One step for­ward for ac­ces­si­b­lity

Maryville has been tak­ing steps to im­prove the ac­ces­si­bil­ity of the cam­pus.

In the past, open­ing the bath­room doors at Maryville used to re­quire two hands and a lot of pa­tience. Stu­dents in a hurry or stu­dents with ac­ces­si­b­lity is­sues found it to be a prob­lem. This past win­ter, new ac­ces­si­ble but­tons for bath­room doors were in­stalled across Maryville’s cam­pus to fix the prob­lem.

These are lo­cated in the men’s re­strooms in Gan­der, the re­stroom in Kaldi’s and the re­strooms in the Do­nius Uni­ver­sity Cen­ter. All of these com­ple­ment the but­tons al­ready in­stalled in the wom­en’s re­strooms in Gan­der.

Ad­di­tion­ally, adult chang­ing ta­bles have been in­stalled in Kaldi’s, with in­con­ti­nence sup­plies be­ing avail­able at the nurse’s of­fice.

They al­low users to wave their hands in or­der to open a bath­room door, op­posed to open­ing a door with one’s hands, which is what had been done be­fore this up­grade.

Ac­cord­ing to Al­li­son Fuller, the di­rec­tor of dis­abil­ity sup­port and suc­cess at Maryville Uni­ver­sity, the stu­dent or­ga­ni­za­tion ABLE (Abol­ish Bar­ri­ers to Lead­er­ship and Em­pow­er­ment) had sug­gested new ac­ces­si­ble doors on cam­pus.

“A few of us met with our di­rec­tor of fa­cil­i­ties to see when we could make that hap­pen, so we’ve been work­ing closely with them to make those changes,” Fuller said.

Ac­cord­ing to Fuller, to fig­ure out which doors to al­ter, the fa­cil­i­ties man­age­ment team re­lied on which bath­room doors had got­ten the most com­plaints from stu­dents. For ex­am­ple, if a stu­dent in a power chair had com­plained about the lack of an ac­ces­si­ble door, that door was made a pri­or­ity.

She also said she is par­tic­u­larly proud of ABLE for hav­ing helped make those changes pos­si­ble.

In gen­eral, Fuller said, Maryville be­ing a cam­pus of in­clu­siv­ity means that when some­thing is pointed out that is, for what­ever rea­son, not in­clu­sive, the staff will quickly work to ad­dress it.

“The ac­ces­si­ble doors are an ex­am­ple of how a need, when brought up, can be filled quickly,” Fuller said.

Chris­t­ian Henry, a com­mu­ni­ca­tion ma­jor, said while he had been able to grab doors be­fore the in­stal­la­tion of the ac­ces­si­ble doors, he un­der­stands that for oth­ers, it can be harder.

Since the doors were added, how­ever, he finds that he no longer has to roll di­rectly up to the doors and stand in front of them, which he thinks is “cool.”

Henry said Maryville of­fers many ac­ces­si­ble op­tions. He men­tioned the hall­ways are wide and most doors have sen­sors. Al­though, two or three class­rooms, he said, lack “rolly chairs,” but they are ex­cep­tions.

While many steps are be­ing taken, there is still work to be done re­gard­ing ac­ces­si­bil­ity. Fuller said fol­low­ing this, her next hope is to add an ac­ces­si­ble bench on the route to the li­brary from Gan­der.

She said only one area al­lows stu­dents to stop and rest cur­rently. Her hope is to have this pro­ject done by the sum­mer.

While Henry was pos­i­tive about Maryville’s ac­ces­si­bil­ity over­all, he said he would like to see all the ac­ces­si­ble door but­tons work. This is be­cause some­times they do not func­tion prop­erly.

If you find an au­to­matic door is not work­ing, email suc­ceed@maryville.edu.