There is an issue that many people don’t think about on a daily basis because it doesn’t affect them directly. This issue is handicap accessible public facilities and physically disabled people have to think of this every day and everywhere they go.
The Ole Miss campus is large and spread out, and many of the buildings are very old and historically significant. The question is, are we a handicap accessible University? The best way to answer this question would be to talk to someone with physical limitations who is on campus every day; however, due to confidentiality issues it is difficult to track a physically disabled person down through the Office of Student Disability Services. Another way to assess the campus is to interview people with temporary physical impairments and see just how easy it is for them to get around campus; this is what I have done. According to the ADA (Americans with Disabilities http://www.ada.gov), all public places must be handicap accessible. This includes, but is not limited to, restrooms, entrances, hallways, ramps, elevators, water fountains, and door ways. Ole Miss, like many other public places, meets these standards, but I set out to see if they went the extra mile for students, faculty, and visitors.
One thing that is very apparent is that public transportation to and from and around campus has greatly improved over the past several years. Also, after some investigating I found certain buildings to be very handicap friendly, in my opinion, but others were not so great. One of the main things that should be different is the location of the ramps. More often than not, they are hard to find or way out of the way. This is a huge inconvenience for people who cannot access a building using stairs. Automatic doors should be better maintained as well.
Ferbia Allen is a football player at Ole Miss who suffered an injury to his foot and had to wear a cast for quite some time. “The buildings were very accommodating,” says Allen when asked if the campus was easy to get around. Josh Tatum is another football player who suffered an ankle injury and had to be on crunches for a while. When asked if the University met his needs, he shared a much different opinion from his team mate. “There are too many stairs, and the ramps are often out of my way,” says Tatum. He also went on to say that everything is too spread out and handicap accessibility was not well planned out.
In order to get an idea of how our campus compares to other public places, I sought the help of someone who deals with many handicapped individuals everyday. Mr. Rick Beckwith, Assistant Director of Recreation at the North Mississippi Regional Center, (www.nmrc.state.ms.us/nmrcapp.pdf) takes many trips to campus with his clients for sporting events, recreational activities, and the Special Olympics, which the University hosts. “During Special Olympics track and field events I am in charge of anywhere from 300 to 500 participants, many of which are physically impaired,” Beckwith says. The areas most often used by NMRC include the track and field area, Turner Center, and stadium. Beckwith stated that all of these areas are very accommodating for his clients who are in wheel chairs or use other walking aids. For someone who is responsible for so many disabled people to have so many good things to say about our campus is a very good sign that Ole Miss is trying hard to meet the needs of its physically disabled population.<object width=”425″ height=”344″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/NrDotr784-c?hl=en&fs=1″></param><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/NrDotr784-c?hl=en&fs=1” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”425″ height=”344″></embed></object>
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