Winter Quarter 2023

          
Perspectives in Assistive Technology
ENGR110/210

          

David L. Jaffe, MS
Lathrop Library Classroom 282
Tuesdays & Thursdays from 4:30 to 5:50pm PT

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Disabilities at Stanford

Stanford Daily - February 18, 2009

A look at the experiences of Stanford students and faculty with disabilities,
and the resources available to them

By Emily Rials
Contributing Writer


Making the most of your Stanford experience is no easy task. The campus is big, the pressure to perform well academically can feel overwhelming and there are so many events that it's nearly impossible to take advantage of every opportunity that presents itself.

Consider, for a moment, what it might be like to navigate Stanford's campus if you can't use your legs to push the pedals. Consider trying to find a classroom if you can't see signs on the doors, or trying to attend social gatherings if you can't hear the words your peers are speaking.

Stanford is a university openly committed to diversity. There are theme houses, student groups and community centers dedicated to providing resources to those interested in talking about issues of sex, religion and race. Discussion of disability, however, is rarely as open.

Regardless of discussion, the issue remains that there are students and faculty on campus who work and study, and also happen to have physical and/or sensory disabilities. Consider this story a step toward a more open dialogue about this oft-overlooked area of diversity.


The Office of Accessible Education (OAE) is the place from which disability-related resources are distributed and accommodations are allotted. Services offered by the OAE vary based on a student's particular set of needs, and different services are provided through different resource centers.

The Student Disability Resource Center (SDRC), for example, has the stated goal of "providing students with equal access to all facets of university life: education, housing, recreation and extracurricular activities."

Through the SDRC, students can arrange for anything from exam accommodations to housing accommodations, from note-taking service to oral or sign language interpretation. The SDRC is also responsible for the student-run DisGo golf cart service, which gives free rides to students whose mobility is limited because of permanent disability or temporary injury.

The Schwab Learning Center, the Assistive Learning Technology Center, and the Center for Universal Design in Education are other OAE-run centers for students, offering accessible technology and learning resources for those who need them.

How do these resources and services, then, help the students and faculty who use them? What other resources and services might be missing?


"Classes are relatively straightforward," said Rachel KoIb '12. "Social events are more difficult."

Kolb hails from New Mexico and is interested in pursuing a major in English. She is also Deaf; she wears a hearing aid in each ear, but relies on lip reading and interpreters to understand spoken English. Kolb uses sign language interpreters in all her classes and to help her in her extracurricular activities - she rides for the equestrian team.

"The SDRC is really great," she said, noting how the center is responsible for arranging for the interpretation services she needs. "The challenge is when something comes up last minute, and it's hard to get interpreters. People don't always understand I need advance notice."

Still, Kolb described her freshman experience so far as fairly typical.

"I think sometimes my Deafness makes it harder," she admitted. Lip reading works fine in one-on-one interactions, but the problem comes when more than two people are talking.

"I can't follow what's going on," she added. This can make attending parties and other extemporaneous social events difficult.

And while she feels the Stanford community has been very open to her, KoIb acknowledged that some are less receptive.

"Some don't think beyond 'the normal," she said. "They want me to do things their way, but this is the way it is for me, and I need to do things my way."


Julia Feinberg '11, an ethics in society major, gets around campus using a power wheelchair. She was born with Type II Spinal Muscular Atrophy, a neuromuscular disease that has affected her muscle development.

Awareness about disability resources on campus is extremely low," Feinberg said. "Whenever people say 'diversity,' disability is not really included."

In her senior year of high school, Feinberg completed a massive research project focused on assessing the accessibility of 15 universities and colleges in and around Philadelphia. She based her evaluation on everything from access to dormitories to the height at which lab equipment was stored to the presence of staircase alternatives, like ramps.

"Stanford is very good for a private school," she said. "It's a big campus, so it's spread out - and it's a flat campus."

Stanford's physical size, she explained, allows the University space to build new, accessible buildings - space that physically smaller colleges lack.

Feinberg mentioned a few areas in which Stanford's accessibility could be improved for her and others in similar situations.

"Automatic doors are put in on an as-needed basis," she said. "Even when you do request it, it takes at least four to six weeks."

And sometimes when automatic doors are added to a building, the accessible entrance is in the back.

"People are always more than willing to open a door," Feinberg said, "but I shouldn't have to go around to the back entrance or be dependent on others to simply enter a building."

Other structural barriers, like a lack of ramps or elevators, make things difficult for those in wheelchairs. Some public spaces, like the upper level of Memorial Auditorium, remain unreachable by those in wheelchairs. Even the residential buildings with elevators are not necessarily fully accessible, either. The Branner elevator, for example, only moves between two of the dorm's three floors.

"The problem is that there shouldn't solely be access to academics, but also socializing and being a part of your dorm community," Feinberg said. "This is a clear example of where structural barriers can take a huge toll in one's interactions with others if the dorm residents are not conscious of this limitation and don't make an additional effort to include the person in dorm activities."

Overall, one of Feinberg's main concerns seems to be awareness of issues surrounding disability on Stanford's campus. She noted that there is a group for students with disabilities on campus that is looking for members. She also finds hope in the creation of a committee to look into disability issues and resources on campus.

"There's starting to be growing awareness in the Stanford administration," Feinberg said.


Lecturer Cathy Haas is one person who has played an integral role in increasing administration awareness about disability-related issues. Haas, who lost her hearing following a bout of scarlet fever when she was two, has been teaching American Sign Language (ASL) at Stanford for over 30 years. She also serves as the Advisor for the Disability Staff Forum, which helps facilitate communication between individuals at Stanford with and without disabilities through workshops, speaker events and lunch meetings.

"Professors with disabilities get on the forum and try to help increase accessibility on campus," Haas said through an ASL interpreter.

Haas came to Stanford in 1975 to do research with Koko the gorilla, helping to teach the ape to sign. When a medical school professor asked Haas to teach sign language to his students, she agreed.

"The students kept pestering me after that," she said, "They wanted to learn sign language."

When Haas originally approached the linguistics department about a job, however, she found that her interviewer was resistant to the idea of hiring a Deaf teacher for the proposed ASL classes.

"I was just in shock," she said. "This is my language and my culture - you wouldn't hire someone who wasn't fluent in the Swedish language to teach Swedish!"

Haas' persistence won out in the end, and she has been teaching ASL classes through Stanford's Special Language Program ever since.

"We've added research and linguistics, Deaf awareness, Deaf clubs and activities," she said. "Things really started to take off."

Teaching has helped Haas develop a keener awareness of those issues facing community members with disabilities, and she in turn passes her understanding on to her students. Teaching in a university setting, she explained, allows both students and faculty members to "respect each other's cultures and get a better education."


Nicole Torcolini '12 lost her sight when she was four years old. Now a freshman, she is determined to major in computer science.

Her decision to attend Stanford was motivated by its accommodating services for the disabled.

"Most important was the quality of the Office of Accessible Education," she said. "Some of the colleges that I looked at had a pretty good office, but they just weren't prepared to do the math and the science, which are my strong points."

Torcolini makes use of the OAE both to help make class work accessible to her and to help her get to and from classes.

"If the materials are not in an accessible format, the OAE will translate them into a document I can read," she said.

Torcolini and her guide dog, Lexia, also take advantage of the SDRC's DisGo golf cart service to navigate Stanford's sprawling campus.

"I use DisGo almost every day," she said. "They're a wonderful service."

Torcolini cites evening and week end transportation as resources she wishes were available. DisGo rides are only offered from 8:10 am to 5:10 pm, Monday through Friday.

"Anything extra, like extra study sessions, is scheduled after those hours, so it's hard to get there," she said.

Limited transportation service, however, hasn't proven too great a deterrent.

"I know my way around," she said. "If it's not too far, I'll go myself" Torcolini, like Feinberg and Haas, is also involved with trying to raise awareness of issues affecting the blind community at Stanford and beyond. Recently, Torcolini created an online petition, which she intends to send to Walt Disney Pictures, asking the company to prioritize the distribution of extra audio files on DVDs so blind moviegoers can enjoy films with their friends.

So far, the petition has received over 1930 online signatures.


This winter quarter marks the third year that Lecturer David L. Jaffe has taught ENGR110/220, "Perspectives in Assistive Technology." The course centers on developing technology that benefits disabled individuals.

The course involves both lectures and projects.

"The projects have to work with people with a disability," Jaffe said. "Students who want to work on a project form teams to address a need of someone with a disability."

Project suggestions have come from many different sources. "Some of them have been suggested by people who live in assistive senior-living centers, others came from veterans who are at the Spinal Cord Injury Center at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System and others come from people with disabilities in the local area or from facilities that serve people with disabilities," Jaffe said. "Perspectives in Assistive Technology" was originally geared towards mechanical engineering students. This year, Jaffe is looking to open the class to students from other engineering disciplines, from electrical engineering to computer science.

"The idea would be to have a diverse group of engineers work together to solve some big problems," he said.

Susan Nourse'09 is a product design major who enrolled in the class this quarter. Her group's project involves a mechanical solution to a common problem for people in wheelchairs: opening non-automatic doors.

"Education is best when it's easily applied," Nourse said. "This class allows us to commit ourselves to something that actually looks like it has applicability."


The experiences of students and faculty with physical and sensory disabilities vary greatly, there is no single "disabled" experience at Stanford. Understanding even just a few of the obstacles faced by community members with disabilities, however, can help broaden everyone's perspective as many noted.

And if there can be a consensus reached about the perspectives and experiences of Stanford students and faculty whose lives are affected by physical or sensory disabilities, the take-home message might be this: be aware and be respectful of those around you.

"You need to treat me like a normal person, because that's what I am inside," Kolb said. "But also realize I do need help sometimes."


Contact Emily Rials at ekrials@stanford.edu

Updated 09/09/2022

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