How Can Technology Make UCSD a More Disabled-Friendly Campus?
Burgundy Li March 16, 2018
In the days of rapid changing and developing of science and technology, assistive technological equipments are essential to the mobility and learning of students with disability in school.
University of California, San Diego (UCSD) is the largest campus among all other UC campuses, but unfortunately, UCSD has limited facilities for disabled students.
“I think there’s a need of installing a stair wheelchair lift at Price Center.” said by Janet Cheung, an international student from Hong Kong who likes staying at Price Center during her break time and discovers the problem for disabled students.
The function of a stair wheelchair lift is to lift people (wheelchair) up and down by attaching the rail of the device with the wheelchair. Although Price Center has elevators on each level, they are mostly in the corner which are hard to see. It usually takes two to three minutes to wait for the lift. During busy hours such as lunch time, elevators are usually packed by students. There would not be enough spaces for wheelchairs to get in, so it is not a good time for them to use elevators during that time. Therefore, implementing stair wheelchair lifts could help them move from one point to another efficiently and easily. For the time being there is no any implementation, but OSD is consulting students and they hope students can give them feedbacks from sending them emails.
OSD (Office for Students with Disability) is the disability center in UCSD that collaborates with undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and staff, other departments and professionals for reviewing medical documentations and providing academic and non-academic accommodations for disabled students in school.
Joana Boval, the director of OSD, said there are many places in school are in fact running into problems of accessible, such as SIO (Scripps Institution of Oceanography), Geisel Library, and Price Center.
OSD is currently working to improve the accessibility of Center Hall by putting vertical activation bar at each of the classrooms’ entrances and exits instead of only push buttons. The vertical activation bar is the new technology specially designed for disabled students which is installed on the ground of each door. “If you use a wheelchair and you have limited upper body strength, you can roll your chair into the bar and open the door.”
Besides, OSD is also replacing most of the doors of the lecture halls at Center Hall, study rooms in Geisel Library and Price Center to automatic doors so that disabled students can more easily enter and exit.
In the process of discussing, funding and implementing technological devices in school, OSD have faced a lot of challenge and concerns, since they have to worry about 70 thousands of people traverse those places in a daily basis. While OSD is not working alone but with Melissa Williams, who is the campus coordinator and works for the disability counseling and consulting that is a human resources. They are the ones who handles accommodations of faculty and staff, and visiting scholars etc.
Jimmy, one of the disabled students in UCSD majors in Visual Art. He is blind, and he has to rely on his white cane and people around him to walk on campus everyday. The campus is hilly, and it continues to grow. Jimmy finds it hard to walk up stairs and through slopes everyday with his white cane, not to mention those who use wheelchairs.
SIO (Scripps Institution of Oceanography) is one of the oldest and largest UCSD buildings that was established in 1903 for undergraduate, graduate students and scientists to do earth and ocean science research. The institution is located on the hill, and contain many stairs and slopes. “They were not built to be accessible so it is the biggest challenge among all other buildings in school”, said Joana. The building is having more elevators comparing to the past, but it is still putting more into effects.
Other than physically disabled students, UCSD is also expanding the services by providing assistive technologies to cognitive disabled students, such as JAWS, Kurzweil, and Dragon Naturally Speaking. Kurzweil is a speech recognition software program that helps students with reading disorder who have difficulties in expressing themselves and academic learning, such as reading, writing and organizing. It is a device to convert speech to texts. While professors are teaching in class, the device automatically converts their words to texts and appear the texts on screen. This function can be greatly applied when they are writing essays too that they can speak to the device and translate them to texts.
By developing assistive technologies for disabled students in school will benefit their learning and hope to bring awareness to other students and the school about disability which they often forget about.
Interviewees
- Joana Boval from OSD (Office for Students with Disability)
- Jimmy (UCSD disabled student)
- Janet Cheung (UCSD International student)
