If you build it, who can come?

The postcard above depicts the Approach to Rensselaer Technical Institute. In Academic Ableism, Jay Timothy Dolmage offers this description of the image:

“The steps are made of a light gray stone. They are about 20 meters wide on their bottom flight, which is at the forefront of the photo, so that we look up from the very bottom. The steps narrow further up, at the point where two large cylindrical marble columns stand. The steps continue to climb up to an imposing set of gates. Behind these gates there are green trees and foliage and, we assume, the university. Five people stand up near the very top of the steps and they look very small, giving perspective on just how steep and massive the approach is.”

Imagine being a prospective student, parent, faculty or staff at the bottom of the Rensselaer steps (above), could you climb them? How daunting would they feel if you used a mobility device (walker, cane, wheelchair, etc.)? 

These steps represent the barriers to education. For people with a disabilities, encountering barriers is an unfortunate truth of daily life, and they are often forced to prioritize which barriers to address and which ones to avoid. A 2016 UK Study found that 71% of users with disabilities will abandon a website that is difficult to use (The Click Away Pound Survey). How many students are not enrolling, transferring elsewhere, or simply dropping out do to inaccessible content and practices? 

Frustratingly, there is no clear answer. The perceived lack of students with accommodations is not indicative of the number of students with disabilities. Not all students with disabilities are diagnosed or choose to disclose their disabilities (especially with the recent attempts to connect Tylenol to Autism). Therefore, we cannot know conclusively whether a student dropped, failed, or withdrew from a course due to barriers they encountered. By striving to make content, systems, and practices accessible, we hope to remove as many barriers as possible so no student has to rely on documentation or disclosure. If we build it, some will come. If we build it accessibly, all can come.

Now return to steps at Rensselaer. If you could climb them now, could you climb them every day? What if you had long COVID? Were 6-months pregnant? Recovering from surgery? Sprained your ankle playing flag football? A ramp would increase access for the entire community.

Here are some other ways accessibility benefits everyone:

• In Denver, sidewalks are a prime example of accessibility benefiting everyone; areas with no sidewalk, or the ill-maintained flagstone sidewalks make travel difficult if not down- right dangerous. Evenly paved sidewalks (preferably wide sidewalks) increase access to the neighborhood for all pedestrians
• Captions in loud environments like a Nuggets game allow the entire audience to keep up with the announcer
• Making documents digitally accessible increase the functionality of tables of content and search features; these features make it easier for all readers to engage with the document
• Motion sensor crosswalk buttons make it easier for everyone to activate the crossing signal (not to mention decreases the risk of catching whatever illness is coming from the elementary school nearby)

• Engage with the IAG:
  • Explore our past selections of Accessibility Bytes and suggest a topic for future semesters
  • Schedule an Access Check or department visit
  • Ask about taking a field trip to Atlantis Community Inc
  • Send us an email: [email protected]
• Learn about the disability social justice movement
  • Watch: Crip Camp by Netflix
  • Read: The State of Critical Race Disability Studies A White Paper Report from the Disabled Scholars of Color Collective
• Learn more about accessibility and its benefits:
  • Watch: Disability & Innovation: The Universal Benefits of Accessible Design by Haben Girma at WWDC 2016
  • Read: The Curb Cut Effect by Angela Glover Blackwell
• Identify barriers in your content and practices:
  • Are you describing all visuals during lectures?
  • Are you utilizing proper structural elements in Canvas?
  • Do your PDFs have selectable text so students can customize the font or line spacing as needed?
  • Can students navigate your course content with just a keyboard?