Accessibility Audit of the York University, Keele Campus

In the social model of disability, it is the built environment that has a disabling effect on individuals with impairment. The built environment includes buildings and roads. Its inaccessibility limits disabled individuals’ access to education, employment, healthcare, entertainment, political participation, and many other aspects of life.

As a professor, I think about the accessibility of university campuses, especially in relation to our institutions’ efforts towards being inclusive of previously underrepresented groups. People with disabilities are one such group, and in addition to social barriers, they face obstacles in the built environment. 

My introduction to disability issues and accessibility was in university in my first architectural design course. It made a deep impression on me, and the way I see the built environment was changed.  In my research, I focus on accessibility of the digital and physical environments that pertain to transportation. I include disability accessibility in my teaching too. I want to provide my students the same opportunity I was given as a student.

One of the graduate courses I teach in the Master’s in Environmental Studies Planning in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University is titled Transportation Policy and Planning. It lends itself to introducing accessibility topics easily – accessibility is crucial in transportation. Every year, I assign students a group project to conduct an accessibility audit of the Keele campus. Given the large size of the campus, a significant amount of travel is required using exterior paths, whether it is from parking lots to classrooms, the subway stops to office spaces, one building to another, or the lab to the gym. My students do an audit of the exterior paths of travel using the Toronto Accessibility Design Guidelines as a checklist. 

I chose the university’s campus for this exercise for two reasons. First, the location is convenient for all students as they are on campus for classes; organizing for a team tour is much easier. Second, auditing their campus gives many students the opportunity to explore the environment they are familiar with through a new perspective: a disability perspective. Unless they are disabled or someone important to them has disabilities, people may not appreciate the many barriers that exist in the built environment.     
 
I divide the campus into five sections as seen in the map. Each section is assigned to a team of students. The groups are free to choose what to focus on in their respective audits. One of the requirements of the assignment is to recommend suggestions when there is deviation from the design guidelines. 

In this piece are findings from last year’s cohort, summarized in the side bars – focusing on parts of the exterior paths of travel on campus that are not in accordance with the design guidelines. Their reports for the course included elements that are in conformance to the City’s accessibility guidelines. In my own previous work on university campuses in several institutions in North America and Europe, I found similar patterns: some accessibility and some inaccessibility with varying degrees of each. The lesson here is that barriers exist. Their elimination would remove the disabling aspects of the environment for people with disabilities to move around on campus more easily in their respective roles as faculty, staff, or students. 

Notwithstanding the challenges of retrofitting to make campuses accessible, the built environment’s accessibility is a prerequisite for an inclusive higher education. 

Side Bar – 1
By David Mejia Monico, Steven Lum, and William Russell  

In the western part of Keele campus (green outline), we found that some of the exterior paths of travel did not conform to the City of Toronto's Accessibility Guidelines. For example, the staircases generally were too wide, with the city requiring intermediate handrails in 1650 mm intervals if the staircases are over 2200 mm wide. The photo depicts a staircase near Calumet College which has a 2540 mm distance between the railings, far above the city standard. This makes it difficult for people with trouble walking from being able to hold onto the railings on both sides so that they feel more secure moving up and down the stairs. The image also shows damage on the stairs, which is also a tripping hazard. As a recommendation, the university should retrofit the staircases by adding intermediate handrails appropriate for the width and conduct regular maintenance to prevent the steps from deteriorating over time.
Side Bar – 2  
By Maria Clara Ferreira, Nathan Wener, Sara Abbasian 

Our group was assigned the area that includes our faculty’s building. One of the non-compliant aspects we found was the lack of accessible entrance from a parking facility to our building nor Osgoode Hall Law School. There is no elevator or ramp to the latter and only a single ramp in a poor condition of repair leading to our building (HNES).    
Additionally, we noted that the Toronto Accessibility Guidelines requires all accessible landings to have a zero-degree grade while the above entrance leading to the chemistry building has a 2-degree incline.  

Our key recommendations include repairing faulty infrastructure, upgrading non-compliant elements, and ensuring proper placement of accessibility features to enhance usability in compliance with Toronto Accessibility Design Guidelines and the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act.  York University’s infrastructure budget should account for these repairs and ensure that added costs are factored into capital budgets.  

Side Bar – 3 
By Joanna Grace Silva and Xinyu Lu

Our site for the audit included common areas such as Harry Arthur Commons, Student Centres, York Lanes, and the York University Subway Station. We found several non-compliances to the Toronto Accessibility Design Guidelines including lack of accessibility to rest areas, often social common areas, which may lead to social isolation for students with limited mobility who cannot access those areas to socialize. For instance, at Vanier College, a resting area is located 11 steps below the main ground, with no accessible exterior ramp provided. The main exterior pathways to highly frequented destinations such as the subway stations, York Lanes, or Vari Hall had obstructed paths. We found an art installation obstructing the width requirement (2100m), while trees and shrubs had overgrown into the required vertical clearance (3000m) for headroom, pathways had running slopes greater than the 1:20 maximum ratio. Our recommendations to remove inaccessibility include, providing ramps to spaces at different elevation, relocating the art installation, and cutting shrubs to maintain the required vertical clearance.   

 
Side Bar – 4 (Purple Outline) 
By Anson Ho, Luka Sonevski, and Shannon Harman 

We found breaches of City of Toronto guidelines which we constituted as risks, dangers, and inconsistencies. Risks we found most prevalent were uneven surfaces or pavements due to a lack of maintenance and proper drainage, posing risk of harm to people with disabilities. Another non-compliance we identified was a lack of rest stops, which places people with low stamina and mobility need to use to avoid the risk of falling or discomfort. Dangers we found were an absence of hazard strips at intersections and crossings, as well as multiple staircases in disrepair, and thus lacking handrails, as well as no tactile warnings. Additionally, inconsistencies such as the affordance of ramps that are not wide enough for a mobility device, as well as wayfinding not accommodating the needs of individuals with disabilities, such as some entrances to a residence having ramps and others not. We recommend a prioritization of maintenance of school grounds as well as widespread hazard strips.
Side Bar – 5 (Blue Outline) 
By Angelica Eccles and David Martino

Our audit identified a built environment of a university campus plagued with inconsistent paving, inaccessible street furnishings, and improper waste handling. Our assigned portion of the campus (purple outline) fails to meet the Toronto Accessibility Design Guidelines in nearly every aspect. For example, the pedestrian crossings feature inconsistent tactile paving and dead-end crosswalks, creating significant barriers to accessible navigation for disabled people. We also located a dumpster, with overflow of waste items, blocking a sidewalk near the Harry Sherman Crowe Housing Co-op. There were street furniture, such as benches and seats that do not have armrest, back support, rounded edges, and clear ground spaces. Our recommendations include prioritizing infrastructure improvements that focus on accessibility: refurbishing non-compliant elements, facilitating a consistent maintenance plan, removing obstacles from pathways, and frequent compliance monitoring. These improvements will require dedicated funding integrated into both short- and long-term capital budgets and must account for the additional costs of accessibility upgrades.