Accessibility in Name Only  

Content Note: disability, ableism, workplace accessibility barriers, and systemic exclusion

I was employed at a post-secondary institution in Burnaby, BC as an instructor in the School of Health Sciences. As my disability progressed, I became more dependent on my wheelchair and other mobility aids. While being an instructor in health sciences was a great accommodation for someone with the physical disability, as opposed to actually working in the field, I was eventually forced to resign due to lack of accommodations from my employer. Teaching itself was not hard on my disability, but getting to my workplace was. They made the process so daunting that it eventually exhausted me and I didn't want to fight anymore. I was seeking accommodations in the form of a wheelchair accessible door for both my office and the laboratory that I taught labs in. The doors were so heavy that I would often have to wait in the hallway for a stranger to walk by and ask them to open the door for me. My requests were not unreasonable and supported by my manager, yet the institution simply decided not to install these automatic door openers with zero explanation.  

I also found that they were checking off their requirements in terms of providing accessible accommodations as a form of lip service. An example of that would be that they had a minimum number of wheelchair accessible parking spots available on campus, but some of them were not actually accessible. And by that, I mean they would paint a parking stall with the wheelchair symbol in it right behind a lamp post, so you couldn't actually drive into that stall; they were not real parking stalls. As a lecturer, I often had classes in different buildings on campus, and when I asked if I could park in the accessible spots closer to the buildings where I will be teaching, I was told that you can only park there if you had a pass for that lot, which was not possible for every building. They would point me to other spots that were 10 minutes across campus, which was nearly impossible for me to do in my wheelchair.  

Between the parking headaches, the inability to open the door to my office and my lab, and all the doctor's visits and forms that had to be signed by various authority figures, I ran out of energy to advocate for myself and simply stopped working.