Campus group blocks off staircases to raise awareness about accessibility
Vanessa Del Carpio
Staff Writer
@excalweb
On the morning of February 6 and 7, many students intending to use the stairwells in Vari Hall were faced with a rather strange sign.
The stairwells were blocked off with caution tape and a sign that read, “Caution: These Stairs are Out of Service—Inconvenient Eh? This is only an example of what persons with disabilities experience every day.”
The event was the brainchild of guest speaker Jeffrey Preston, a disability advocate best known for driving his electric wheelchair from London to Ottawa to raise awareness about inaccessible transportation.
Preston says he came up with the idea out of the frustration of working on accessibility issues for a long time without seeing any tangible results.
“Perhaps by giving people the ‘disabled’ experience, they might not only empathize with our concerns but also be motivated to fight for our rights,” he says. “It’s about forcing people to ask themselves, ‘How does it feel to be told there are places in this world that you cannot go, simply because of your mode of transportation?’”
A stairwell in Vari Hall was blocked off February 6 and 7 for a brief half-hour period. In addition, a major stairwell in Vanier College was also blocked February 7. However, organizers made sure only stairwells that have alternate stairwells right beside them were being blocked off.
“We don’t want to prevent people from getting to class, only to grab their attention and get them to consider disabling barriers,” says Kaley Roosen, student chair of Access York and one of the event’s coordinators.
“It’s a very good thing,” says Wallace Pidgeon of York media. “The purpose is to raise awareness on campus for all students, faculty and staff to the issues of both physical and intellectual barriers to those with disabilities that society continues to overcome. The emphasis is on the abilities of individuals as opposed to their disabilities be they physical, psychological, or sensory.”
However, Roosen pointed out that preventative and active responses to accessibility issues on campus could be addressed quicker.
“There was an elevator out for a week in York Lanes,” she recalled. “There were no safety concerns raised for me when I couldn’t get to my meetings. It’s interesting to see the comparison […] the university might be closed down if stairwells were closed off the same way an elevator is.”
