The Office of Disability Support Services helps
make higher education at Rice accessible to all.

Most of us don’t pay attention to getting around, especially in a bounded area like the Rice University campus. We simply calculate the most convenient route, then we walk off in that direction. Curbs, steps, and narrow or heavy doors, when we encounter them, are just parts of the journey and barely rate notice. For some people, though, impediments like these are barriers not only to the journey but to the services, benefits, and rewards that lie beyond.

Accessibility for students, employees, and visitors is important to Rice, and the university takes its lead in this area from the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA). This civil-rights-based legislation was enacted to protect individuals with disabilities against discrimination in areas of employment, housing, education, transportation, communication, health services, and public services. In spirit, the ADA emphasizes dignity and inclusion, and its guidelines mandate particular structural features in new buildings and encourage the removal of “architectural barriers in existing facilities, including communications barriers that are structural in nature, where such removal is readily achievable, i.e., easily accomplishable and able to be carried out without much difficulty or expense.”

It is Rice University policy, administered in part through the Office of Disability Support Services, to make reasonable efforts to accommodate anyone with disabilities who spends time on campus. Because Rice University serves a wide range of individuals, its staff has opportunities for collaboration in pursuing ADA compliance goals and meeting the individual needs of Rice community members. “We are working to better foresee and provide for the needs of students, employees, and visitors,” says Jean Ashmore, director of Disability Support Services. “We are trying to send the message that we are anticipating possible needs by preparing for near-time challenges.”

In addition to helping ensure equal access to education for individuals with disabilities, the ADA and other legislation, including the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1997, have catalyzed an increase in postsecondary enrollment among students with disabilities. This fact is borne out by the U.S. Department of Education and the National Center for Education Statistics. In 1994, approximately 45 percent of people age 16 or older who reported having a disability either attended college or completed a bachelor’s degree or higher. In contrast, only 29 percent reported doing so in 1986.

An estimated 428,280 students with disabilities were enrolled at two- and four-year postsecondary educational institutions from 1996 to 1998. One quarter of the reported disabilities were mobility, sight, speech, or hearing related, and more than half were learning disabilities, such as dyslexia or attention deficit disorder. The majority of these students attended medium to large public institutions, perhaps due to the perception that larger public institutions are better equipped to handle the needs of students with disabilities. That perception does not necessarily reflect reality, however, and with the number of students with disabilities attending postsecondary institutions on the rise, work is being done at Rice to prepare for future needs.

“Rice has a relatively low enrollment of students with disabilities,” Ashmore says, “but we must continue to enhance accessibility on campus both to accommodate the students and to make ourselves attractive to all prospective qualified students.” Currently, only about 1 percent of the student population at Rice has a documented disability, but Ashmore says that the true number may be considerably higher. There are no requirements that students make such information known. In fact, asking about a disability during the application process is unethical, even illegal, although applicants are free to disclose that information if they choose.

Once accepted to the university, incoming students are invited to contact the Office of Disability Support Services if individual arrangements or modifications are needed. Many students, Ashmore notes, have developed their own coping techniques over the years to overcome situations such as dyslexia or attention deficit disorder and do not seek the university’s help.

For those who do choose to self -identify, Ashmore works to take every reasonable step to ensure that the student’s disability will not hinder his or her experience at Rice. In meeting the needs of students, the office takes into account many issues, including student living environments, classrooms, faculty contacts, and campus accessibility as it relates to each student’s abilities. All these issues and more must be addressed in a way that covers the four or five years of the student’s Rice experience. Modifications or arrangements include customizing a dorm room or changing a class location to meet the student’s physical abilities, ensuring that visually impaired students have permission and equipment to tape class lectures, and giving extra time on exams to students who deal with certain types of learning disabilities.

University employees are another group that benefits from ADA legislation. Reasonable accommodations, if not an undue burden, are provided for job applicants and employees with disabilities so that they can complete the application process or perform their work.

“It takes a lot of attention and effort to design accommodations to meet all of the possible needs, but it is worth it,” says Mary Cronin, associate vice president for Human Resources. “It takes some creativity, but solutions are possible.” With healthcare privacy issues and ever-increasing levels of employee confidentiality, however, the conversation often must begin with the employee.

Once employee disabilities are known, Rice can offer a wide variety of options to assist qualified employees, including those with or recovering from short-term disabilities. For faculty and staff needs, planning is usually limited to the employee’s work environment. More often than not, these arrangements are handled at the supervisory level and can be readily addressed once the employee makes the initial request. Some solutions are as simple as custom office chairs. Other more high-tech options include computer monitor enhancements, special software, or tailored tools.

Assistive listening devices to enhance hearing are available to students, faculty, and visitors through the Office of Disability Support Services. Braille embossers and graphic-raising technologies that use heat and special paper to create a raised tactile image for the visually impaired also can be found there. Additional adaptive technologies located in Fondren Library include large-print readers with zoom text and screen-reading software.

Making special accessibility arrangements for campus visitors, however, is one area that remains a challenge for Rice. A major hurdle is learning ahead of time that an accommodation is needed. Requests often come at the last minute, but the university attempts to handle each request promptly and compassionately. “Of course, if we can find out sooner, that’s even better,” says Russell Barnes, director of Equal Employment Opportunity Programs and Affirmative Action.

Disability Support Services advises departments that are planning programs or events to include statements in their promotional materials that encourage registrants who need physical accommodations to contact the office in advance. Disability Support Services also can help arrange necessary adjustments and provide disability-related information, including an online campus accessibility map.

But a map is not the territory, and real-world accessibility entails an understanding of needs, careful planning, and logistics. Rice is working to implement general improvements to facilities and make buildings open and usable by all members of the university community. Many mobility-enhancing accommodations such as cut ramps and automatic door openers are not necessarily obvious in ADA-compliant buildings, but they promote integration and often become preferred features well beyond the populations they were meant to serve.

Luiza Maal, staff architect with the facilities and engineering department at Rice and also a mother, points out, “If you’re a parent pushing a stroller, you very quickly learn where the cut ramps are and which floors of a shopping mall have automatic door openers.” A patron carrying a stack of books into a library is grateful for the automatic door openers. Delivery people can appreciate ramps that replace stairs. People in noisy, crowded environments are helped by elevator signals that beep as well as light up when the elevator arrives. Moreover, the height of hooks and elevator buttons, for example, can be helpful to anyone, disabled or not. Rice’s efforts in this area also serve students and teachers with the Rice School of Continuing Studies, which draws a wide range of participants from the Houston area, especially senior citizens with age-related difficulties in hearing or moving.

“Some changes are more visible than others, but we’re always doing little things,” says Maal. “The general population benefits from the ADA. It’s a good law.”

New buildings are easiest to make compliant because enhancements for accessibility are not obtrusive structural afterthoughts but are integral to the design and aesthetics. Rice buildings constructed since the passage of the ADA have been designed to incorporate accessibility features noted in the law.

At Duncan Hall, for instance, a gently sloping sidewalk gracefully signifies the grandeur of the entry while offering an alternative to impassible steps. Automatic doors facilitate entry, and inside, acoustic-enhancing classroom architecture and new gadgetry, such as individually adjustable earphones and large-screen computers, serve people with hearing difficulties or visual impairments.

In the colleges, cost and space constraints prohibit making all rooms ADA compliant, but many rooms now exist to serve students with physical limitations. In the two new college buildings—Martel, which opened last spring, and Wiess, which opened last fall—a typical floor plan of a four-bedroom suite with an adapted room will have one larger bedroom in which a wheelchair can turn around and an additional bathroom equipped with a wheelchair-accessible shower and toilet. The front doors to all suites are wider than usual to ensure that students using wheelchairs can visit friends throughout the college, and all signage in Martel and Wiess are in Braille as well as in type.

The new wings currently under construction at Jones and Brown Colleges also will have improved accessibility for disabled users. Lovett College has an accessible commons area and student room. And other older residence halls, including Baker, Will Rice, and Hanszen Colleges, are being considered for renovations to make them welcome residential choices for students of any physical ability. Even the masters’ houses are getting some attention. The new masters’ houses for Martel and Jones Colleges have wheelchair-accessible entries, common areas, kitchens, and bathrooms, making them suitable venues for college gatherings.

“As of fall 2002, five colleges out of the nine will have accessible rooms,” Ashmore says. “I feel that with the opening of these two new colleges we will have a good distribution of available rooms.”

ADA compliance is not always an easy goal given the practical matters and age of the Rice campus. Renovating existing structures, especially historically significant ones built long before accessibility needs were commonly understood, is difficult and can come at a high price in terms of dollars and assignable space. For example, a ramp allows for a maximum one-inch rise in height for every 12-inch run in length. This slope provides a far gentler incline than the usual one-inch rise to two-inch run of standard stairs but requires more room. Inside buildings, wheelchair-accessible classroom desks must be larger than their traditional-design counterparts, just as accessible bathroom stalls need more room than others.

Providing equal access to the main entries of some of the oldest buildings, where stairs are an integral facet of the design and space for ramps improbable, continues to be a challenge, but these difficulties are being addressed. Work is now under way on many older campus buildings, and by the end of 2002, Herring Hall met the same standards the ADA sets for new buildings. At Rayzor Hall, a better ramp has improved the exterior approach and entry. In older buildings, the best compromise is to leave the appearance of the exterior almost the same but to design innovative changes inside. At Keck Hall and Rayzor Hall, this approach has preserved the architectural character of familiar buildings, while allowing the interiors to better serve their users.

Building by building, renovations further improve entry by making accessible doorways and other features central parts of design rather than afterthoughts, adding accessible bathrooms where possible, and adapting more offices, classrooms, and residential college rooms for use by people with any range of physical ability. At present, most older campus buildings have at least one ADA-compliant bathroom, an elevator, and an entrance ramp.

The oldest buildings, the ones that most symbolize Rice, are proving to be the most difficult to make accessible. Lovett Hall, for example, which is probably the best-known and most-photographed building on campus, is unmistakably tied to the university’s image and iconography. Completed in 1912, however, it presents several obstacles to accessibility and provides the chief example of the conflict between reducing mobility restrictions and respecting the campus’s traditional architecture.

The central arch at Lovett, fondly known as the Sallyport, is an essential part of Rice’s history and culture. However, it divides the building in half; people who want to go from one wing to the other must exit the building and use a separate doorway to reenter. And that isn’t easy. Lovett’s narrow entries, heavy doors, and steep stairs are prohibitive to some and impassible to visitors in wheelchairs, and the building’s only elevator serves just one wing. Limited interior space further hinders plans to enhance accessibility. Most improvements will require a reduction in assignable space. However, viable options for solving these challenges are being reviewed.

Identifying and developing solutions to problem areas is a joint effort taken on by facilities and engineering, outside consultants, architecture firms, students, employees, and visitors. Manager of architecture and engineering John Posch routinely walks the campus with Maal and Ashmore to ensure that things such as failed sidewalks and foundation shifts do not become barriers or liabilities for the university. “It’s an issue of compliance and meeting the needs of the Rice community, in balance with budgetary and space priorities of the university” says Posch. “It’s not an easy task, but it is the right thing to do.”

Although the ADA regulation presents challenges to the university, those challenges are being met with a high degree of commitment to dignity and inclusion. Accommodating students, employees, and visitors with a range of abilities expands the background and life experience represented at Rice. And as the changes unfold on campus, Rice can open its doors to a more diverse community that makes a Rice education a more relevant experience for all members of its community.

—Roberta Kelley Henderson