Hey all!
I have been meaning to give a little update on what I have been doing as Accessibility Officer for a while now, and I am finally just getting round to doing it! I think i am going to make these updates monthly unless anything particularly important or interesting happens that I can't wait to share hah! :)
Over the past couple of months I have begun and helped many different projects across campus and on the whole it has been a really enjoyable and interesting experience, full of learning and positive change!
Me and Chloe (Activities Officer) have both been working hard on ensuring the campus is accessible and over the past month have been assessing the situation for ourselves on 'Access Walks' by going around buildings in the University to find issues with general accessibility. So far we have completed both Percy Gee and Charles Wilson, and will be continuing these walks in the coming month/s to identify further issues across the whole campus.
(If anyone has anything specific about accessibility on campus they would like to raise, please do email me at nak18@le.ac.uk (my work email) and we can raise these issues alongside the others when the report is written. Thank you.)
Yesterday morning I had a meeting with Chris Harrison from Estates, which Chloe also attended, in order to discuss some of the issues with accessibility on campus that we have encountered so far. These included things such as accessible toilets being in inaccessible locations, accessible entrances being inaccessible, issues with doors/buttons being out of reach/unfit for purpose, the issue of having no wheelchair desks in lecture theatres, the need for access strips and an accessible cover face for the map to identify accessible routes around campus, and also the potential to allow disabled students access to the corridor that connects Maurice Shock with the rest of campus to allow an easier and more accessible route for them to take and other issues also. Chris assured us that he will work on creating solutions for the issues we gave and is hoping to have an accessibility audit repeated on campus to further identify issues and their solutions beyond mine and Chloe's work.
Alongside this, Chloe and I have also been working on increasing support for the Sensory Garden project and have scheduled a meeting to discuss this with Dave Hall towards the end of the month. The idea has received a lot of support and I am hopeful that the meeting will solidify some of the plans to put the sensory garden into action. At the moment I have named this project Sense the Future, in light of the futures it could signify and protect, both for the mental health of our university population and the planet, and also the sensory haven I hope it will become if it is given the go ahead.
Further to this, on August 1st and 2nd I attended focus groups during the recruitment of a new Vice Chancellor to represent disabled students and staff at the University. I would like to take a moment to congratulate Professor Nishan Canagarajah on becoming the University of Leicesters’ new Vice Chancellor. I cannot wait to see the fantastic changes I am sure he will bring to our University and I hope to have the opportunity to work alongside him in the near future.
It was also fantastic to meet the other Full and Part Time Officers, alongside other members of staff at the PTO Training session last Tuesday :)
My plans for the next few weeks…
- Adnan (Education Officer) has scheduled for me to meet him so I can help with an Access Needs Survey he is organizing to discover students experiences with the AccessAbility centre and further access needs.
- Sana (Wellbeing Officer) has arranged for me to meet with Martin Miller to discuss Adapted Accommodation at the University of Leicester and ensuring it is both accessible and is no more expensive for students to use than other accommodation at the University would be.
- Adnan is also kindly arranging a meeting for me to talk with Martin Kaynor about the issues with timetabling and that the timetables are realistic and allow enough time for disabled students to be able to get from location to location.
I am sure there are likely things that this list is missing as I am currently dealing with terrible brain fog, but if I do think of anything else I will add them in the comments below haha! :)
First and foremost I am a voice for the students, so if there is anything you have come across that you want to be raised, please don’t ever hesitate to email me at nak18@le.ac.uk and I will do my upmost best to get back to you as soon as I can. I am going on a short holiday in a couple of weeks, but things will settle into a routine after this :) Thank you!