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cosmolinguistSo as part of my "support plan" for university, I've been allocated so many hours of something that I think was called orientation. To help me find my way to my "teaching sessions" the first few weeks, and then maybe later on in the semester because things would change or move rooms or whatever.
Okay. They were able to sort this out for me in a short timeframe, because coming through clearing I didn't have my original assessment with DASS until the Tuesday of freshers week and by the Friday it was confirmed. It was suggested I phone them about this on Monday morning, so I did, and they were able to get support in place by the time of my first lecture that afternoon. And a lecture and a class on the Wednesday.
All of this was done by one person, whose initial is I. She was fine: she called or texted me to arrange/confirm plans, she was waiting for me early, she chatted a bit (she'd just graduated in mathematics, she told me her first name was Arabic when I told her I was studying Arabic, etc.), we were both confused but we got everywhere together. Fine.
It would've been nice to have more help with things like getting around the library, finding toilets, figuring out where I could get some food on Wednesdays when I'm in uni five hours out of six, but this was support specifically offered to get me to "teaching sessions," it seemed to happen only in 15-minute chunks right before my lectures, and I didn't expect the people guiding me around to be the best people to talk to about that. It was only a vague thought, anyway.
On the Friday of that week I got a text from a new number saying something like "Hi, I'm H, I'll be helping you on Monday, where and when should we meet?" My heart sank. Partly because I was already fine with the one place I had to go on a Monday, and partly because I naively hadn't expected all of the arrangements to have to be re-confirmed with every new person. And I had to tell every new person what building and room I needed.
I'd had to tell the "supervisor" guy I spoke to the first day what my timetable was, and he made sure to confirm the times and places, so I foolishly expected they'd be handed out to the "support" workers rather than me having to dig through my notebook or log in to view my timetable online all the time. It stressed me out.
All of this stressed me out, which seemed unfair when it was supposed to keep me from getting stressed out because normally having to get to a new place on my own is the worst. And it was, so I put up with this stuff because it was less stressful.
I eventually got back to H over the weekend with my spiel about where to meet, but then she said "great but I can't be there Monday, someone else will, but I'll see you Wednesday." So I had C on Monday.
I was at the meeting point early -- with the bus times, I have the choice of being there early or late so I'm always early. So I was looking at my phone and stuff, and then it rang and she said she was there but she didn't see me -- which isn't really a problem I could fix! I didn't even know what she looked like yet -- and off we went. This was to a lecture I'd already been to and I ended up leading her there, because of course she didn't know where she was going (she'd repeated the name of the building slowly and thoughtfully when she asked where it was and I'd told her, as if it only distantly rang a bell, which did not inspire confidence in me). I'd complained about this on Facebook and concluded that since this was a week that involved a few places I'd already been (my lectures and my Arabic class) as well as ones I hadn't (my seminars, which hadn't been held the first week) it was worth putting up with things I didn't need to make sure I got what I did need.
After my relatively uneventful time with C, I was really unhappy to learn that she'd called my landline what must have been just before she called my mobile to say she was there and where was I. I can't figure out why she'd have tried the landline first, but she must have since she couldn't have done it after we got off the phone; she said by that point she could see me and she appeared mere seconds later. So anyway she called my house and Andrew picked up, she said "Holly?" as if she thought it was me, he explained that he was my husband, she must have mis-heard or misunderstood the word husband pretty drastically because she said "Hospital?" and poor Andrew briefly thought someone was calling him to tell him I was in the hospital, or something.
I was really not happy about that, but I didn't have the energy to complain about it. Next morning I saw C again, she accepted the slightly different directions (this time I'd stay on the bus an extra stop since the next stop was right near the building I needed this time), was there waiting for me even though I was early again, and got me to a new place for my seminar without incident. Considering this was like the only benefit I really got from this entire week, I'm glad it went so well!
Wednesday morning C was there again. I had to reassure her that my lecture was where it was (it is a confusing bit of the building) and because I'd had to arrive early there was enough time after she deposited me with the crowd waiting to get in because the previous lecture still hadn't finished that I had time to find the toilets by myself, following signs like a sighted person. I'd scurried out of this room quickly on the Monday (my other lecture was very nearby) because I didn't know where any toilets were in that building and had to go to another one and all through a maze of corridors before I could be confident I knew where one was. Like I was the goddam Hidden Figures lady or something.
Having to be glad that my orientation-support-theatre ended with time for me to do some actual orientation made me grumpy, but at least now I knew where some toilets were.
Wednesday afternoon I had the previously-promised H, which while I was again going to some place I'd been before, the Arabic class was genuinely in a confusing space and we'd had to move rooms during the first class because the computer wasn't working, so I didn't mind the help so much and at least wasn't leading this person around.
Thursday I have off uni. But I got an e-mail saying these PASS sessions we'd all been told about (it stands for Peer-Assisted Study Something-or-other) were happening, and for me there was one Friday morning. My timetable said this was in the Chemistry building. I didn't know there was a buliding called Chemistry! I dutifully e-mailed my "support supervisor" to tell him about this addition, and about a change because the Monday lectures were no longer going to be in a room next to the Wednesday lecture, they were going to be somewhere totally different. I told him I wasn't expecting support for the PASS session on Friday since I was only telling him about it on Thursday, but that it'd be good to have for the lecture on Monday even though otherwise I wouldn't need anything this week because I'd have already been everywhere else and thus know my way.
Friday morning arrived and I looked up where this Chemistry building was, since if I was going to go there I'd have to make my way there myself.
It looked really confusing. I couldn't tell from the online maps where exactly it was,or even where the door was. A lot of these things are tucked away from roads so don't turn up on Google Street View or anything. I moaned copiously and Andrew offered to help. But I didn't like that, when the university were paying this outsourced company to do this job. Plus he wasn't totally sure he knew where he'd be going either. I ended up getting really stressed about it and deciding that, lacking questions to ask my peers about in the study session anyway, I was better off just staying home and reading up for my seminar that afternoon.
At some point I realized I hadn't had a text or call from that day's person asking me where to meet. I did get one of the automated e-mails asking me to confirm the sessions I'd had, no doubt to prove the people turned up and deserved to be paid. So when I logged into the system to deal with that, I saw that while all Monday's and Wednesday's sessions had been "matched" with either C or H, the one for Friday still said "Unmatched." There was nobody responsible for getting me to my seminar.
Now I was really stressed, too much to phone but I e-mailed this "supervisor" of mine, saying how disappointed I was. Eventually I got an e-mail back saying that the guy had been out of the office Thursday and that day, but that yes they could see there was no one allocated to me and they'd ring me about this after my lecture. I laughed bitterly -- how did they think I was getting to my (seminar, not lecture, but it doesn't matter) without the sodding help I required? -- but wasn't going to argue. It was fine with me if they waited to call. I'd had a couple of hours of being really wound up about this and while I wasn't happy about missing anything, at least now that I knew that was what was going to happen, I could start to settle down a little bit. Gary needed taking to the vet just o check up on how his mouth was healing a week post-op, and if I wasn't in uni I could take him which meant Andrew could save his arthritic knees and we could save his bus fare. Gary and I walked; I thought the fresh air would be good for us. (And his mouth was proclaimed by the vet to be healing well, which came as no surprise but some relief.)
I e-mailed my lecturer (since I didn't know which TA my seminar group had yet, I couldn't e-mail them) explaining what'd happened and asking if I could catch up on anything I'd missed. She seemed pretty unbothered about me missing it, which also helped (but I'd put a lot of work into my reading and homework for it, so I was still annoyed!) and I was able to set off for Brighouse a little earlier and more leisurely than I'd planned (I was staying over that night).
So then we get to today. Today's person, U, rang me to introduce herself, asked if it was okay if she messaged me when she got to the meeting point, and then texted me to ask if there was anything I wanted to her to know, or to do, when she was assisting me. None of the other ones had done that, and I even told Andrew how impressed I was (I don't know what information they're given about me, like do they know it's a sight impairment I've got, or anything? I don't expect a lot since they're not even given the information on the system about where I need to go).
I was early, again, and she texted me she'd be a few minutes late because she was on a bus from North Campus (this is what they're calling UMIST these days). Fine, but the five minutes made me twitchy. I like to be early because to get the slides on my tablet I have to make sure it's turned on and the wi-fi's working and I'm logged in and everything, and I just seem to be a slower, faffier person than the 18-year-olds around me who flump into chairs and are ready to go. And while usually the seats right at the front in direct view of the slides are not popular, there are only a few seats in the whole lecture theatre where I can have a chance of seeing anything so I like to know I will have one of those.
And again I was dealing with someone who had only the vaguest idea where we were going. "I've looked up the building on the map," she said earnestly, about a building I'd spent my whole fresher's week in it seemed. I knew where the sodding building was, but I had no idea after that.
And neither did she. She looked vaguely at signs next to corridors, she asked some students hurrying away -- who, bless them, were much kinder than I would've been if I was in a rush -- and asked what lecture we were looking for (to which U talked over me to give the wrong answer when I was trying to say it) and made a suggestion. We found a few other people who seemed to think the suggested direction was the right one, and U left me there, saying she would see me again on Friday. I pointedly said "see you" and things rather than anything like "thank you" and sat myself down.
It was the wrong room. There were about a dozen of us there, but there should've been a lot more. Including a lecturer.
We waited about five minutes -- it was already start-time by this point, though -- but when nothing continued to happen, one or two trickled out, and then all of us. We wandered around a bit and eventually found someone to ask who could point us in the right direction.
The room was pretty full but I managed to get a spot at the front. The slides were projected on the wall rather than above our heads -- the old room had room for whiteboards at regular wall height and then the slides above it, so it put more distance between me and them which made it harder to follow the slides, this was actually easier -- but also the lights were all off on the left hand side of the room! About half of them were on, on the right side, but where I was sitting was actually pretty dark. So I was frantically taking notes about something I'd missed the first fifteen minutes of, that I could hardly see. It didn't make me feel any less flustered about missing the beginning (and actually, the fact that I came in while the class was about halfway through watching a clip I recognized from A Bit of Fry and Laurie was, while and awesome clip, just adding to my sense of disorientation because I couldn't see the lecturer when I walked in and did not expect the voice I'd hear to be Stephen Fry's, wittering away at a million miles a minute!).
It was a kinda tough lecture anyway, or it seemed like it because I never really felt settled. I moved to the brighter side of the room during the break, but I still felt like I was missing stuff, the notes I was taking weren't good, I wasn't sure I was following... Having woken up with a sore throat and sinus pain I had let ibuprofen and vitamins do what they could and taken it easy until I had to come here, but after a couple of weeks managing to feel like I was staying on top of things I felt like my grip was slipping today.
And really a lot of that stress and overwhelm was because someone didn't know where they were going when they were given the job of telling me where to go. I felt like enough things had piled up that I have to complain, but god willing I have only one more day of this left, the Friday to replace last Friday when I couldn't get to my classes...!
I don't want a lot of earnest apologies like I got last Friday. I don't want the emotional labor of dealing with that. I just want to have energy to do more than one thing in a day, to not always feel overwhelmed, to not have this conviction that if I had only my homework to do my life would be a lot easier than with all this disability admin to do too.
And as if to prove that last point, I don't just have one seminar that I've done and enjoyed the reading for, I have DSA Study Needs Assessment tomorrow, which I am really not looking forward to because they're going to want to know why I don't use magnifciation (it doesn't help my eye condition, which no one believes even though its Wikipedia page even says so) and why I don't use a screenreader (I sometimes do but they suck more than not using them for a lot of things! c.f. all these books the library says are available electronically but with all the copy-protection, when you navigate to them the screenreader just says "graphic"). Magnifiers and screenreaders are supposed to fix all blindies' problems, so when I say they don't people usually think I'm the problem.
I've been so grumpy for at least a week that I don't feel like I'm a good advocate for myself or what I need at all, right now, and I really need to be.
Okay. They were able to sort this out for me in a short timeframe, because coming through clearing I didn't have my original assessment with DASS until the Tuesday of freshers week and by the Friday it was confirmed. It was suggested I phone them about this on Monday morning, so I did, and they were able to get support in place by the time of my first lecture that afternoon. And a lecture and a class on the Wednesday.
All of this was done by one person, whose initial is I. She was fine: she called or texted me to arrange/confirm plans, she was waiting for me early, she chatted a bit (she'd just graduated in mathematics, she told me her first name was Arabic when I told her I was studying Arabic, etc.), we were both confused but we got everywhere together. Fine.
It would've been nice to have more help with things like getting around the library, finding toilets, figuring out where I could get some food on Wednesdays when I'm in uni five hours out of six, but this was support specifically offered to get me to "teaching sessions," it seemed to happen only in 15-minute chunks right before my lectures, and I didn't expect the people guiding me around to be the best people to talk to about that. It was only a vague thought, anyway.
On the Friday of that week I got a text from a new number saying something like "Hi, I'm H, I'll be helping you on Monday, where and when should we meet?" My heart sank. Partly because I was already fine with the one place I had to go on a Monday, and partly because I naively hadn't expected all of the arrangements to have to be re-confirmed with every new person. And I had to tell every new person what building and room I needed.
I'd had to tell the "supervisor" guy I spoke to the first day what my timetable was, and he made sure to confirm the times and places, so I foolishly expected they'd be handed out to the "support" workers rather than me having to dig through my notebook or log in to view my timetable online all the time. It stressed me out.
All of this stressed me out, which seemed unfair when it was supposed to keep me from getting stressed out because normally having to get to a new place on my own is the worst. And it was, so I put up with this stuff because it was less stressful.
I eventually got back to H over the weekend with my spiel about where to meet, but then she said "great but I can't be there Monday, someone else will, but I'll see you Wednesday." So I had C on Monday.
I was at the meeting point early -- with the bus times, I have the choice of being there early or late so I'm always early. So I was looking at my phone and stuff, and then it rang and she said she was there but she didn't see me -- which isn't really a problem I could fix! I didn't even know what she looked like yet -- and off we went. This was to a lecture I'd already been to and I ended up leading her there, because of course she didn't know where she was going (she'd repeated the name of the building slowly and thoughtfully when she asked where it was and I'd told her, as if it only distantly rang a bell, which did not inspire confidence in me). I'd complained about this on Facebook and concluded that since this was a week that involved a few places I'd already been (my lectures and my Arabic class) as well as ones I hadn't (my seminars, which hadn't been held the first week) it was worth putting up with things I didn't need to make sure I got what I did need.
After my relatively uneventful time with C, I was really unhappy to learn that she'd called my landline what must have been just before she called my mobile to say she was there and where was I. I can't figure out why she'd have tried the landline first, but she must have since she couldn't have done it after we got off the phone; she said by that point she could see me and she appeared mere seconds later. So anyway she called my house and Andrew picked up, she said "Holly?" as if she thought it was me, he explained that he was my husband, she must have mis-heard or misunderstood the word husband pretty drastically because she said "Hospital?" and poor Andrew briefly thought someone was calling him to tell him I was in the hospital, or something.
I was really not happy about that, but I didn't have the energy to complain about it. Next morning I saw C again, she accepted the slightly different directions (this time I'd stay on the bus an extra stop since the next stop was right near the building I needed this time), was there waiting for me even though I was early again, and got me to a new place for my seminar without incident. Considering this was like the only benefit I really got from this entire week, I'm glad it went so well!
Wednesday morning C was there again. I had to reassure her that my lecture was where it was (it is a confusing bit of the building) and because I'd had to arrive early there was enough time after she deposited me with the crowd waiting to get in because the previous lecture still hadn't finished that I had time to find the toilets by myself, following signs like a sighted person. I'd scurried out of this room quickly on the Monday (my other lecture was very nearby) because I didn't know where any toilets were in that building and had to go to another one and all through a maze of corridors before I could be confident I knew where one was. Like I was the goddam Hidden Figures lady or something.
Having to be glad that my orientation-support-theatre ended with time for me to do some actual orientation made me grumpy, but at least now I knew where some toilets were.
Wednesday afternoon I had the previously-promised H, which while I was again going to some place I'd been before, the Arabic class was genuinely in a confusing space and we'd had to move rooms during the first class because the computer wasn't working, so I didn't mind the help so much and at least wasn't leading this person around.
Thursday I have off uni. But I got an e-mail saying these PASS sessions we'd all been told about (it stands for Peer-Assisted Study Something-or-other) were happening, and for me there was one Friday morning. My timetable said this was in the Chemistry building. I didn't know there was a buliding called Chemistry! I dutifully e-mailed my "support supervisor" to tell him about this addition, and about a change because the Monday lectures were no longer going to be in a room next to the Wednesday lecture, they were going to be somewhere totally different. I told him I wasn't expecting support for the PASS session on Friday since I was only telling him about it on Thursday, but that it'd be good to have for the lecture on Monday even though otherwise I wouldn't need anything this week because I'd have already been everywhere else and thus know my way.
Friday morning arrived and I looked up where this Chemistry building was, since if I was going to go there I'd have to make my way there myself.
It looked really confusing. I couldn't tell from the online maps where exactly it was,or even where the door was. A lot of these things are tucked away from roads so don't turn up on Google Street View or anything. I moaned copiously and Andrew offered to help. But I didn't like that, when the university were paying this outsourced company to do this job. Plus he wasn't totally sure he knew where he'd be going either. I ended up getting really stressed about it and deciding that, lacking questions to ask my peers about in the study session anyway, I was better off just staying home and reading up for my seminar that afternoon.
At some point I realized I hadn't had a text or call from that day's person asking me where to meet. I did get one of the automated e-mails asking me to confirm the sessions I'd had, no doubt to prove the people turned up and deserved to be paid. So when I logged into the system to deal with that, I saw that while all Monday's and Wednesday's sessions had been "matched" with either C or H, the one for Friday still said "Unmatched." There was nobody responsible for getting me to my seminar.
Now I was really stressed, too much to phone but I e-mailed this "supervisor" of mine, saying how disappointed I was. Eventually I got an e-mail back saying that the guy had been out of the office Thursday and that day, but that yes they could see there was no one allocated to me and they'd ring me about this after my lecture. I laughed bitterly -- how did they think I was getting to my (seminar, not lecture, but it doesn't matter) without the sodding help I required? -- but wasn't going to argue. It was fine with me if they waited to call. I'd had a couple of hours of being really wound up about this and while I wasn't happy about missing anything, at least now that I knew that was what was going to happen, I could start to settle down a little bit. Gary needed taking to the vet just o check up on how his mouth was healing a week post-op, and if I wasn't in uni I could take him which meant Andrew could save his arthritic knees and we could save his bus fare. Gary and I walked; I thought the fresh air would be good for us. (And his mouth was proclaimed by the vet to be healing well, which came as no surprise but some relief.)
I e-mailed my lecturer (since I didn't know which TA my seminar group had yet, I couldn't e-mail them) explaining what'd happened and asking if I could catch up on anything I'd missed. She seemed pretty unbothered about me missing it, which also helped (but I'd put a lot of work into my reading and homework for it, so I was still annoyed!) and I was able to set off for Brighouse a little earlier and more leisurely than I'd planned (I was staying over that night).
So then we get to today. Today's person, U, rang me to introduce herself, asked if it was okay if she messaged me when she got to the meeting point, and then texted me to ask if there was anything I wanted to her to know, or to do, when she was assisting me. None of the other ones had done that, and I even told Andrew how impressed I was (I don't know what information they're given about me, like do they know it's a sight impairment I've got, or anything? I don't expect a lot since they're not even given the information on the system about where I need to go).
I was early, again, and she texted me she'd be a few minutes late because she was on a bus from North Campus (this is what they're calling UMIST these days). Fine, but the five minutes made me twitchy. I like to be early because to get the slides on my tablet I have to make sure it's turned on and the wi-fi's working and I'm logged in and everything, and I just seem to be a slower, faffier person than the 18-year-olds around me who flump into chairs and are ready to go. And while usually the seats right at the front in direct view of the slides are not popular, there are only a few seats in the whole lecture theatre where I can have a chance of seeing anything so I like to know I will have one of those.
And again I was dealing with someone who had only the vaguest idea where we were going. "I've looked up the building on the map," she said earnestly, about a building I'd spent my whole fresher's week in it seemed. I knew where the sodding building was, but I had no idea after that.
And neither did she. She looked vaguely at signs next to corridors, she asked some students hurrying away -- who, bless them, were much kinder than I would've been if I was in a rush -- and asked what lecture we were looking for (to which U talked over me to give the wrong answer when I was trying to say it) and made a suggestion. We found a few other people who seemed to think the suggested direction was the right one, and U left me there, saying she would see me again on Friday. I pointedly said "see you" and things rather than anything like "thank you" and sat myself down.
It was the wrong room. There were about a dozen of us there, but there should've been a lot more. Including a lecturer.
We waited about five minutes -- it was already start-time by this point, though -- but when nothing continued to happen, one or two trickled out, and then all of us. We wandered around a bit and eventually found someone to ask who could point us in the right direction.
The room was pretty full but I managed to get a spot at the front. The slides were projected on the wall rather than above our heads -- the old room had room for whiteboards at regular wall height and then the slides above it, so it put more distance between me and them which made it harder to follow the slides, this was actually easier -- but also the lights were all off on the left hand side of the room! About half of them were on, on the right side, but where I was sitting was actually pretty dark. So I was frantically taking notes about something I'd missed the first fifteen minutes of, that I could hardly see. It didn't make me feel any less flustered about missing the beginning (and actually, the fact that I came in while the class was about halfway through watching a clip I recognized from A Bit of Fry and Laurie was, while and awesome clip, just adding to my sense of disorientation because I couldn't see the lecturer when I walked in and did not expect the voice I'd hear to be Stephen Fry's, wittering away at a million miles a minute!).
It was a kinda tough lecture anyway, or it seemed like it because I never really felt settled. I moved to the brighter side of the room during the break, but I still felt like I was missing stuff, the notes I was taking weren't good, I wasn't sure I was following... Having woken up with a sore throat and sinus pain I had let ibuprofen and vitamins do what they could and taken it easy until I had to come here, but after a couple of weeks managing to feel like I was staying on top of things I felt like my grip was slipping today.
And really a lot of that stress and overwhelm was because someone didn't know where they were going when they were given the job of telling me where to go. I felt like enough things had piled up that I have to complain, but god willing I have only one more day of this left, the Friday to replace last Friday when I couldn't get to my classes...!
I don't want a lot of earnest apologies like I got last Friday. I don't want the emotional labor of dealing with that. I just want to have energy to do more than one thing in a day, to not always feel overwhelmed, to not have this conviction that if I had only my homework to do my life would be a lot easier than with all this disability admin to do too.
And as if to prove that last point, I don't just have one seminar that I've done and enjoyed the reading for, I have DSA Study Needs Assessment tomorrow, which I am really not looking forward to because they're going to want to know why I don't use magnifciation (it doesn't help my eye condition, which no one believes even though its Wikipedia page even says so) and why I don't use a screenreader (I sometimes do but they suck more than not using them for a lot of things! c.f. all these books the library says are available electronically but with all the copy-protection, when you navigate to them the screenreader just says "graphic"). Magnifiers and screenreaders are supposed to fix all blindies' problems, so when I say they don't people usually think I'm the problem.
I've been so grumpy for at least a week that I don't feel like I'm a good advocate for myself or what I need at all, right now, and I really need to be.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-10-09 10:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-10-10 08:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-10-10 06:43 am (UTC)A couple of things:
Do you have any kind of disabled students’ group runnings where other students could help with some kind of advocacy? Unis seem collectively awful at disability and helping in general and a group of people who have been doing this a couple of years already might have some ideas.
Secondly DSA:
My niece recently got diagnosed with Irlen’s syndrome. We couldn’t get her a laptop because her condition doesn’t require specific software on a computer although it *would* be improved just by HAVING a computer (because the buildings aren’t Irlen’s friendly), so if you are looking to get a laptop etc, you will need to say that you want some kind of software on it. It seems amazing to me that they can disable her by forcing her into an environment that will cause her pain but if she needed a screen reader she could get her own laptop, but still.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-10-10 08:50 am (UTC)But yes, I feel like I'm going into my first DSA assessment with an oddly good idea of what boxes there are to tick. It's why I'm finding it so exhausting: if I could just answer questions and not have to think about what categories I'm putting myself in, it wouldn't be a big deal.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-10-10 12:05 pm (UTC)I hope it goes better than you hope and isn’t too tiring.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-10-10 12:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-10-10 09:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-10-10 11:36 am (UTC)Hopefully things will calm down but after Reading Week (at the end of this month) some of my classes change rooms again and then of course before I know it it'll be next semester, so I'm not done with this yet.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-10-10 09:59 am (UTC)I am so angry and frustrated on your behalf. :(
Hulk smash ableism!
(no subject)
Date: 2017-10-10 11:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-10-10 11:47 am (UTC)https://twitter.com/DisabledHulk
(no subject)
Date: 2017-10-10 12:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-10-10 10:45 am (UTC)And now I need to find someone who can tell me what we do to accommodate visually impaired students here. I've had people with mobility issues (fairly easy now that we're in a new building), and deaf student (whose sign-language interpreters never failed to amaze me). Hm.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-10-10 11:34 am (UTC)My university is definitely built to be as maze-like as possible. :) It kinda helped that for the first week or two everybody was getting lost so it wasn't just me!
(no subject)
Date: 2017-10-10 11:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-10-10 11:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-10-10 11:45 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-10-10 07:15 pm (UTC)It's not exactly unreasonable that if your job is to help someone find a room, you work out where it is in advance.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-10-11 08:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-10-11 08:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-10-10 09:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-10-11 08:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-10-12 10:33 pm (UTC)I'm pretty sure the answer is "no," but there was a fad for Geography depts making 3D tactual maps of campuses. That wouldn't help as much when you're n the building, but could be some use for the big picture.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-10-14 10:50 am (UTC)