The Eighth Floor

[autymn]

I work as a Physical Disabilities Specialist at a rather well known university which for my and my employers protection will remain namiless. Myself, I am blind and have neurological disabilities that result in fun things happening with the use of elevators (weeeeeee!) I also work with a service dog. Someone in university administration thought it brilliant to place our department on the eighth floor on the periphery of campus! This either means multiple trips up and down seven flights of stairs for me a day - something that is very taxing on my body/CNS or multiple rides on the elevator that causes its own set of issues. Oh, and of the three elevators, we're lucky if two are working.

And need i even mention the problem being on the eighth floor raises for the students I serve who use wheelchairs, crutches, or other mobility devices?!

Supposedly "they" have been working to get our department moved for "some time." Whatever that means.

Comments

Re: Second hand story, but I've corroborated it...

[urocyon]

Call me bitter these days, but I'm almost surprised that the crawling was not taken as proof that the office was, indeed, accessible to the non-lazy.

Then again, most of my education happened before the ADA went into effect, and they rarely even pretended to think about accessibility. I temporarily needed a wheelchair, and realized I was very lucky indeed that I could just about crutch my way around after abandoning it in a hallway. The high school I started at stuck their generalized Special Needs room--about as bad a dumping ground as it sounds, anyway--on the second floor, with only stair access. Everybody with mobility problems ended up in a neighboring district which at least tried to do all kinds of accessibility (and so did I, eventually). That, of course, was taken as proof that things didn't need to change--where were the disabled students?!

Just got prompted by the pre-ADA mention. ;) Unfortunately, the "where are the disabled people?" thing is still a self-fulfilling problem, AFAICT.