Most university students have had a hard time getting into classes at some point, but a growing number are used to having difficulties getting into their classroom. As provincial laws remove access barriers, more students with disabilities are enrolling, but according to Julia Munk of outreach group Students for Barrier-Free Access (SBFA), many hurdles remain.

Problems include buildings without a ramp or with one that is too steep, rooms without enough lighting for visually-impaired people, and spaces without non-slip floors. Under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) all public buildings in Ontario must be made fully accessible by 2025. Though campus planners say full accessibility is a priority, the campaign to remove barriers has moved slowly and run into obstacles of its own.

The latest debate involves the Canadiana Gallery, a building that until now was used for examination space. U of T’s Criminology department is moving into the gallery, along with its library of 30,000 volumes, a 50-seat seminar room, and nearly 500 square metres of meeting, office, and utility space. However, to the dismay of SBFA and other groups, the plans for the gallery are stingy on disability accomodation.

Measures to allow access to the building’s second and third floors and the library’s stacks have been deferred indefinitely to cut costs. The retrofit’s planning document includes a possible future location for the elevator, to be built “as soon as funds are available,” to make the upper floors accessible.

In the meantime, library staff are asked to fetch books for students who can’t use the stacks, and general-use rooms are being built on the first floor for those who can’t reach the upper floors.

Munk criticized the university for spending a great deal ($2.1 million) on the partial retrofit in an expensive, unsatisfactory compromise.

“An elevator will be needed, so the argument not to include one without a plan to add one later seems shortsighted.”

Elizabeth Sisam, assistant VP of campus and facilities planning, maintained that U of T faces complications carrying out the needed retrofits.

“It’s essential to make all our buildings accessible, there’s no question of that. But because the university has such a large number of older buildings built at a time when accessibility was not considered, and because many [of them] have heritage designations attached to them, it becomes particularly difficult to address these sort of things,” she said, adding that the provincial government does not fund accessibility renovations.

U of T VP and provost Vivek Goel noted that U of T recently conducted an inventory of its accessible spaces to help future planning.

Still, SBFA complains that the inventory did not employ certified accessibility auditors, and challenges its findings. Students in U of T’s work-study program conducted the inventory under the supervision of an architect with private-sector experience to evaluate physical barriers. SBFA publishes its own list of accessible buildings in its annual guidebook. The university’s inventory has not yet been made public.