The Ryerson Students’ Union (RSU) is planning an accessibility audit after the Student Learning Centre (SLC) was criticized for inaccessibility last week.
David Lepofsky, the chair of Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance, released a video on Oct. 29 showing the SLC’s problems with accessibility.
The video showed him walking into pillars and getting turned around on stairs because of angled railings. It also shows him bumping into people whose legs hang off what Lepofsky calls the “hangout steps” into the ramp area.
The RSU audit will be led by Camryn Harlick, who reached out to a third-party organization and provided an accessibility audit checklist.
“We want to check what we should be looking for instead of creating our own,” said RSU president Susanne Nyaga. “They have expertise in this area.”
The RSU will use volunteers to help complete the audit with the assistance of Ryerson students, faculty and staff who have both visible and non-visible disabilities. RyeACCESS will be included in the process, Nyaga added.
“We never support doing work for a community without involving that community,” said Nyaga.
“I think this audit will be able to demonstrate what specifically needs to be done.”
Nyaga said the goal is to be able to create long and short-term plans for Ryerson to become a more accessible university.
The RSU wants to “be able to create plans on how we can move forward and how we can start to make campus a lot more accessible,” said Nyaga.