Handicapped Accessibility Forum Discusses 'Freedom' on Campus

Author: Tim McCahill

"Accessibility to me means freedom of choice," said Middlebury resident Rose Hotte. "The freedom and the choice to go wherever I want." Hotte was one of the five panelists at a lunchtime discussion kicking off Accessibility Awareness Week, held on campus the week of Nov. 18.
The weeklong series of events, sponsored and organized by the biology department's Neural Disorders: Individuals, Families and Society course, was designed to promote awareness of disabilities and accessibility issues in the College community.
The panel discussion introduced the issue of accessibility with five speakers from in and around the College community. The panelists included Jodi Litchfield, Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) coordinator, Katie Samson '03, Sarah LeFeber '03, Hotte and Jill Meunier, a resident of Vergennes. The five discussed how accessibility awareness affected their lives as well as how it was addressed on the Middlebury campus and community.
Litchfield began the discussion by describing the role of the ADA office at Middlebury. "November," she said, "marks the eighth year of the ADA office at Middlebury." In 1994, students approached the College asking for assistance in accommodating disabilities. The College realized that they had no way to accommodate the student's needs and established the ADA office to provide such assistance. Now, the ADA office takes care of 20 different disabilities ranging from hearing impairment to mobility impairments to psychological disabilities. "There are hidden disabilities," Litchfield said, "[with all] affected a great deal academically, residentially, by having a disability and often we can't see them."
Samson is one of those affected. During her sophomore year she had a spinal cord injury that resulted in her being a quadriplegic. She returned to school in the fall of 2000 after extensive rehabilitation, and had to figure out how living at Middlebury would work for her. Samson talked about how being in a wheelchair has affected her life at school. "A lot of things have to be done for me," she said, "I have to take things into consideration that others don't really think about." These include figuring out the best way to get to classes on time and into buildings, as well as getting around campus.
While Samson lives in an off-campus apartment with a live-in nurse, LeFeber lives in a residence hall. She is a paraplegic, able to come to Middlebury on her own. That in itself was "scary," she said, "because there are things that I need help with. However, people here are so helpful." LeFeber talked about the difficulties associated with being in a wheelchair on campus. Many of the dorms are not accessible; public buildings have laws, but houses and living spaces do not necessarily have the same controls.
Hotte and Meunier, who both have multiple sclerosis (MS), have been working with Parfitt's students for the last few years, coming in to talk about various topics associated with accessibility and MS. Hotte has been in a wheelchair for six years, and voiced her desire to make the whole world accessible. She talked about the frustration associated with wanting to do things on one's own but being hindered by a lack of accessibility. Meunier, who was diagnosed with MS in 1996, is just getting used to her electric wheelchair. "It's my legs," she said. "It helps me get around." However, she feels constrained by a lack of accessibility: going to the dentist's, for example, is difficult because she has to stay in her chair as opposed to getting into the dentist's chair, which prevented her from having X-rays taken.
There is much more to accessibility then just being able to get into buildings however. It's a standing friendly world, as one panelist put it, "people don't remember that people in wheelchairs are permanently four feet tall." The best way to raise awareness is to question everything, because very rarely will something be fully accessible. Litchfield advises everyone to "look at the world with different eyes." That is what Accessibility Awareness Week hoped to achieve.