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Annonymous Retired Employee for Student Health Services Email Interview
What were some of the daily challenges you faced on campus due to your rheumatoid arthritis?
Response: My hands, fingers, knees, feet, and hips are always hurting. But I use handicap parking. And I also try to take my breaks to help relieve the pain. It makes simple tasks like walking to my office quite painful.
Can you describe any specific situations where you felt accessibility is lacking or could be improved at Texas Tech University?
Response: At student health, there are only 2 handicap parking spaces for employees to access. It is hard to find a convenient spot and access certain offices.
What tools or strategies did you use to overcome physical accessibility barriers on campus?
Response: My department got me a mouse and keyboard to help. It made my daily tasks more manageable. I think there is room for improvement, but this is what helped me.
How would you envision an app like this helping you with your daily campus life and activities?
Response: Yes, I believe an app would help not only me but the students and faculty here on campus who have a disability. I think it could help people naviagte through campus better and find the best spots to access different places.
What specific features or functionalities would you find most valuable in an app designed to support students and faculty with disabilities?
Response: I think there are apps already in place for people with disabilities, so I am not sure what specifc features to say. If ya'll could figure out a way to locate handicap spots, that would be great. It could also be a good idea to have a way people could communicate and share resources through the app.
Are there any specific campus locations or services that you believe should be a priority for inclusion in the app?
Response: I cannot think of a lot of specific locations on campus other than my department, but I think football and baseball stadiums could be prioritized. I know people who have told me it is hard to access the stadiums in a wheelchair during games. It is so crowded and hard to find the handicap entrances.
What other resources or support systems did you rely on, either within the university or externally, to manage your rheumatoid arthritis? How could our app complement or enhance these resources?
Response: I relied on my keyboards and a mouse and tried to find the best parking. My situation is different from other disabilities. If your app could show me where to purchase these products that would be great. It would also be nice if faculty could communicate and offer advice and support through the app.
Anonymous Disabled Texas Tech Student Voice recorded Interview
1. What is your disability?
Response: Fractured Leg
2. How is it like navigating through Texas Tech with crutches?
Response: The experience has been challenging. I can only take specific routes with my crutches, and figuring out those paths took a while, and I wish there was an easier solution to this problem.
3. What are some of the challenges you faced?
Response: Being late to class mostly.
4. How do you currently access the information about the accessibility on campus? Did you reach out to the disabilities department?
Response: I was just exploring the routes I could take. I didn’t know there was such an option to look online to see if there were any ways I could take, but I just found out through experience.
5. What features or functionalities would you find helpful that we could incorporate into the app?
Response: The shortest/easiest path I could take.
6. Was there a schedule that you used to help you get to class?
Response: It would take 20 minutes to get to class before my injury, now it takes up to an hour. In my back-to-back classes, I would leave 10 minutes early to make it on time to the next class.
7. Were there any Texas Tech resources that you used throughout your day?
Response: No Texas Tech resources were used.
8. How do you communicate your needs with your professors?
Response: Some professors would record the lectures so I can catch up on what I missed, and one professor couldn’t do anything and told me to ask a friend about what I missed out on.
9. Are there any specific technologies that you would use for your situation?
Response: I don’t have a specific technology that I use, but I do have my phone with me, so that could come in handy if you guys built some software that I could use with my phone.
10. Any other features that you would like to see or recommend that you want to see in the app?
Response: User-friendly as possible. Easy buttons to press and it doesn’t involve much thinking. If not, I can just figure it out on my own if the software is too hard to use.
Annonymous Student Legally Blind
Q: Can you tell me about the condition of your vision I was born with the condition that is called Leber Congenital Amaurosis. According to what people have said, the front of my eyes works well but when the image is transferred to the back of my eyes, this is where the problem exists. I have extreme nearsightedness, and I don’t have much peripheral vision, I just have nearly central vision.
Q: Do you use any equipment to aid you with your condition? Yes. I walk around with a cane. I don’t really see a lot of depth. When I walk with a cane, if there’s a hole or crack on the road, hopefully the cane will find it.
Q: Do you often find it difficult to navigate around campus with your condition? A lot of the time if there’s construction in the way, I won’t see it until I get very close to it, then I have to go around the construction. That is the main issue. I’m used to going certain ways to classes and now I have to go in a different direction, and I have to think about how to get to class with that direction.
Q: Do you find accessibility points like ramps and automatic doors help you?
I usually use normal doors and stairs but every once in a while, ramps are helpful. When I know in certain buildings the steps are not stable, I’d use ramps instead.
Q: Can you briefly explain how you plan to travel to class or from class to home? Do you plan ahead, or do you need some help? I do a lot of planning ahead. I learned a little bit about how to get around campus. A lot of classes are in the same building, but if there is a new class then I have to figure out how to get there. I use landmarks to know where to go, like when I pass a certain landmark I know I need to make a turn. It is a little bit of what I call mental mapping in my head. For traveling home, there is a transportation service offered by CitiBus called CityAccess for people with disabilities including visual impairment. You pay a little bit of a fee, but it’s curb-to-curb service. It really helps out a lot.
Q: Do you often need help and how do you contact others for help?
My wife can see, so she can pick me up from school. Sometimes when I have no idea what to do when walking around campus, because I can see a little bit, I can just ask the students.
Q: How do you envision our app to be helpful to you?
A lot of visual impairment people use the voice feature on the phone like on iPhone it’s called voice over, so as long as the app is compatible with these features, that’d be great because you can use the voiceover on your phone to tell you where you are, and go from there to other access points.
Q: How do you use your phone to help with your condition? Any feature other than voice over do you use on your phone that you would like the app to support? Another thing that I use a lot is zooming the screen in. So, when the voice over doesn’t work with something, I can just zoom in on it and be able to use it. These are features that are built into the phone but some apps don’t utilize it like the voice over sometimes doesn’t read everything.
Q: The second feature of the app is letting students contact help as easily as possible, like the Student Disability Services. Do you usually contact the SDS for help? The SDS can send you emails to let you know if some places are under construction, but when you get lost, they can’t really help.
Q: Which parts of the campus area do you think we should prioritize when implementing accessible points for the map? Probably the SUB and library, and maybe buildings that are difficult to find, like English and Philosophy building, Education building. Maybe a little bit off-campus but I think the Career Center and Wellness Center also. Those buildings are difficult to find for people with visual impairment.
Q: Any other feature you would like to see the app support? I think it needs to be basic enough for people to use easily and people with visual impairment to easily access voice over features. Don’t make it too complicated and confusing like showing accessible points everywhere, just help them get to the general areas and they can figure out themselves.
Joshua Steven Role: Academic Counselor
Q: How would you describe the average experience of students with disabilities navigating the Texas Tech University campus? The average experience will always differ depending on the disability. Students with invisible disabilities, such as ADHD, Dyslexia, etc., won’t have the same challenges as those with physical disabilities. Each year we conduct a disabilities week challenge. We invite members of the faculty/staff to go around campus on scooters and tell us the challenges they experienced. There are some challenges that present issues such as ramps and accessibility such as ADA buttons to open doors. There are only certain areas in buildings where those buttons are, so depending on where you are coming from or what part of the building you are trying to reach, there are some real challenges. There is only one location in Holden Hall for accessibility with a scooter/wheelchair.
Q: What are some of the challenges regarding transportation faced by students with disabilities at Texas Tech? Regardless of your disability, you are kind of at the mercy of the bus schedule. All the buses that run on campus have the ability to assist those with physical disabilities, and generally, are very reliable. There is handicap parking on campus, but you still have to have a parking permit. Tech is a closed campus, so traffic is limited during usual business hours. If you have someone drop you off, you still need to communicate with the transportation office to register the vehicle to be on campus.
Q: How does your department currently provide information about accessibility on campus? Other than calling our office, we don’t have a solid guide/map. We are currently in the process of making an interactive map, and an actual map that showcases all the accessibility locations here on campus.
Q: What features or functionalities would you find helpful in a disability app for Texas Tech? Having the location of bathrooms is always a plus, and the locations of accessibility points. Another great idea, as pointed out by you, Travis, would be the ability to have a feature that contacts our office directly if you are having a certain type of crisis or emergency. An example would be for students/faculty that have an electric wheelchair that stops working, would have a feature that lets us know where they are so we can send help.
Q: Are there any specific areas or buildings on campus where students encounter accessibility issues? Holden Hall is definitely a challenge. One access point for the entire building. The old agricultural building is also a challenge, and the ramp is very daunting and inconvenient. Another big challenge is that this campus continues to grow and change, so there are construction points on campus that can create challenges for those trying to navigate TTU.
Q: How do students with disabilities at Texas Tech typically plan their schedule and navigate between classes? I always suggest at the beginning of the year that all students locate their classrooms before classes start, and plan accordingly to their schedule. If you know where you are going, then it makes it easier for you to plan a path to get to and from classes.
Q: What resources or support services do you currently offer regarding navigation? Students with a visual disability are able to use AIRA. This is an app that allows students to call a live person. The app uses the camera to see where you are, so they can access maps, and guide you to where you need to go. We have a list of apps that we give to students that are free or cost money to use. These apps offer transportation accessibility.
Q: How do students with disabilities communicate their needs or request accommodations to faculty or staff members? Student go online and fill out the application form at Student Disability Services | Student Disability Services | TTU. Students are asked to fill out a brief questionnaire and has a location to upload supporting documentation. After we have received this information, we set up an intake meeting with the students to discuss accommodations provided.
Q: Are there any specific technologies or assistive devices that students with disabilities rely on? This again plays on the specific disability. Students with a hearing disability are offered R-CART (FM System), live captioning, or an interpreter. We have Kurzweil software that reads documents to you, different colored paper for tests, an imaging machine that can increase visibility for documents, scribes and readers, and quiet testing rooms. Other services are offered based on your specific disability.
Q: What other suggestions or feedback do you have for improving accessibility at Texas Tech? I would highly suggest that our leadership office participate in the accessibility challenge. We take a lot of things for granted, like sight, hearing, and the ability to navigate on two legs. Unless you are specifically looking out for these accessibility points, people won’t realize how difficult this campus can be to navigate.