The accessibility of the Elizabethtown College campus has been a reccurring question among students and faculty who may or may not be familiar with the current Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliances. Is the College as ADA compliant as it could be? Or are there steps the College should be taking to make the campus more accessible to those who need it to be?
The most recent survey of accessibility on campus was conducted in 2014, to assess the ADA compliance of the structures and buildings located within the campus community. Since 2014, the College has actively been working to update the ADA compliance in areas that were previously inaccessible. These renovations included reorganizing the front row of the Thompson pool deck and updating the pool’s locker rooms, paving a walkway from Alpha Drive to Schlosser Residence Hall and a walkway to the Brossman Commons and adding ADA accessible door openers to Founder’s Residence Hall D Tower.
According to the Director of the Learning Zone and Disability Services Lynne Davies, ADA accessibility does not mean full accessibility to every building and classroom. Rather, ADA accessibility means compliance.
“The building codes are really the determinant of the accessibility on campus,” Davies said. “Even though the solution may not seem the most reasonable, it is compliant. ADA accessibility means compliance.”
Therefore, the preexisting structures and original buildings located on campus, like Alpha Hall, Wenger and Royer Residence Hall for example, which were built before the ADA was passed in 1990, are only legally required to be ADA compliant. New buildings, like the Bowers Center for Sports, Fitness and Well-being, will be fully accessible since the current building codes require new buildings to be.
Davies cited some prominent examples of compliance on campus for students with disabilities who cannot access all the areas on the College’s campus.
“For students who have difficulties opening doors, students can get in contact with Campus Security to program doors to open for them by swiping their student ID,” Davies said.
Davies also explained the process of requesting to move classes into more accessible buildings for any enrolled students who cannot access the course’s current classroom.
After a student enrolls in the course, Davies does the legwork to make sure the classroom the course is held in is accessible to all the students registered. She cited a classroom located on the second floor of Wenger as an example of this.
“This is ADA compliance,” she said.
Davies also mentioned that less than roughly one percent of the students she works with have physical/visible disabilities. Rather, over 30 percent of the disabilities she encounters at the College are health or mental-health related.
“Students with trauma have different needs than students with physical disabilities,” Davies said.
She cited another example of this in the classroom setting. While some students may not be physically able to enter the classroom, other students may not be able to stay in the classroom. To illustrate this, she described a recent veteran in a common classroom setting. She explained how a classroom, like a computer lab where all the computers face one wall or a classroom without any windows, would not be conducive to a victim of trauma, like a veteran.
“We offer reasonable accommodations and modifications for the students who need them,” Davies said. “I would like students and faculty to realize that accessibility is much more than just physical handicaps.”
However, it is ultimately the student’s responsibility to identify their needs to the College and to Davies to receive the accommodations and modifications they require. Davies explained that the K-12 schooling system is required to be proactive in identifying children who need academic accommodations and modifications and acting accordingly.
Yet, in the college environment, the students are now responsible to identify their personal needs to the College. And unfortunately, only 37 percent of students who need academic accommodations seek out help from the Learning Zone or Disability Services.
“The ADA likes to see progression,” Davies said. “At the College, we tend to figure out accessibility on a case by case basis. But, there are certain characteristics that can be shared among students with disabilities, and we do our best to be progressive with ADA compliance and accessibility issues as they arise on-campus.”
