UNM’s push to make campus fully handicapped accessible is made more difficult by insufficient funding, University officials said.
Leslie Donovan, University Honors Program associate professor, relies on a power wheelchair and said she experiences campus accessibility issues every day. She said handicapped parking is a major issue.
“Almost all the places on campus are nominally accessible, but often in a very difficult way,” she said. “People who use wheelchairs have a hard time parking anywhere on campus. There are simply not enough spaces. If you can’t park in a handicapped space where you can get your ramp down, you end up having to go long distances to get where you need to be.”
The University formed a committee in 1994 to transition the campus to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 guidelines for accessibility.
Mary Kenney, planning and campus development officer, said the committee’s legislative funding has been cut off for the past two years.
“We take accessibility very seriously,” she said. “We try to make sure that we are addressing the most critical needs on campus and doing what we can with the limited resources we have.”
Enacted in 1990, the ADA is a federal civil rights law that prohibits disability discrimination, and its guidelines serve as minimum requirements for facility handicapped access, according to the United States Access Board website.
University Planning chairs the UNM Facility Access Committee and Kenney said it is charged with managing UNM’s progress toward full compliance with ADA guidelines, prioritizing unresolved accessibility issues and reviewing construction plans to ensure accessibility.
The committee got funding from the state Legislature to spend on addressing ADA requirements, but in the last two years funding has decreased, and the committee relies on personal sponsors, Kenney said.
“As we assess particular areas of campus that have critical needs, the committee then has to approach UNM leadership,” she said. “We make recommendations as to what needs to be done and how can we find funding.”
Committee member Mark Manzutto said the committee worked to make classrooms and lecture halls more handicapped friendly and mapped campus access routes that need change. He said campus accessibility is not perfect.
“We have a lot of great, hard-working individuals who are chasing down every issue,” Manzutto said. “We deal with issues on a case-by-case basis. The budget is definitely our greatest challenge, but we are doing everything we can.”
At Dane Smith Hall, handicapped parking spaces are yards away from the nearest door, but the door opens to a flight of stairs. The nearest ramp and accessible entrance is around the corner, across an expanse of grass. The Communication and Journalism building has one handicapped parking space near an entrance, but the handicapped-accessible entrance and elevator are on the other side of the building.
ADA section four, standard 6.2, states that, “Accessible parking spaces serving a particular building shall be located on the shortest accessible route of travel from adjacent parking to an accessible entrance.”
Donovan said Mesa Vista Hall and Hokona have lifts instead of elevators where only a few stairs connect sections of the buildings.
“The lifts are old, and no one knows how to work them, or they are key-operated, and no one has the key,” Donovan said. “Trying to figure out how to get down two or three stairs can take an hour. Just a couple little steps and you’re stuck.”
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ADA section 4, standard 11.3, states that “If platform lifts are used, then they shall facilitate unassisted entry, operation and exit from the lift.”
Donovan said she often makes requests for things to be fixed.
“They do their best, but often it takes several years for anything to happen,” she said. “And the bonds that didn’t pass in this election just mean that they’re going to have even less money to make alterations.”
The ADA says facilities that have not been modified or altered since the bill was passed are obliged to comply, but many of the dorms are not handicapped accessible, UNM housing spokesman Bobby Childers said. He said four SRC apartments and Redondo Village are the only dorms that are handicapped accessible.
“We are still fully in compliance because the newer halls meet the standards,” he said. “Getting the older halls up to compliance is always something we consider, but the reality is the expense is just too great.”
