Collegiate Times

Michele Shebroe became concerned witht he accessibility of campus after her father, who has a back injury, was unable to navigate to the hilly terrain.

David Bingham, Tech’s ADA services architect, came to Tech as an architecture graduate student in 1988, before the ADA was legislated. He was one of only two people in a wheelchair on campus at the time, and he remembers there only being one Blacksburg Transit van that could pick him up.

Before there were federal regulations, he said, Tech was still fairly accessible. Even so, “we’ve come very far over the last 20 years,” he said.

EVALUATING THE CAMPUS

Buildings opened before 1990 did not have to be completely renovated to comply with ADA regulations, but any renovations made after 1990 must be ADA compliant.

The north campus task force was created to go back and look at older buildings and evaluate their accessibility and potential for ADA-compliant renovations. The group contains professional staff, faculty and students.

“Prior buildings were designed without that awareness,” Bush, a member of the task force, said of the campus. “We found ourselves going back for a whole host of issues.”

While the final report of the evaluations isn’t finished, Bush said there were a few main conclusions that came out of the research.

Bush said the group did not look at the interior of the buildings but focused on making the academic side accessible from a parking spot to the curb through a route to the entrance of a building.

“There’s a lot of change in topography,” he said, noting in total there is a 30-foot slope from the McBryde side of campus to Burruss Hall. 

The group also reported that many sidewalks were damaged and the accessible routes are generally lengthy across the north side.

Reilly said that six power doors have been installed on the academic side of campus. A new ramp to the back of Burruss has been added in the tunnel to the left of the building.

Bush noted that even the campus landmark wasn’t very accessible.

“Burruss is our landmark; people are drawn to it naturally,” he said. “And the building’s main entrance is not accessible.”

Those who can’t use front entrance stairs must use the tunnel’s new entrance or go through the side near Norris Hall and take elevators to the Burruss Hall lobby.

LOOKING AHEAD WITH ACCESSIBILITY

After the task group finishes evaluating the north campus and making its recommendations to the university, Reilly said the group would turn its focus to Squires Student Center and the upper quad area that includes the corps of cadets dormitories.

While Michele Shebroe originally approached the ADA office to discuss the residential side, Bush said he was not sure when the task force would look at that area. He added that when a community member calls attention to something specific, like Shebroe did, it does have a possibility to switch the direction and focus of a group.

“They want to look at it,” he said.

Shebroe said one of the biggest concerns on the residential side was the lack of access from the Drillfield through Slusher Tower to the West End/Ambler Johnston Hall area. A student would have to go around by Owens Dining Hall or travel the steep West Campus Drive.

She also wanted to bring to the university’s attention the turnstile going into the DX facilities. Rick Johnson, director of housing and dining services, said the situation was evaluated, and the department concluded that it was effective to allow students to enter through the DX exit door if they have a disability.

The university could also focus more on proactive design as opposed to reactive, Bingham said. For example, something as small as the Hokie Passport swipe into buildings could have been proactively designed to be accessible to those without the use of their hands. Instead, the campus has to add magnetic proximity readers onto buildings as students and faculty need them, which reads the magnetic strip on a card from a few yards away.

He said such functions “do the same job for the same price” if added originally, but the university couldn’t afford to go back and replace every swipe with a magnetic reader.

Progress can also be slow in renovating and adding to the campus.

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A version of this article appeared in the May 5 issue of the Collegiate Times.