AFA Concrete

UEA is a concrete jungle of inaccessibility, it always has been and you may never have thought about it. The campus was designed to be modern, innovative and imaginative but it was never designed to be fully accessible; they just didn’t think like that in the 1960s. Accessibility, of course, means far more than just entering a building in a wheelchair, it covers hearing and visual impairments, mental health provision, parking, note-takers, information on coloured paper, large font, Braille, the list carries on. Individual students have been struggling to make the University more accessible for decades, with varying success.

UEA has slowly changed to make itself more accessible to students, staff and visitors, with new ramps and lifts installed, portable hearing loops, better floor markings, more Braille books in the Library, computer terminals with large screens, more dyslexia support and a full-time Disability Coordinator in the Dean of Students, but we still lack key areas of accessibility. We have been silently paying the price for having a jungle of steps, hard-to-read written formats and badly marked paths, with students either turning away before applying, or being let down through their studies. Now the University may have to change because of the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act, a law that has made (admittedly vague) provisions of duty for Universities to make “reasonable adjustments” for those with disabilities.

We have also lacked a strong collective progressive campaign from the Students’ Union. Together we’re stronger, to quote another famous Norwich-based union, and together we can push for change. Our Union accepts that society will, intentionally or not, discriminate people who have so-called ‘disabilities’. Our Union wants to fight the lack of access, understanding and opportunity that students with disabilities will face in the wider world. Thus, our Union created a position on the Executive – the team that executes policy to run the Union – to support students with disabilities. Unfortunately for years the position of “Students With Disabilities” Officer was woefully unfilled, and the Union decided to amalgamate several other equal opportunities roles into one. Cue the creation of the ‘Liberations Officer’, a confusingly-titled officer on the Exec there to liaise with students with disabilities; lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) students and students from ethnic minorities. Phew.

Fast forward five years and there still isn’t a students with disabilities group within the Students’ Union. If students have a problem they generally go to the Dean of Students, where they face a binary reception of either ‘yes, we can help’ or a polite ‘no, we can’t’. It must be said that they offer fantastic one-to-one professional support for the whole spectrum of disabilities and access needs, and will try to help as much as they can. It must also be pointed out that the Dean of Students lacks any kind of campaign wing, a progressive movement for change, to eradicate discrimination and to push the Government for stronger legislation. Cue the Liberations Officer again; it’s their job to create such a group, and the current officer, Steve Williams, just has.

The group is called ‘Access For All’ because we believe people have access needs, not disabilities. This follows from what social scientists called the Social Model of Disability, which basically states that your disability comes from the discrimination you face from society, not your medical condition. As with any large institution, it can be hard for students to make their individual voice heard within the University, so the group will be there to amplify your message several decibels. It will offer practical advice on who to see for short-term solutions, how to campaign for longer-term change within the University and the UK Government and enables students to network amongst themselves when similar problems reoccur.

The Union of UEA Students, as you may know, is linked to every other Union up and down the country by the National Union of Students (NUS) and they have four Liberations Campaigns to augment the main campaign for free education and better student services. These Liberations Campaigns are the Students With Disabilities, LGBT, Black Students and Women’s Campaigns. They are run on the basis that these groups of people have always faced discrimination and been denied their equal rights for decades – if not centuries – and strive to create a just, equal British society.

They also run on the basis of autonomy, which means only people who self-define as one of these categories can go to the annual Conference to elect a national Committee and choose policy for the next year. Access For All will link with the NUS Students With Disabilities Campaign, often abbreviated to NUS SWD, as if we needed anymore acronyms at UEA.

The Campaign has a full-time convenor called Sian Davies, working at NUS Headquarters in London, and works with a whole Committee to produce campaign material for Unions, give links to national charities and organisations and visits Unions to make presentations. The focuses for this year are;

• ‘Sexual RevoLOOtion’ following on from the very successful ‘Free to Pee’ campaign highlighting the necessity of wheelchair-accessible toilets, we are now campaigning for condom and sanitary machines at suitable heights for wheelchair users.
• ‘Activate’ A sports day for students with disabilities on 7th November.
• ‘Don’t Diss My Ability’ To raise awareness of the many different disabilities, and to break down the that is attached to so many of them.

Back to some recent successes at UEA, we have just secured a sum of money from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) to do something which should have been done a long time ago. Imagine if you were on the fifth floor of the Teaching Block and the fire alarm went off: you would think you were fine because you can just walk down the stairs. Now imagine if you were in a wheelchair and you’re only hope of escape is a lift. But all the lifts at UEA, every single one of them, will shut off in a fire, because they are on the same electricity source as everything else. Students in wheelchairs face an uneasy wait until the Fire Brigade are ready to go in and haul them down the stairs. It’s a disaster waiting to happen. The money will be used to “fire proof” several lifts in the Teaching Block, putting them onto a separate electrical supply, thus usable in a fire. About time too!

We have also seen a number of automatic doors popping about campus, this helps students in wheelchairs if they can’t open heavy doors by themselves. It gives them independence, mobility, freedom and access that everyone else takes for granted.

Access For All has already had its first meeting, and we have already been discussing some of the various access problems students face. Here are some examples; bikes being locked to handrails down slopes or stairs, so that students cannot use the handrails to go down or up them. A student being denied the right to use a dictaphone to record lectures, even when they have an access need. There are still too many heavy doors on campus, especially in the Street. Wheelchair Stairlifts cannot take heavy wheelchairs, making them inaccessible to many. There is no decent path around the lake, accessible for wheelchair. There is little in the way of practical floor markings around campus to aid visually impaired students. We want a fully standardised policy on how to better include students with dyslexia, because some Schools of Study and some academic tutors are better than others. Finally, we want the Estates Department to explicitly warn students of the exact extent of building work that is going on about campus, so that students with all sorts of access needs are aware if they have to change their route. The present system for passing on information is wholly inadequate. Make your voice heard, get in touch.

Access For All is having its second meeting on Tuesday 18th October between 4-5pm in the Bill Wilson Room, next to the Box Office in Union House. All are welcome and strongly encouraged to attend.

You can contact the Liberations Officer, Steve Williams, on su.liberations@uea.ac.uk or pop in to the Part-Time Exec office on the top floor of Union House.

You can contact the Disability Coordinator, James Dexter, on james.dexter@uea.ac.uk or pop in to his office in the Dean of Students, Upper Street Level.

You can contact Access For All by emailing accessforall@another.com and visiting the website at www.stu.uea.ac.uk/liberations