Experiencing Barriers

Feature Education Story.

The “Understanding Disability” students at Ithaca College used two innovative techniques to do what the course title implies. Professor Judy Kennison assigned her class an hour in a wheelchair as well as a day in earplugs. The college announced the assignment in a September news release.

“Barrier Experiences” is the name of the project. Kennison says the assignment’s purpose is to foster an “awareness of the challenges posed by physical and social disabilities.”

There are 41 students in the course. The students break up into pairs and each take a turn navigating a predetermined route around the campus in a wheel chair. Each student also spends a day wearing industrial earplugs to simulate hearing impairment. The students write a paper about their experiences.

Kennison said the wheelchair assignment predates her tenure at the school. She added the earplug portion as a means of expanding the students’ experiences. Several students find the social ramifications of the hearing impairment equally difficult, if not more difficult than using the wheelchair. Check out these statistics on the prevalence of hearing impairment.

Kennison called the chairs “institutional,” saying they are typical of what someone with limited economic resources would probably use. The Ithaca College campus poses a particularly tough challenge for the wheelchair users. Its many slopes are a struggle to navigate.

“I knew the campus was not good for wheelchairs,” sophomore physical therapy major Lisa Russell said. The assignment confirmed her suspicions.

Kennison said that while she doesn’t believe the project can truly simulate the actual feeling of having a disability, she hopes it makes her students think about the everyday issues a disability imposes. Something as simple as a trip to the dining hall can become a challenging ordeal.

Senior Annette Dudarewicz and junior Katherine Wilson demonstrated using the wheelchair in the video below.



Here is another story on the “Barrier Experiences” project.

--Nate March