“A lot of work, but it pays off”

Nicole Sourt Sánchez makes it plain right from the outset: it is a fundamental human right for people with physical, emotional, intellectual or sensory disabilities to take part in society. According to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, that human right applies to all people with disabilities, who make up around 20% of the population of Switzerland, it is worth noting.

Sourt Sánchez is the co-managing director of Sensability and the organizer of the awareness-raising course for staff and students at the University of Zurich. Severely visually impaired from birth, she knows exactly what she talks about. She studied educational science at the Universities of Zurich and Bern, earning her Master’s degree two years ago. That was actually her second choice because she couldn’t enroll in her desired degree program – chiropractic medicine – despite having good grades. The restricted admission to the program is not accessible for people with disabilities. Even a request to the organizing bodies was fruitless.

During her university studies, finding her way around buildings was the biggest problem, the inclusion expert says. If the seminar classroom locations were changed shortly before the start, she couldn’t practice getting there on her own in advance and had to ask the lecturers to tell her the exact room name directly. She also always had to request course materials around one to two months ahead of time from instructors, she recounts: “I kept on pestering until I received them.”

Academic accommodation gave her time extensions on exams, but things got dicey when it came to having to interpret statistics: “The screen reader cannot read unlabeled graphs. A simple data table with the same content would have helped me a lot, but before – not during – the exam. I need time to practice,” Sourt Sánchez recollects. She says that she usually discussed hindrances and barriers directly with her department and encountered a lot of goodwill in the process. Sourt Sànchez, who herself works today as a UZH instructor, acknowledges that “a lot has been done with regard to accessibility since I graduated.”

Herbert Bichsel, a wheelchair user with hand dysfunction, exposed many hindrances and barriers himself during his studies at the University of Fribourg. They were subsequently remediated bit by bit. The current co-president of Sensability graduated from a special program that allowed him to study philosophy and religious studies even without holding an upper secondary school diploma. “Many people with disabilities do not follow a normal educational path and depend on program offerings of that kind,” Bichsel says.

The aspiring philosophy student ran into his first problems right at the front entrance of the university: he was unable to open the door from his seated position in his wheelchair – it now opens automatically ever since then. Bichsel’s feedback on the accessibility of books in the library, the microwave oven in the cafeteria and the ID badge scanner also led to pragmatic corrections by the dean’s office in Fribourg. And since he was unable to use his hands to write, Bichsel was allowed to take all exams orally in double the normally allotted time.

“It took me 10 years to finish my philosophy studies. It was arduous work, and I was glad that I was assigned a quiet room for rest and relaxation. But the effort paid off in the end,” Bichsel sums up. The mobility expert emphatically advocates for consulting with people with disabilities early on to improve accessibility. “Well-intended measures that do not address our actual needs are of no use to us.”

Cyril Haudenschild, a hearing-impaired person who is unable to speak, communicates in sign language. He works as a computer programmer and is dedicated to raising public awareness about the needs of people with hearing disabilities. He is able to read lips, but understands only 30% to 35% of what’s said and has to laboriously figure out the rest himself. So, he often needs an interpreter to translate for him in sign language sentence by sentence, as is the case also in the workshop.

Haudenschild demonstrates in sign language what really matters when communicating with the hearing impaired: maintaining constant eye contact, speaking slowly and articulately at a normal volume, and forming short sentences in standard German. Good lighting, active facial expressions and gestures, pointing at objects and writing things down are also very helpful. A face-to-face distance of at least 60 centimeters must be maintained so that hearing-impaired individuals can read lips. People with fingerspelling skills can communicate even better.

Although 1.3 million people in Switzerland, many of them elderly, are considered hearing-impaired, sign language is not officially recognized, and it is not always easy to receive cost reimbursement for interpreters. “Coping with everyday life is very exhausting and sometimes frustrating. You have to grit your teeth and tough it out,” Haudenschild explains. That’s why there are not many hearing-impaired people at universities, he adds.

One thing is clear at the end of this workshop: anyone with a mobility, visual or hearing disability has to have a strong will to persevere, needs to constantly self-advocate and must repeatedly overcome obstacles put in the way by others, partly unconsciously, even at universities. So, it’s our job as employees of the University to continually improve accessibility to buildings, infrastructure, and teaching and research spaces.