Western University’s campus is known for its beautiful landscaping and architecture, but what if its buildings are unable to fulfill their basic use? For students, staff, and visitors with disabilities, not all of Western’s campus is easily accessible. Disability advocate and King’s college Professor Jeffrey Preston, who is a wheelchair user himself, believes that Western must do more to support the accessibility of buildings on campus and in London as a whole. Recent renovations on the University College building hope to begin the lengthy process of campus change for the better.

The $34 million renovation of the UC building will include widening of doorways for wheelchair accessibility, reconstructed wheelchair accessible bathroom stalls and more, says Project Manager for the University College renovation project Fred Janzen. Janzen believes that a focus on accessibility has been taken into consideration while confirming the construction layouts and shows the UC building as on-track to be finished for September 2018.

Jeffrey Preston acknowledges Western as an older campus and views renovations of older buildings like UC as a great start to accessibility. Preston believes “The new buildings at Western are fantastic, in my experience they’ve been really easy to get around. The older buildings not so much. They’ve done as much as they can in certain areas, for example, the renovation on UC is going to be a great improvement when it’s finished.” Preston goes on to compliment Western on its ability to do “systematic renovations to these spaces and fold in those accessibility features now which is a great thing. At the same time, there are some other older buildings where the priority isn’t necessarily there in terms of renovations. I’ve always been told to avoid the Kresge building. I was told ‘don’t even try, you’re not going to get in there.’”

A particularly compromising building on campus is that of the McIntosh Art Gallery, with only the one front door this building is completely inaccessible due to 6 steps to its entrance. Arguments against any reconfiguring have been given due to its status as a historical building. Preston understands how complicated and politically charged the question around heritage designation is and believes that there is a value in protecting heritage sites and enshrining and protecting our history, but also has concerns from the perspective of a person with a disability. “There’s also this fact that part of what we are enshrining in heritage buildings is essentially monuments to my disenfranchisement. As we see these heritage buildings, part of what we are maintaining and saving, is a time in which people like myself were not allowed to be a part of the society where we were barred of access literally and figuratively speaking.” Preston believes we must look at whether making a building accessible really diminishes it at all. Would a ramp around the back change the impact of the building “because at the end of the day, there are a lot of varying levels of heritage preservation and some of them have nothing to do with accessibility and inclusion.” Preston asks that people be more open about having that conversation around accessibility and inclusivity “because at the end of the day, there are lots of things that we used to do in the past that we agree needed to go away, that we needed to stop doing.” Preston wants to impact accessibility now where possible so the issue of accessiblity concerning current and future historic buildings won’t cause these very difficult conversations down the line.

As university campuses go, Preston believes Western to be one of the most progressive schools he’s been to. This was one of the contributing reasons to his 14 year long academic career at Western as an undergraduate and graduate student, receiving his BA, Masters, and PhD from the university. With that being said, Preston acknowledges that accessibility “isn’t just a Western problem, this is a societal problem. Our belief system around accessibility is one of accommodation. The idea is that the world will keep on spinning the way it always has, and if somebody needs something different the onus is on them to come forward and ask.” The Western USC has attempted to solve this issue with a portable ramp that will give access to stages and venue locations around campus easily and quickly. USC Accessibility Coordinator Stefan Paciocco had concerns brought to him about a student in a wheelchair being unable to access the Mustang Lounge stage independently and decided to take the issue to council. He quickly learned that a portable ramp is available on campus and is currently working on fixing issues concerning “specific rise and run requirements for the area that the ramp must be placed in, and depending on the setup of the room of the event, it may not be possible to utilize the ramp effectively.” While Paciocco continues to work for this ramps’ use, he also wants to show more focus on issues concerning “Adding another accessible table at the Spoke, adding other equipment such as FM transmitters and other accessibility devices to the UCC for events, beginning to help fund the Access Lab in Weldon and providing use of an Accessibility and Inclusivity Checklist that we have created this year among the Peer Support Services.”

“Just because it’s the way we’ve always done it, doesn’t mean it’s the way we should continue to do it over and over again.” — Jeff Preston

The importance of creating an accessible campus is often lost on those not facing a disability themselves, Preston acknowledges this issue by stating “One of the biggest challenges we face in the Disability Rights movement is: How do you keep disability at the forefront of people’s minds when our systems are basically designed to ensure that we, the disabled, are not visible within this world? As a society we demand that the disabled be invisible and we enforce that in the ways that we design our buildings and the way we plan our events and programs.” Preston insists that if we change the norm of how buildings are designed and what we accept as “good enough”, we can see a real change. The importance of accessible routes can be outlined in the below video regarding the difference in time alone between entering UC by the closest route, versus the accessible route.

Preston goes on to say “If you’re not in sight, you are out of mind. If we can not remember to think about accessibility that means that we have to turn it into a policy solution. We need to look at a way to say that before we book any event: Is that event space going to be accessible?” This idea is being explored by FAM Senator Jaclyn Siou. As the representative for FIMS, Arts and Humanities, and Music for the USC Senate, Siou is currently working on putting forth a pitch for accessibilty to become the big Senate/WSS project to tackle next school year. Siou hopes that for next year a group could be put together to “come up with some relevant statistics and feasibility of implementation by looking at other models implementing accessibility and work on drafting relevant policy papers” from there on. Incoming WSS Chair Kelvin Zhou is on board with Siou’s plan and agrees that accessibility on campus is a relevant but often forgotten issue. Zhou is unsure of what power they could enforce on the issue but “can explore this avenue and offer any support in any way they can.”

“Ultimately it’s a choice. There are choices that need to be made, and unfortunately I think when we are dealing with minority subjects, it’s very easy for us to act like the choice has already been made for us. That our hands are tied and that it’s too difficult and we can’t really change it.” — Jeff Preston

Jeff Preston believes that a first step to normalization and integration is to “change this belief that accessibility should only be provided if there is some confirmation that a disabled person is going to be there.” Preston asks that organizations should be providing the accessibility whether or not it’s known that someone with a disability is going to be there. Preston believes that “we should be building accessibility into our plans, because no other person would need to call up Western and say ‘hey I’m a woman, is there going to be a female bathroom at this event?’ or the same scenario for someone of a minority race or sexual orientation. That’s where we need to get for people with disabilities. We need to get to the place where it’s an expectation that the event is accessible, it shouldn’t be something you have to ask for.”

Large organizations like Western that plan events fairly regularly have an opportunity to make a financial impact on accessibility, or rather the cost of organizations remaining inaccessible. Preston guarantees that “if organizations the size of Western started to commit to only running events and only booking events at accessible venues, whether or not it’s requested, that is going to make a huge impact on the venue market.” Preston wants more than just statements and announcements around being in favour of inclusivity and in favour of accessibility. Preston is calling for Western to do something, stating “we know that when left to their own devices people don’t remember that disabled people exist. Western needs to choose to change.”