I have disabilities—a bit of a soup of them, in fact. Most relevant to life at Camosun, I have chronic hip pain.
I also have a class on the third floor of the Ewing building, which has no elevator.
To me, it seems reasonable that the college installs in Ewing one of those little freight elevators that are in the Paul and Dawson buildings. So, I decided to get to the bottom of disability accommodation on campus, both up-front and behind the scenes.
There’s a lot to consider with accommodation policy and implementation, as there is when considering when students have the right to obtain their desired accommodations and when they don’t. Sometimes students should fight for an accommodation; sometimes they shouldn’t.
There are lots of students on campus with accessibility issues. They each have a story to tell.
“The one thing that really does get me a lot is there’s not really a lot of spaces on campus that I can sit and study at that aren’t in a classroom,” says Kelsey Worth, a third-year University Transfer student who has spina bifida and scoliosis, and uses a wheelchair. “The study spaces outside are the metal picnic benches you can’t move. They’re bolted down, and so are the stools that are inside the Fisher Building. There’s nowhere to pull a chair up. And the cafeteria is a write-off; I can’t get in there. It just kinda sucks, because I’m on campus a lot, but not necessarily in class, and I’d love to get some work done, but there’s nowhere for me to go.”
Worth says that the downstairs portion of the library is cluttered and difficult to navigate in a wheelchair, and that it isn’t ideal for studying.
“The tables in the library, there’s already too many in there. They’ve got too many computer terminals and not enough study space,” she says, adding that the silent study space upstairs in the library also presents exclusionary problems. “The chair makes a lot of noise even when it’s turned off, so I would still be disturbing other people and I’d get dirty looks. It’s just not a comfortable space, because you know you’re the problem for everybody else, so I kind of avoid the library; there’s too many people and not enough space.”
Worth feels that even in the buildings where she can find accessible space, there’s still not enough room for her.
“Every other building except Wilna Thomas, the few tables that are available are almost always full,” she says.
Worth says that creating areas that are accessible to everyone but prioritized for disability access would be a step up, but she thinks it would be a burden on an already strained system.
“I don’t think it would hurt, but at the same time I can’t see it happening in a place like this because they don’t want to take away from the limited resources they already have for everybody,” she says. “It makes sense, but where would you put them?”
Worth feels that social inaccessibility is just as prevalent on campus as physical inaccessibility.
“I find starting a conversation with people on the first day of class very awkward because a lot of people don’t know what to say, but it’s like, why does it have to be about the fact that I’m in a wheelchair? It’s honestly like it’s a giant beacon that says ‘Do not approach me,’ or that I don’t have a personality outside of my limitations,” she says. “Yes, I’m in a wheelchair; yes, I have a physical disability. Am I any different in my interests and hobbies than anybody else? I honestly don’t think so. I read the same books, watched the same movies that you did growing up. I just have a chair that moves instead of legs that move me.”
She says that many people in her situation would prefer people not focus on their disabilities.
“For the most part, we’re not against speaking about our limitations, but we don’t want to focus on it the whole time. I’d much rather have a conversation about what book I’m reading or what movie I’m watching, you know; we’re normal people,” she says. “I think that is probably the main thing for me—don’t be afraid to come and talk to me about anything. It’s like people see the chair but they don’t see the person. I feel like people don’t understand that it doesn’t need to be like that.”
The Centre for Accessible Learning (CAL) is Camosun’s primary resource for students with disabilities; CAL works with students and instructors to find ways for students to be successful in their courses by helping them with the challenges imposed upon them by their disabilities. CAL manager Darryl Gorrie says that they strive to stay above the curve when it comes to assistive technology.
“We work with partners like ATBC [Assistive Technology BC] in Vancouver,” says Gorrie. “They have grants and technology loan programs, so we’ve taken advantage of that to obtain equipment to help students but also to bring our own knowledge up as we go forward.”
Gorrie says that in a situation where a student’s challenges are beyond CAL’s ability to help, they’re happy to make a few calls.
“We do referrals out to community agencies, and that goes for mental health as well,” he says. “We will refer out to community agencies who have capacity in that area when we see a student who is really struggling.”
Sometimes, help is right down the road, at the University of Victoria’s CanAssist.
“CanAssist quite often will work with anyone in the community for whom a standard piece of technology you can buy on the market isn’t suitable,” says Gorrie. “They’ll work to create something novel and innovative for an individual. It’s amazing.”
Gorrie believes that gaining independence is invaluable, and says that CAL is highly committed to supporting that process.
“I think it’s super important that students learn the skills for independence as much as possible, and part of that is working with them around technology, so they can become über-competitive in the job market, and extremely proficient in their area of interest,” he says. “If you build self-serve tools, they start using those, and it creates a situation where people can become more independent.”
He adds that this successful process is what motivates people working within CAL.
“That excitement is part of what drives all of us at the CAL because we see people moving forth, getting their credential, and being able to go out and start their lives in employment. I think stuff like that is what drives us.”
The Camosun College Student Society (CCSS) is also a resource for students struggling with disabilities.
“I’ve done a fair amount of work with CAL,” says CCSS wellness director Eleanor Vannan, who also puts a lot of effort into building supportive relationships with students if they just need someone to talk with or to vent to. “I’ll take students for coffee, and one of the things I am quite good at is navigating institutional structures, so a lot of the time it’s helping them know the right process, the right person to go to, that kind of thing.”
Vannan is also a student with multiple disabilities, so she understands the struggle.
“I’ve had a diagnosed disability since I was in Grade 5. I ended up dropping out of high school because I didn’t receive any academic support or accommodation,” she says. “I came to Camosun, and in that period I actually had quite a bad fall and injured my cervical spine.”
Vannan says that she has nerve pain from that, so it presents as a physical disability, but she also has a learning disability, and, along with that, the associated struggles with anxiety and depression. She says that when talking to students she tries to reframe situations and provide students with some context.
“Our role in the CCSS is very often translating between institutional jargon and how students speak and understand things,” says Vannan, “as well as guiding them through the process and saying, ‘Here’s a reasonable outcome we can expect, and here’s what we can’t expect.’”
One of the more infamous accessibility issues around campus is that the Centre for Trades Education and Innovation, which was built in 2016 at the Interurban campus, had a mezzanine with no elevator access (the college is just finishing putting an elevator in, to make the mezzanine accessible). The argument at the time was that it came down to budget; however, it’s a beautiful building, so there was obviously money allocated to visual aesthetics. I wondered if perhaps the issue was less about scarcity of resources and more about allocating resources to form over function.
“I think it’s a false dichotomy—you can have them together,” says Vannan. “And we shouldn’t slander function by thinking of it as something that must be utilitarian. You figure out what the function is, then you figure out how to make it beautiful, and I think you can find beautiful options at any price.”
However, Vannan believes that preemptive problem solving is the key.
“Camosun is very much a patchwork community,” she says. “People come from all different backgrounds, abilities, and lived experiences, and that’s what makes it such a wonderful community to be a part of, but we need to have diverse groups making the design decisions about what these spaces should look like and how we’re going to use them.”
Gorrie agrees with this and says that it’s simpler to be proactive than retroactive with accessibility issues.
“It all goes back to the principle of barrier-free design,” he says. “It’s super important to think about things at the outset of the design phase, because it’s much easier to build in accessibility principles at the beginning, rather than having to go back and retrofit.”
Speaking of retrofitting, I looked into what it would take to put an elevator into Ewing, and I came across the concept of “undue hardship,” which is the only scenario in which the college is not mandated to provide an accommodation.
According to the Canadian Human Rights Commission, “Undue hardship describes the limit, beyond which employers and service providers are not expected to accommodate. Undue hardship usually occurs when an employer or service provider cannot sustain the economic or efficiency costs of the accommodation.”
To get a better understanding of what this means, I spoke with Camosun ombudsperson Carter MacDonald.
“It’s a very high standard in human rights legislation,” he says. “It’s incumbent upon the college to grant accommodations up to undue hardship.”
MacDonald provides two examples. The first involves a student—not from Camosun—who used a sports wheelchair with a wide wheelbase that couldn’t fit through a bathroom door. It was going to cost $50,000 to accommodate the student, says MacDonald, so the institution denied the request.
“Well, quite frankly, $50,000 for a post-secondary institution is not undue hardship in order to accommodate a student if it’s got a $150-million budget, so the Human Rights Tribunal found in favour of the student,” says MacDonald, adding that the institution has to be able to really demonstrate that it would impede its operations or put it at financial risk of bankruptcy if it were to respond to an accommodation request.
The second case regards a former Camosun student who was not allowed to record some of her class lectures. Since the crucial focus of the courses revolved around functional communication, simply recording them would not fulfill those requirements.
“The tribunal ruled that post-secondary institutions are not obliged to change the integrity of their courses to meet, in this instance, a desire by a student for an accommodation she didn’t even have, and the tribunal found in favour of the college,” says MacDonald.
MacDonald says that a significant consideration around the feasibility of accommodation is maintaining academic integrity, and Gorrie seconds this.
“With courses, it’s always based around what’s essential,” says Gorrie. “If you’re in a Nursing course and you have to be able to suture a wound that’s bleeding within so many seconds before the person died, [that’s] an essential task that’s required under time pressure, so [the student] couldn’t have double time to do it. It wouldn’t be possible.”
A 2016 Nexus article identified that Camosun did not have a proper policy when it came to providing accommodations for students; as of 2020, it’s still in the works. Camosun education policy specialist Rashed Al-Haque says that the intent and function of the policy is to ensure that the students who need these accommodations get them; he says that, according to the Human Rights Code, students with disabilities should receive accommodations.
“That’s a legislative obligation that we have,” he says. “So we use very strong language in this draft policy to really hold the college responsible, because at the end of the day, our policies should reflect our values and principles.”
Al-Haque stresses that having a policy is important but that it’s only a formality, since appropriate accommodation is mandated by law and is already being fulfilled by Camosun.
“This policy is just that extra added layer, that protection for everybody to ensure that students do in fact receive their accommodations,” he says. “If it’s been recommended by CAL, they should receive that, and at the college we have a responsibility to ensure that we’re supporting our learners and students to be successful academically.”
Al-Haque hopes that the policy will be finished by the end of the year.
I find it difficult to distinguish the line between what should be a legitimate expectation and what may be considered an undue sense of entitlement.
“This really goes back to expectation-setting, and it’s something I face,” Vannan admits. “I’m frustrated all the time, because you think to yourself, ‘In this one particular instance, if they just did it this way, my life would be so much better.’”
Vannan recalls a line she read in a policy: “An acceptable accommodation is not necessarily a perfect accommodation.”
“I read that at first and I thought, ‘I don’t like that language, that’s very condescending to students,’ but the more I thought about it, I thought, there is some truth in that,” she says. “At the end of the day, we all like our barriers to be taken down in exactly the way we want, but sometimes we have to be able to say to ourselves, ‘Does this leave the barrier in place, or does it take it down, just not in the way that I want it?’”
This ties back into Ewing not having an elevator—Vannan points out that the building technically has access to every floor (through the walkways that lead to and from Fisher).
“Is it ideal, not having an elevator in Ewing? No, it’s not,” says Vannan. “That’s kind of the bitter pill sometimes, understanding that when you’re fighting for access, you sometimes have to accept the things that are less than ideal but are good enough.”
However, Vannan also has trouble in discerning where that line is.
“I have to sit and check myself for a moment, saying, ‘Is this you being that person who just wants what they want because it’s comfortable?’” she says. “It’s really hard, because I think, for students with disabilities, we are so used to being shut out of places, and going into situations being ready to have a fight. It’s really hard to step back and say, ‘Should I be having a fight?’”
Vannan reminds students that a win is still a win, and that they need to choose their battles.
“You do have people who are very adamant that this is what they need,” she says. “But in certain situations where there’s not that documentation or diagnosis, it’s not necessarily the hill to die on, in terms of making the college provide accommodations. But when you have a situation where you do have that documentation, that’s when you have that big fight.”
Second-year University Transfer student Malcolm McLaren has been diagnosed with ADHD, anxiety, and depression. McLaren—who is also shift captain at the Lansdowne campus for the CCSS’ WalkSafer program—acknowledges that disabilities can produce challenges in all aspects of life, and says that people who have disabilities need to judge when to disclose this to others.
“As difficult as it is, when you’re generalized by another person, it’s your responsibility to let them know that you require different treatment,” he says, adding that it’s not an excuse, it’s just the person explaining what they need.
McLaren says that it can be hard for students to admit that they have a disability.
“Years ago, when I first came to the Carpentry program here, I was struggling, and my teacher didn’t directly say it to me, but he said to the class three or four times that if you have a disability you should go to the CAL, and eventually I did, and he said, ‘I knew it! I was trying to tell you, but I couldn’t!’” McLaren says with a laugh. “You know, it’s a pride thing for a lot of people, like you don’t want to admit that, and a teacher breaking that stigma, I think it really helps.”
McLaren says that it might help to have a standard addition to all course outlines that addresses the disabled elephant in the room.
“Maybe there should be a section at the beginning where they could explain that if you’re a student with a disability you can go to the CAL and get help,” he says.
However, McLaren says that he’s really happy with the state of disability accommodation at Camosun.
“Coming back to school as an adult, I had some big fears,” he says. “I thought coming into a school with a disability I might be treated like I was when I was younger, or like I was with an undiagnosed disability in the real world, which was pretty awful, and I was really surprised and overwhelmed with positivity working with the CAL.”
McLaren says that CAL began supporting him even before he became a student.
“They were willing to help sign the student loans up with me, so they could get me the best services I needed,” he says. “I was blown away by the college administration trying to help me out; I’ve never experienced that before.”
Gorrie feels very strongly that the college really cares for students with disabilities, and this comes across in the enthusiastic cooperation with which CAL staff work, both with each other and with students.
“That’s one of the reasons I’m so happy to be here—the fantastic people. I couldn’t have landed in a friendlier or more supportive environment,” he says. “There’s always issues in organizations, but the willingness to work together to look at the future as an opportunity to make good systematic change, to create powerful mechanisms that everybody wants to be involved with, that’s a very exciting reason why I came here.”
McLaren says that usually a non-visible disability gets the person “treated like garbage” everywhere they go, but he says that it doesn’t carry that stigma at Camosun.
“CAL and most Camosun faculty are really understanding,” he says. “It’s unbelievable.”
McLaren also says that students have the power to make positive changes when issues arise.
“If there is a problem that a student has, they can go to Nexus, they can go to the student society, and make a fight for themselves, as well as others, and make a change on campus—they really can,” he says.
Vannan wants students to know that the CCSS is there for them.
“The student society’s entire purpose is to serve our membership to ensure they have the best Camosun experience,” she says. “And we can celebrate with them when times are good, but we will fight for them when things go wrong. And certainly, in my position, that goes doubly for students with barriers to access, so they’re always free to send us an email or stop by our office.”
McLaren agrees with this, saying that students should seek out the student society if they are having problems.
“I think if people do have accessibility issues, or they feel they aren’t being represented, then they should come seek out the CCSS and know that we have their back,” he says. “There’s always ways that we can help, and even if it doesn’t directly solve it right here, right now, there’s others like you, and, through advocacy and the work we do, there will be a change one day.”
Correction: This story originally said that the mezzanine in Camosun’s Centre for Trades Education and Innovation had no elevator; the college is in fact almost finished putting an elevator in. We apologize for the mistake.