
It’s a great example of how infrastructure built to help physically disabled people actually helps more people than it was designed for. Ramps to sidewalks can help those on all types of wheels. If your hands are full, tapping a button to open a door is very convenient. All these benefits were incredible. Until I found myself in an electric wheelchair.
I broke my ankle in April. I was walking on the west side of the columns on the quad, enjoying a slightly warm day. The world had started to get greener once again, and there were two people playing catch on the grass. They were throwing the ball east to west, so I was keeping track of it, worried I’d have a baseball hurling toward my face. Then I hit the ground.
Thankfully, some kind people got me to a first aid kit, and I was able to get an appointment with student health later that day. I had to find my own transportation, but I was lucky enough to have a friend who could take me.
With an avulsion fracture and a sprained ankle, I was told I shouldn’t be walking. Crutches were an absolute nightmare. And I wouldn’t be out of my boot for at least until memorial day, well after the end of the spring semester. Hobbling along toward my x-ray, a man on crutches with an amputated leg saw me struggling. “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it,” he said in a kind voice. An overwhelming sense of desperation had turned a bit more helpful, thanks to him.
I felt the most hopeless I ever had sitting in my dorm the next three days, barely moving and incredibly disappointed I couldn’t make it to class.
The University’s para-transit, which provides transportation for temporarily or permanently disabled students, is “provided as a courtesy and cannot be a guaranteed service,” per the disability center’s website. After a conversation with a coordinator at the disability center, I found out it would take at least two days to get para-transit access established anyway, and their hours and reach wouldn’t be able to cover all the places I need to go, many of them past 5 p.m.
I called company after company, trying to find someone who could rent an electric wheelchair to me. Eventually, one was delivered. Only after having it for a few days, I was on my way to a meeting and my chair broke down. Campus police helped me drag it to a charging station, but I eventually needed to call the outside of hours number, and thankfully someone came to get me a new battery after a few hours.
Even when I was told at a follow-up appointment that I could walk shorter distances, it wasn’t realistic for me to walk the thousands of steps I usually had every day. I couldn’t move well enough, and I definitely couldn’t make my way to the student center. But even when the wheelchair worked, I began to see how limited infrastructure for disabled people is on campus.
All those buttons, once convenient to me, were now yet another hurdle to navigate. The buttons that are at the perfect height for standing people became impossible to access once I was actually in a wheelchair. Getting into the Reynolds Journalism Institute through the double doors was always a task. I’d race to get in the first set, but had to suddenly maneuver myself so the second set wouldn’t crush me between the doors.
Every single building in the J-School is connected. This presents a challenge when half of the entrances include some sort of steps. Getting to the first floor of Gannett took me three times as long, even though the time between my classes remained the same.
Although there’s an elevator to the third floor of the Reynolds Journalism Institute — where I worked three days a week — the glass doors lacked accessibility features. Sending a message to my coworkers to let me into the office felt humiliating even on the best of days.
My experience is not unique in the slightest. The disability center supports over a thousand students on campus, many of them physically disabled.
In my situation, I was able to heal. But not every disability is temporary. Everyone has a right to a safe and equitable campus. Current infrastructure, obviously many architect’s afterthought, must be designed with direct input from those who could benefit the most. Harvard’s Graduate School of Design also emphasizes this necessity, where designing for all types of bodies must be considered – not just checking off boxes to meet ADA standards.
And even more so, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which applies to students in high school, does not apply in college. IDEA provides federal financial assistance to school districts in higher education, accommodation is governed by Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, which does not provide direct federal funding, even for public universities like MU.
Guaranteeing equitable access to campus spaces should always be a priority, even if federal funding isn’t provided (the majority of general funds for public universities come from state governments anyway).
Even extended hours for para-transit could help relieve some of the burden. I was fortunate enough to have been able to rent an electric wheelchair that allowed me to study at the library past 5 p.m. and attend evening meetings, but that’s not the case for everyone. Para-transit should be guaranteed, not just a courtesy service.
University support in finding an electric wheelchair also would have been helpful in my case. It was a pretty overwhelming process and took quite a few attempts to find a business in Columbia that could rent a chair to me. The disability center was not able to help me on that front either.
There’s no question in my mind that campus must be accessible to everyone. Expanding the availability of these resources and improving access to campus can help make this happen.