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Disabilities at Stanford
Stanford Daily
- February 18, 2009
A look at the
experiences of Stanford students and faculty with disabilities,
and the
resources available to them
By Emily
Rials
Contributing Writer
Making the most of your Stanford
experience is no easy task. The campus is big, the pressure to perform well
academically can feel overwhelming and there are so many events that it's
nearly impossible to take advantage of every opportunity that presents
itself.
Consider, for a moment, what it might
be like to navigate Stanford's campus if you can't use your legs to push the
pedals. Consider trying to find a classroom if you can't see signs on the
doors, or trying to attend social gatherings if you can't hear the words your
peers are speaking.
Stanford is a university openly
committed to diversity. There are theme houses, student groups and community
centers dedicated to providing resources to those interested in talking about
issues of sex, religion and race. Discussion of disability, however, is rarely
as open.
Regardless of discussion, the issue
remains that there are students and faculty on campus who work and study, and
also happen to have physical and/or sensory disabilities. Consider this story a
step toward a more open dialogue about this oft-overlooked area of
diversity.
The Office of Accessible Education
(OAE) is the place from which disability-related resources are distributed and
accommodations are allotted. Services offered by the OAE vary based on a
student's particular set of needs, and different services are provided through
different resource centers.
The Student Disability Resource Center
(SDRC), for example, has the stated goal of "providing students with equal
access to all facets of university life: education, housing, recreation and
extracurricular activities."
Through the SDRC, students can arrange
for anything from exam accommodations to housing accommodations, from
note-taking service to oral or sign language interpretation. The SDRC is also
responsible for the student-run DisGo golf cart service, which gives free rides
to students whose mobility is limited because of permanent disability or
temporary injury.
The Schwab Learning Center, the
Assistive Learning Technology Center, and the Center for Universal Design in
Education are other OAE-run centers for students, offering accessible
technology and learning resources for those who need them.
How do these resources and services,
then, help the students and faculty who use them? What other resources and
services might be missing?
"Classes are relatively
straightforward," said Rachel KoIb '12. "Social events are more
difficult."
Kolb hails from New Mexico and is
interested in pursuing a major in English. She is also Deaf; she wears a
hearing aid in each ear, but relies on lip reading and interpreters to
understand spoken English. Kolb uses sign language interpreters in all her
classes and to help her in her extracurricular activities - she rides for the
equestrian team.
"The SDRC is really great," she said,
noting how the center is responsible for arranging for the interpretation
services she needs. "The challenge is when something comes up last minute, and
it's hard to get interpreters. People don't always understand I need advance
notice."
Still, Kolb described her freshman
experience so far as fairly typical.
"I think sometimes my Deafness makes it
harder," she admitted. Lip reading works fine in one-on-one interactions, but
the problem comes when more than two people are talking.
"I can't follow what's going on," she
added. This can make attending parties and other extemporaneous social events
difficult.
And while she feels the Stanford
community has been very open to her, KoIb acknowledged that some are less
receptive.
"Some don't think beyond 'the normal,"
she said. "They want me to do things their way, but this is the way it is for
me, and I need to do things my way."
Julia Feinberg '11, an ethics in
society major, gets around campus using a power wheelchair. She was born with
Type II Spinal Muscular Atrophy, a neuromuscular disease that has affected her
muscle development.
Awareness about disability resources on
campus is extremely low," Feinberg said. "Whenever people say 'diversity,'
disability is not really included."
In her senior year of high school,
Feinberg completed a massive research project focused on assessing the
accessibility of 15 universities and colleges in and around Philadelphia. She
based her evaluation on everything from access to dormitories to the height at
which lab equipment was stored to the presence of staircase alternatives, like
ramps.
"Stanford is very good for a private
school," she said. "It's a big campus, so it's spread out - and it's a flat
campus."
Stanford's physical size, she
explained, allows the University space to build new, accessible buildings -
space that physically smaller colleges lack.
Feinberg mentioned a few areas in which
Stanford's accessibility could be improved for her and others in similar
situations.
"Automatic doors are put in on an
as-needed basis," she said. "Even when you do request it, it takes at least
four to six weeks."
And sometimes when automatic doors are
added to a building, the accessible entrance is in the back.
"People are always more than willing to
open a door," Feinberg said, "but I shouldn't have to go around to the back
entrance or be dependent on others to simply enter a building."
Other structural barriers, like a lack
of ramps or elevators, make things difficult for those in wheelchairs. Some
public spaces, like the upper level of Memorial Auditorium, remain unreachable
by those in wheelchairs. Even the residential buildings with elevators are not
necessarily fully accessible, either. The Branner elevator, for example, only
moves between two of the dorm's three floors.
"The problem is that there shouldn't
solely be access to academics, but also socializing and being a part of your
dorm community," Feinberg said. "This is a clear example of where structural
barriers can take a huge toll in one's interactions with others if the dorm
residents are not conscious of this limitation and don't make an additional
effort to include the person in dorm activities."
Overall, one of Feinberg's main
concerns seems to be awareness of issues surrounding disability on Stanford's
campus. She noted that there is a group for students with disabilities on
campus that is looking for members. She also finds hope in the creation of a
committee to look into disability issues and resources on campus.
"There's starting to be growing
awareness in the Stanford administration," Feinberg said.
Lecturer Cathy Haas is one person who
has played an integral role in increasing administration awareness about
disability-related issues. Haas, who lost her hearing following a bout of
scarlet fever when she was two, has been teaching American Sign Language (ASL)
at Stanford for over 30 years. She also serves as the Advisor for the
Disability Staff Forum, which helps facilitate communication between
individuals at Stanford with and without disabilities through workshops,
speaker events and lunch meetings.
"Professors with disabilities get on
the forum and try to help increase accessibility on campus," Haas said through
an ASL interpreter.
Haas came to Stanford in 1975 to do
research with Koko the gorilla, helping to teach the ape to sign. When a
medical school professor asked Haas to teach sign language to his students, she
agreed.
"The students kept pestering me after
that," she said, "They wanted to learn sign language."
When Haas originally approached the
linguistics department about a job, however, she found that her interviewer was
resistant to the idea of hiring a Deaf teacher for the proposed ASL
classes.
"I was just in shock," she said. "This
is my language and my culture - you wouldn't hire someone who wasn't fluent in
the Swedish language to teach Swedish!"
Haas' persistence won out in the end,
and she has been teaching ASL classes through Stanford's Special Language
Program ever since.
"We've added research and linguistics,
Deaf awareness, Deaf clubs and activities," she said. "Things really started to
take off."
Teaching has helped Haas develop a
keener awareness of those issues facing community members with disabilities,
and she in turn passes her understanding on to her students. Teaching in a
university setting, she explained, allows both students and faculty members to
"respect each other's cultures and get a better education."
Nicole Torcolini '12 lost her sight
when she was four years old. Now a freshman, she is determined to major in
computer science.
Her decision to attend Stanford was
motivated by its accommodating services for the disabled.
"Most important was the quality of the
Office of Accessible Education," she said. "Some of the colleges that I looked
at had a pretty good office, but they just weren't prepared to do the math and
the science, which are my strong points."
Torcolini makes use of the OAE both to
help make class work accessible to her and to help her get to and from
classes.
"If the materials are not in an
accessible format, the OAE will translate them into a document I can read," she
said.
Torcolini and her guide dog, Lexia,
also take advantage of the SDRC's DisGo golf cart service to navigate
Stanford's sprawling campus.
"I use DisGo almost every day," she
said. "They're a wonderful service."
Torcolini cites evening and week end
transportation as resources she wishes were available. DisGo rides are only
offered from 8:10 am to 5:10 pm, Monday through Friday.
"Anything extra, like extra study
sessions, is scheduled after those hours, so it's hard to get there," she
said.
Limited transportation service,
however, hasn't proven too great a deterrent.
"I know my way around," she said. "If
it's not too far, I'll go myself" Torcolini, like Feinberg and Haas, is also
involved with trying to raise awareness of issues affecting the blind community
at Stanford and beyond. Recently, Torcolini created an online petition, which
she intends to send to Walt Disney Pictures, asking the company to prioritize
the distribution of extra audio files on DVDs so blind moviegoers can enjoy
films with their friends.
So far, the petition has received over
1930 online signatures.
This winter quarter marks the third
year that Lecturer David L. Jaffe has taught ENGR110/220, "Perspectives in
Assistive Technology." The course centers on developing technology that
benefits disabled individuals.
The course involves both lectures and
projects.
"The projects have to work with people
with a disability," Jaffe said. "Students who want to work on a project form
teams to address a need of someone with a disability."
Project suggestions have come from many
different sources. "Some of them have been suggested by people who live in
assistive senior-living centers, others came from veterans who are at the
Spinal Cord Injury Center at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System and others
come from people with disabilities in the local area or from facilities that
serve people with disabilities," Jaffe said. "Perspectives in Assistive
Technology" was originally geared towards mechanical engineering students. This
year, Jaffe is looking to open the class to students from other engineering
disciplines, from electrical engineering to computer science.
"The idea would be to have a diverse
group of engineers work together to solve some big problems," he
said.
Susan Nourse'09 is a product design
major who enrolled in the class this quarter. Her group's project involves a
mechanical solution to a common problem for people in wheelchairs: opening
non-automatic doors.
"Education is best when it's easily
applied," Nourse said. "This class allows us to commit ourselves to something
that actually looks like it has applicability."
The experiences of students and faculty
with physical and sensory disabilities vary greatly, there is no single
"disabled" experience at Stanford. Understanding even just a few of the
obstacles faced by community members with disabilities, however, can help
broaden everyone's perspective as many noted.
And if there can be a consensus reached
about the perspectives and experiences of Stanford students and faculty whose
lives are affected by physical or sensory disabilities, the take-home message
might be this: be aware and be respectful of those around you.
"You need to treat me like a normal
person, because that's what I am inside," Kolb said. "But also realize I do
need help sometimes."
Contact Emily Rials at
ekrials@stanford.edu
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