Dean of Students Kelly Wesener Michael led a listening session Wednesday focusing on any concerns or suggestions relating to accessibility on campus.

This session was the first time students with disabilities were able to share their concerns with administration. The Student Association joined students with disabilities to focus on issues happening on campus and to find solutions to those problems.

Graduate student Laura Kruczinski spoke on issues such as broken elevators, limited amount of bathrooms, an absence of fire alarms inside residence hall rooms, uneven sidewalks, lack of support and lack of accommodations made by professors.

After being on campus for five years, Kruczinski said there haven’t been any improvements in terms of people’s attitudes and stereotypes toward students with disabilities. She also said there are issues in terms of staffing at the Disability Resource Center and a lack of funding to the center is hurting people with disabilities from succeeding.

One major concern Kruczinski addressed was regarding equal accessibility between students with disabilities and students without disabilities.

“[Students with disabilities] might not do things in the conventional way, but that doesn’t mean they can’t meet the conventional goals to be successful,” Kruczinski said.

Kruczinski said she hopes the campus will start to make small changes such as repairing elevators to help students succeed.

At the session, many students shared their experiences of professors humiliating students with disabilities. Students with disabilities said they were rejected interpreters and accommodations in classrooms by professors who were unwilling to help.

Another problem brought to attention was the accessibility of HuskieLink. Students with disabilities said they were not able to vote for Student Association positions. They also said they were unable to apply for leadership roles because they were not accessible to them.

Students offered solutions that the campus may provide to accommodate students with disabilities. One solution offered was for administration to provide a way for students to report professors who are not willing to help. Other solutions included having more handicap-friendly bathrooms, operational elevators and additional interpreters, without making students pay for that service.

Vernese Edghill-Walden, vice president for academic diversity, said she is committed to creating a training program for faculty to better understand the needs of students with disabilities and to understand the law.

Another solution Walden said she is working toward is to execute a complete comprehensive audit of accessibility on campus which means making sure all services, facilities and events are accessible for students with disabilities.

“The way to really address that is to figure out what we have in common and then we work together to fix those things,” Walden said.