Educational Psychology
Making Miami more accessible
School of Education, Health, and Society
1/29/07
Doors on Miami University’s Oxford campus—all 400 of them—will soon feature information that will make the university more welcoming to the disabled. Entrances that are accessible will be clearly marked and those that are not will direct visitors to the nearest building entrance that is accessible.
The almost-completed project is a cooperative effort between students in Miami’s disabilities studies minor and special education major and the university’s physical facilities department.
“Knowledge carries responsibility,” says Kathy McMahon-Klosterman, associate professor of educational psychology, whose classes worked on the project. “What do you do with what you know? It’s not enough to know.”
Working with Jim Haley, associate vice president for facilities, students in fall semester’s EDP 272 (Introduction to Disability Studies) and previous courses mapped campus facilities so that a disability sticker with an arrow pointing to the nearest accessible entrance could be placed on each door.
Many stickers went up at the end of fall semester, and the remainder will be placed this semester.
The collaboration has been an especially useful one, says Haley “Unfortunately, we commonly think of our campus constituents as being normally-abled and provide assistance accordingly with signs and maps. The unique thing about this collaboration is that Dr. McMahon-Klosterman’s class views the challenge differently—primarily from the perspective of a person having some limitation in their mobility. “
The result was some “really good recommendations,” says Haley.
McMahon-Klosterman, whose interest in providing innovative, collaborative learning experiences has resulted in many honors including the 2006 E. Phillips Knox Teaching Award, explains that she can lecture about the frustration of being a wheelchair user or having your movements limited by arthritis or other conditions, but nothing beats the real-life experience of becoming an ally with the disabilities community.
Other students in her classes have updated the disability services information in the Student Handbook, posted a video about a local mother who is caring for a daughter with cerebral palsy on the popular You Tube Web site and are in the process of creating an accessiblity guide for uptown Oxford that would provide information for visitors on such topics as the availability of large print menus and/or Braille menus, restroom accessibility, etc.