An Accessibility Audit of Mount Allisons Residences

By the Association of Chronically Ill and Disabled Students (ACID)

Table of Contents
Why did we conduct the audit?......................................................3
How did we conduct the audit?......................................................4
What did we find?.........................................................................5
Cost Analysis................................................................................ 7
Expanding Disabled Rooms...........................................................8
How Will We Be Sharing This Information?...................................10
Conclusion.................................................................................. 10

Why did we conduct the audit?

The reasons ACID decided to undertake an accessibility audit are many.
Various universities we consider to be our peers have conducted audits and
used them to improve campus accessibility. Twenty-four Canadian
universities and colleges have done accessibility audits in the last five years,
including McGill, University of Toronto, University of British Columbia,
Queens, and University of New Brunswick. An audit would aid in
determining which areas of residences are compliant with the current
standards for dwellings in New Brunswick, and with the recommended
standards for accessible residences.1 It would also help in planning future
renovations of Mount Allisons residences and determine the lowest-cost
ways to improve the accessibility of the residences. An audit would help
Housing and Facilities staff decide which rooms are most suitable for disabled
and chronically ill students, and which would be the most cost-effective to
modify for suitability. The information gathered would give prospective
students a better idea of the dimensions and amount of space available in
each type of residence room, which would allow them to make more
informed choices when deciding which rooms to apply for. It might even
reduce the number of students who switch rooms or even residences during
the year.
Admittedly, we also sought to prove that Mount Allisons residences
were as unwelcoming to the chronically ill and physically disabled as our own
experiences had shown. Personal stories of feelings of degradation and

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humiliation are all too often passed off as anecdotes by the abled, who often
choose to ignore the truth in them. In order to convince the abled of Mount
Allison that campus was, in fact, not truly accessible, we felt we needed hard
proof and statistics, evidence that a well-conducted audit would be able to
provide to us. Is it a demonstration of how little belief and trust is given to
the lived experiences of the disabled that we felt numbers would convince
more people than stories of our lived experiences with Mount Allison
residences? Certainly, and it is a sad thing that we felt this was necessary in
order to move forward, but ultimately we did feel that an audit was one of
the few ways to make the inaccessibility of Mount Allison demonstrable to
those who have never had to deal with it in their own lives.

How did we conduct the audit?

We decided to base the criteria of our audit on several open source
audit formats available to the public, especially the one used by the Radical
Access Audit Project (RAAP) Montreal, a group that aims to audit all of
Montreals public spaces, and the Radical Access Mapping Project (RAMP)
Vancouver, another group that is attempting to do the same for Vancouver.2
This audit model looks at wider parameters than simply measuring the
space, including criteria such as gender-neutral washrooms and availability
of braille signage, along with more traditional measures. We also included
items such as measuring the total storage space available in each room, to
help incoming students plan accordingly and avoid some of the common

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pitfalls that occur when new students try to cram everything they own into a
double room that may be much smaller than it appeared online.
We only audited residences for the simple reason that Facilities
Management has already conducted an excellent audit of the academic
buildings on campus, and we saw no reason to repeat their work. Confining
our work to the residences also allowed us to be more comprehensive in our
response.
We conducted the physical measuring of the audit over a single three-hour
period, as this was all the time Housing was able to give us. Due to the brief
period we were given, when forced to choose between measurements, we
always chose those that were related to accessibility. As a result, we do not
have complete measurements for some items we considered largely
immaterial, such as drawer sizes in Campbell Hall doubles, a room type that
appears to be being slowly phased out. The measurements themselves are
attached, in Appendix A3. We have also included a copy of the RAMP audit
format for comparison.

What did we find?

We discovered many things that surprised us in our audit, starting with
the washrooms in Campbell Hall. We discovered that none of the shower
stalls, including those in the apparently wheelchair-accessible room, were up
to industry standards. The wheelchair accessible showers had a 6-inch high
ledge at the bottom, which is 5.5 inches higher than the standard for

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showers to be considered accessible to wheelchair users. There are no roll-in
showers on campus. The showers also did not have grab bars, which are
absolutely necessary for a shower to be safely used by someone in a
wheelchair. They were also designed in a way that made it difficult to sit on
the shower bench and reach the handles safely. The sink and counter were
also positioned several inches too high for it to be easy for someone sitting in
a conventional wheelchair to use the sink. Of the three fixtures in the
washroom, only the toilet was fully accessible to someone in a wheelchair,
though more grab bars are needed for it to be feasible for someone in a
wheelchair to use the toilet. It would be extremely difficult for someone in a
wheelchair to function on a day-to-day basis if this was his or her washroom.
Our results showed that, ultimately, there are no washrooms in any of
Mount Allisons residences that can be considered wheelchair accessible by
provincial standards. This is concerning for a number of reasons, besides the
obvious. New Brunswick and Nova Scotia have the highest number of
residents that identify as disabled as a percentage of population of any of the
Canadian provinces, and these provinces are where the majority of Mount
Allisons students come from. In addition, Mount Allisons Conference and
Housing department is heavily dependent on conferences and alumni
reunions to book the residences during the summer months and generate
extra revenue. As Canadas population continues to age and life
expectancies become longer, the demographics of Mount Allisons alumni will
reflect these changes.4 If the residences stay inaccessible to those with

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mobility issues, the university will be damaging relations with an increasing
number of alumni and potentially forfeiting an increasing amount of money.
This also applies to conferences. If Mount Allisons residences and facilities
are inaccessible, what will make a conferences organizing committee choose
Mount Allisons campus over the fully accessible facilities at Universit de
Moncton or at Saint Marys University in Halifax?
We found that there is no braille in any of Mount Allisons buildings.
There will be further consultation on how best to proceed on this matter with
the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB)s Moncton branch,
including one of their staff members touring the residences and making
recommendations based on their observations.
When considering how Mount Allison measured up in this audit, it is
important to remember that the province of New Brunswick did change their
accessibility standards for major renovations and new construction in January
2015, meaning that all of the buildings audited were last updated under the
old standards.5 However, this does not come close to accounting for all of the
inadequacies. There is a difference between things being a few inches from
best practice and entire buildings being completely off-limits to wheelchair
users, the visually impaired, or those with other types of disabilities.

Cost Analysis
We acknowledge and understand the budgetary pressures Mount
Allison currently faces. A freeze in tuition and in government funding to New

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Brunswicks universities have greatly complicated matters. Whether this
situation lasts for a decade, as it did in Manitoba, or only three years, as in
Nova Scotia, we have chosen to plan as though it will last indefinitely.
Uncertainty regarding the Canadian economy as a whole, fuelled by the
federal election and an economy in a state of flux and recession, only serves
to make planning a more difficult endeavour. As such, we are aware that
asking the university to undertake any further expenditures, regardless of
scale, is an unwelcome request. We have attempted to price out how much
additional fixtures that would assist in bringing facilities up to code would
cost, rather than seek wholesale changes to the building themselves which
would be remarkably expensive. In cases where it would be necessary to
change the infrastructure significantly, we believe it would be best to
execute these changes when renovations are already taking place, such as
those planned for Thornton House and Windsor Hall. We are aware that
making all residences, especially those on South Side, accessible is a near
impossibility, as that would require the installation of elevators, each of
which would be prohibitively expensive and would require significant work
from outside contractors. As such, we seek smaller scale changes to enhance
campus residences. We believe this approach to be both a reasonable and
feasible one.
A fully renovated bathroom in Campbell Hall would cost anywhere from
approximately $2,600-4,200, based on materials6. (We have not included
labour costs, as we are not aware of the full compensation details and

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collective bargaining agreements surrounding Facilities staff and possible
outside contractors.) A single-piece no threshold shower costs an average of
$3500, though some are available for as low as $1900. A hand-held
showerhead would be a cheap and simple upgrade, costing approximately
$45. Grab bars are approximately $30 each. A lowered sink (the current
sinks are too high for wheelchair users to use easily) would cost somewhere
around $500.
Outside of washrooms, the changes are generally much simpler.
Doorknobs that do not require two fully functional hands, which is an issue in
the newly renovated Bigelow House, cost approximately $7. Wider dimmer
switches for lights cost an average of $15, but they can be as low as $5.
Smoke detectors that have strobe lights, for those that are hard of hearing,
are already being installed in newly renovated residences and cost around
$90 each. We are still working to evaluate the full cost of braille signage.
In light of the universitys budget constraints, ACID has looked into
raising money for smaller-scale renovations ourselves. We believe that it
may be worth conducting a letter campaign to contact alumni and other
donors regarding the state of accessibility at Mount Allison and asking them
to designate any future donations to the university towards making the
university more accessible, in the same way they can designate it towards
certain capital projects. Were also investigating the option of fundraising on
our own and researching possible grants towards specific aspects of the

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needed improvements. Simply put, an investment in accessibility is an
investment in student safety and success.

Expanding Disabled Rooms

Perhaps the fastest way to improve the situation of disabled students
in Mount Allison residences would be to expand the definition of what
constitutes a disabled room. The few rooms that are labelled as being best
for disabled students are almost uniformly single rooms, frequently with ensuite bathrooms. Most are located in Campbell Hall. Expanding the
definition of disabled rooms offers the potential for greater savings and
quicker renovations. Rooms that fit closer to what wheelchair users actually
require may require less work than rooms that are already designated as
wheelchair friendly, yet fall far from the standard to be considered as such.
The Windsor Hall doubles and singles are already wheelchair accessible. If
the bathrooms were made wheelchair accessible in future renovations,
Windsor would become the most wheelchair accessible residence on
campus, and we would feel very comfortable recommending it as the
preferred residence for disabled students over Campbell Hall.
Another way in which these designated rooms do little to make Mount
Allison a more accessible choice to disabled students is their cost. These
rooms typically cost several thousand more than double rooms without ensuite washrooms. For a student taking on thousands of dollars of student
loans, this is a not inconsiderable amount. Furthermore, disabled people are

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typically in a much lower position on the economic spectrum than abled
people, and their lifetime earnings are significantly lower. Education is one
of the ways disabled people can cross this hurdle, and adding additional
costs that they may not have wanted to undertake makes university, and
more specifically, Mount Allison, more inaccessible than it was to start. In
Canada, only 17.6 per cent per cent of mildly disabled people have a
bachelors degree or higher, compared to 27 per cent of abled people.7
Among the severely disabled, only 8.8 per cent hold university degrees.
Disabled Canadians only earn 87 per cent as much as abled Canadians, and
only 49 per cent of disabled Canadians of working age are employed
compared to 79 per cent of abled Canadians. (This includes both severe and
non-severe disabilities.) A university degree has been found to be the
greatest source of equalization in the employment market.8 If Mount Allison
is to be more accessible to disabled and chronically ill, and, indeed, all
students, financial accessibility must be considered.

How Will We Be Sharing This Information?

We believe in sharing the information from this audit with current and
prospective Mount Allison students. Information regarding the accessibility
of residences is available on the websites of many Canadian universities,
including the majority of those Mount Allison considers comparable to itself.
Obviously, there are different levels of information accessibility, ranging from

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simply stating which residences have accessible rooms available on a main
page to going into detailed descriptions of the rooms themselves on each
residence page.9 We hope to see Mount Allison include information about the
availability of accessible rooms on the residence pages in the future.
Some universities, such as McGill, have chosen to distribute
information regarding accessibility to incoming first year students in mailouts in addition to including it on the website. However, we prefer a webonly approach both because it is significantly more environmentally friendly,
saving thousands of pages of paper, and because it is more in tune with how
prospective students research universities and share information today. View
books, though still popular, share nothing with someone looking at them that
a website cannot. Websites also offer advantages, such as embedded video,
that view books do not. We plan to continue elaborating on the information
we collected in the audit on our own website, acidmta.ca, as we continue to
explore how it can be useful to students.

Conclusion
Ultimately, this audit is a plea for better planning. We did not write this
believing that the authors would be present to witness improvements, but
because we believed that we needed to access what currently exists before
we could figure out what we needed to move forward. At the present time, it
would be extremely difficult for anyone with limited mobility to function on
the Mount Allison campus, let alone a full-time student with limited mobility.

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This affects Mount Allisons ability to hold conferences and reunions, and
could hamper a significant source of income. It does nothing to enhance
Mount Allisons reputation, one that has been and continues to be truly
progressive for students with learning disabilities through the Meighen
Centre. An inaccessible campus is going to hamper the future of Mount
Allison. This problem has a simpler fix than it may appear at first glance planning for a more accessible future is the best solution. We are aware that
changes will not occur overnight, but see no reason why they could not take
place over a decade. If we plan for disabled students and a more accessible
future, it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Living in residence can be one of the most important and memorable
parts of attending university. Residence is where you make some of the best friends you
will ever have, where you take the first slow, shaky steps into adulthood, where you study and
sleep and party and live. Mount Allison prides itself on creating a residence life that is
unparalleled. The university website claims You will find that residence life becomes the
foundation for your Mount Allison experience.10 Taking the residence experience away from
disabled students is denying them a vital part of what it means to be an Allisonian.
We are aware that there are things we cannot change. Mount Allison is
located on a hilly campus, in a town that gets an average of 231.2
centimeters of snowfall yearly.11 We cannot alter these facts, but that does
not mean that we need to just view accessibility as a lost cause. There are
many disabilities beyond just those with mobility issues, and the fact that we

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cannot make Mount Allison completely friendly to those with mobility issues
does not mean we should not try to make it friendlier.
As of this writing, Mount Allison has been declared the number one
undergraduate university in Canada for 18 of the past 24 years. It has held
this position for the past eight years straight. This is the number one
promotional claim in our recruiting, and we stake much of our reputation on
this ranking. However, we find it hard to understand why the number one
undergraduate university in this country is a university that is largely
inaccessible to a whole sector of the population. The number one university
in this country ought to be one that prioritizes its ability to educate everyone
who reaches its qualifications. We believe that Mount Allison has the ability
to become number one in this way, too - if those in charge of planning are
willing to accept that there is an issue regarding accessibility and that it
must be addressed. We can and must do better.

1 We used the standards created by Brock University, see Sources.

2 For further information on RAAP and RAMP, see
http://www.curemontreal.org/accessibility/and
https://radicalaccessiblecommunities.wordpress.com/about-ramp/ .
3 See Appendix A.
4 Statistics Canada, CANSIM, table 102-0512 and Catalogue no. 84-537-XIE. Last
modified: 2012-05-31.
5 Interview with Chelsee Pollock, July 2015, conducted by Olivia Auriat.
6 See Appendix B
7 Turcotte, Martin. 2014. Persons with disabilities and employment. Insights on Canadian Society.
December. Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 75-006-X.
8 Turcotte, Martin. 2014. Persons with disabilities and employment. Insights on Canadian Society.
December. Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 75-006-X.
9 For example, a Dalhousie residence page:
http://www.dal.ca/campus_life/residence_housing/residence/halifax-campus/resoptions-halifax/risley-hall.html
10 "Mount Allison University | Advantages of Residence Living." Mount Allison University |
Advantages of Residence Living. Accessed September 21,
2015.http://mta.ca/Prospective/Student_Life/Residence_life/Advantages_of_residence_living/Advantag
es_of_residence_living/
11 Osborn, Liz. "Yearly Snowfall Averages for New Brunswick." Average Yearly Snowfall in New
Brunswick. Accessed September 29, 2015. http://www.currentresults.com/Weather/Canada/NewBrunswick/snowfall-annual-average.php.