Rather than walking from class to class, Danielle Cole made her way around campus Tuesday in a wheelchair.
Cole, a special education in learning disabilities sophomore, was participating in an all-day simulation Tuesday for an assignment which required her to use a wheelchair for one day in order to understand the issue of accessibility.
The simulation was one of the activities offered during the second annual Accessibility Awareness Week at MSU.
Cole said not only did she notice inaccessibility issues, but also the reactions of those around her.
"They either look very intensely at you or they try not to make any eye contact at all," she said. "I think sometimes people don't want to be rude so they don't ask what's going on and don't try to learn anything about it. They just try to block it out."
But Cole and others said people need to realize people with disabilities are just like anyone else.
"You can't know how somebody else feels until you walk a mile in their shoes," she said. "I couldn't imagine how it is to be in a wheelchair every day, but just today gives me slightly more insight."
The week was designed in 2000 by social work graduate student Melinda Haus, originally as a school project in her community psychology class. Last year was the first year it was implemented.
"We had to identify a social problem within our community and come up with an intervention plan," said Haus, who is a wheelchair user. "This was my intervention."
Haus said the project has grown from only addressing wheelchair accessibility to addressing all disabilities. She said students often have "ah-ha" moments, when they realize a difficulty that people with disabilities face that they didn't know about before. She used seating in a lecture hall as an example.
"Getting down there, the slope is so steep," she said. "You can roll down there to talk to a professor, but how are you going to get back up?"
Other accessibility simulations included glasses that illustrate different levels of visual disabilities, latex gloves to help students understand sensory disabilities and wheelchairs for students to experience difficulties when trying to get in and out of a bathroom. The simulations were provided by Hope Network Rehabilitation Services, 2775 E. Lansing Drive.
"They get a great understanding literally doing it," said Michael O'Connor, the clinical manager of Hope Network. "The hope is that when students leave campus, they'll go out into the world and they'll take that awareness with them because people have a prejudice on how people function."
Accessibility Awareness Week also includes a sign language workshop, a question-and-answer session and a disability movie night.
Haus said it's crucial to start now to promote awareness, so that the college generation can go forward and make a difference in their adult lives and in their children's lives. She stressed that disabilities should not be blamed.
"Your disability is not at fault," she said. "What makes having a disability so difficult is the attitudes faced in society and the accessibility barrier.
"It would not be difficult to have this if everything was accessible and people treated me like everybody else."
