For students with mobility challenges, getting to class at Humber can be a frustrating test of endurance.
On the surface, Humber's campuses appear to be accessible. Most buildings have elevators and ramps, as well as exterior push-button entrances. Yet these structural features only go so far when the daily experience of moving across campus still feels like an obstacle course.
Campuses are required to follow the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, but this allows for classrooms with doors under a certain weight to not require a button. Or ramps that may not seem so steep but are to someone who has to wheel themselves up after a long day.
Humber is given a budget of $250,000 annually to spend on accessibility upgrades, with smaller upgrades, typically under $50,000, being simpler to approve. While upgrades more expensive usually have to go through the board of governors, Scott Valens, the Director of Capital Development at Humber, said.
There are challenges that make it difficult for people with physical difficulties to navigate once they arrive to campus.
Like North campus’s Wheel-Trans location. The stop is a several minute walk from the main building entrance, which can take several minutes to cross, even longer in bad weather.
The same pattern is evident at Lakeshore. While the cottages add charm, they also pose serious challenges for mobility. Most often, travel between them requires going outdoors. In winter, this becomes a real challenge, and for students with physical disabilities, this may be the difference between attending classes comfortably and not at all.
Accessibility isn't only about compliance with the AODA, it's about being able to access spaces in the same ways that everyone else does. That requires proactive design, not reactive fixes.
To Humber’s credit, improvements have been made in recent years. North, Lakeshore, Carrier and the Downtown campuses have all been retrofitted with accessible washrooms.
The college’s largest initiative so far has been the installation of tactile warning pads at the top and bottom of all ramps and staircases. That change stemmed from a large accessibility audit conducted in 2019, where Humber identified and ranked areas for improvement into four categories of importance, Valens said.
The college is now nearly finished addressing all four ranks. If a student has a barrier getting to class, that accommodation request is handled as fast as possible, and money is allocated from the college to make that a possibility quickly, Valens said.
But Et Cetera feels this doesn’t go far enough to address the larger things that aren’t necessarily a full barrier, but simply make day to day more challenging, like a further pick up location, no buttons for classrooms, and steep ramps.
Humber has an opportunity to set an example for other post-secondary institutions by rethinking accessibility from the ground up. Accessibility should not be an afterthought in design but embedded in every part of how Humber builds and renovates its spaces.
Every student deserves to come to campus feeling welcomed, not reminded of the distance between intention and execution. True accessibility is more than ramps and elevators. It's about each student, regardless of mobility, having equal ease of access to the same opportunity.
