Issues students face while attending the downtown campus and what the university is doing about it

The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act is a statute put in place in the province in 2005. The AODA aims to create accessibility standards across all public, private and non-profit organizations across the province. Wilfrid Laurier University, being a public university in Ontario, has a responsibility to ensure all spaces are accessible and meet the codes that the AODA lays out. But Students say some buildings on the Brantford Campus are not accessible enough.  

Under AODA regulations, all new and redeveloped buildings must have ramps, lifts or elevators whenever there are stairs. Automatic doors and wide doorways at entrances to buildings and common areas, lighting, accessible public washrooms, barrier-free paths of travel into and through buildings, accessible seating and auditoriums and visual fire alarms in auditoriums and hallways.  

Third-year social work student Alanah Legget has navigated the Brantford campus for three years with a disability and has noticed many issues with accessibility and brought them to the attention of administration.  

“The world was not made for people with disabilities. It was made by able bodied people for able bodied people,” said Legget. 

Ulrike Gross, the assistant vice president of facilities and asset management at Laurier, said her team has received extensive training from a third-party trainer who came to the university and reviewed all buildings and taught staff what to look for in terms of accessibility issues. 

“We take accessibility very seriously,” says Gross. 

Laurier buildings are formally inspected by the facilities department either annually or semi-annually and issues are reported said Gross.  

Accessibility needs for people with disabilities vary depending on the person said Legget, but some common features that make life slightly easier are accessibility buttons on every door, signage indicating where elevators are, braille on signs and elevators spaces and comfortable temperatures in classrooms.  

Especially during hot months at the beginning of the term, an issue Legget and many other students face is the temperature of the classrooms. In a One Market classroom last year, she said she lost consciousness because of how warm the room was.  

While technically complying with AODA code, 97 Dalhousie’s accessible entrance is in an alley that takes an extra five minutes to reach from the front entrance. In the basement of the Odeon Building, the accessible bathrooms are reachable via elevator, but the door leading from the elevator to the accessible washroom does not have an accessibility button. If a student in a wheelchair needed to access the washroom, they would have extreme difficulty getting to it, despite it being the accessible washroom, said Legget.  

“Some of our buildings are from the 80s and code was different at that time and it’s quite challenging to work with an existing building where you already have things built into that building,” said Gross. “We try wherever we can retrofit to make a space accessible. In some instances, we have to wait until we have a capital project and we have funding for it because we can get into some very, very big dollars to be able to make those changes.”  

Elevators are another major issue for students. All campus buildings have elevators but there are no signs to direct students where they are.  

“I wouldn’t know where to go,” said Legget. She said unless a student was shown where the elevators are, in many buildings, the elevators are tucked away like in Carnegie Hall.  

Elevators must have braille for people with vision loss. The main elevator in One Market does have braille, but Legget says that the braille is incorrect.  

“For a town that is relatively connected with the community of people with vision loss because there is the school for the blind on Brant Ave., there should be a lot more accessibility for people with vision loss.” said Legget.  

A classroom that Legget believes to be almost perfect in terms of accessibility is room 207 in the Carnegie Building because of the open floor plan, whiteboards on all walls and the tables and chairs being more accessible than other classes.