this week in social inclusion and diversity

ACPET’s Disability Ambassador, Karni Liddell (a journalist and former Australian champion swimming paralympian) will write a series of personal articles in the coming weeks, providing a glimpse into her private experiences with a disability as a student, journalist, and champion of people with a disability.

We are privileged to have these ‘insider’ accounts. From them, we can draw many lessons about how to provide an effective training/ education service and workplace environment for everyone, not just a few.

Last week, Karni wrote about how words hurt! This week, she turns her attention to the difference in the quality of services she received from two universities . . . and describes how the private university won hand downs:

Providing a total education service: private vs public: by Karni Liddell, ACPET Disability Ambassador

I have always been pro private – private school, private hospitals and then to my surprise private University. I am a girl from Rocky: I trained in a dirty, un-heated pool in Rocky for my first Paralympics, I wore Doc Martin shoes to my formal, I took a 6 pack of beer to my first Bond University party – and yes, I have always been flying the Private flag for education and health. I now live in New Farm, I know my Versace from my Prada, I know that wine tastes better out of a bottle, and I own a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel dog named Tiffany and considering this, you would expect me to think that private is the only way. This is not because I am a New Farm snob, because we all should know that you can take the girl out of Rocky but you can’t take the Rocky out of the girl!

I am a cheerleader for private, because I have a physical disability. It may seem apparent why somebody with a disability might prefer to go through the private hospital system; in fact it may seem essential. But what does having a disability got to do with attending a private university and a private school, you may ask?

To explain my argument, I first want to take you on my journey of doing a degree at Australia’s first and largest private university, Bond University and compare this with doing a degree at the University of Queensland (UQ). Now before I speak openly and honestly about my experiences, please remember that I am comparing these universities not on education, but on their ability to cater to a student with a disability.

I have a muscle wasting disease and I use a wheelchair for long distances. I know, then, that the toughest part of completing a degree for a person with a disability is getting to uni and then getting around uni. It is impossible to get to lectures if there is no lift, or stairs or a space at the top of the theatre for wheelchairs.

I arrived at Bond University as a 21 year old Paralympic swimmer from Rockhampton in my Mazda 121 bubble car and a thirst for knowledge and new experiences. At the time, Bond only had a few thousand students and I was fortunate enough to receive a sporting scholarship for my Communications degree.

On my first day, I had a relaxed chat with somebody from the human resources team about what I would need in regards to getting around campus. There was no vast, daunting form-focused, policy-driven disability support team. Everything I said that I would need to wheel around campus and attend lectures, she delivered with no fuss.

This is what I needed—and was given at no extra cost— to get around campus:

• A key to all the lifts.
• A guided tour around the campus by one of the students to show me how to enter all the lecture theatres from either the bottom or via the top of the lecture theatres. All theatres had spaces at the top of the theatres for wheelchairs.
• A map of where all the disabled parking is.
• If any of my lectures or tutorials were in inaccessible rooms, I was to call her directly. This never happened as all lecture theatres and tutorial rooms are accessible.

On top of these basic things, I also needed to be given extra time for examinations in a wheelchair accessible room. As all of the computer labs are accessible, I did all my exams in there for all of my subjects for my entire degree. I nominated for computer exams each semester, via the Internet. This was my experience completing my Communications degree at Bond University on the Gold Coast.

Now, onto my experience of entering the public education system (albeit, an expensive fee-paying institution) for the first time. I enrolled in speech pathology at University of Queensland. I attended my first week of lectures with great difficulty; the campus was large and extremely inaccessible. I struggled, strained and felt very disabled. One of my lecturers noticed my distress and asked if I had spoken with disability support. My remark to this was, “Disability Support, what is that?”

My lecturer explained that there was a whole team of people who worked in the disability support section, and their job is to support people like me. I couldn’t believe my ears, I felt like I had won the lottery! After a week of total frustration and physical strain, I wheeled myself there faster than Louise Sauvage!

It took me a few days to get an appointment. The lady who greeted me for my appointment was a very serious, introverted person. We spent over 20 mins just filling out forms to prove that I was disabled. I asked her if I could hire a UQ mobility scooter, as I had heard this was an option and the campus was too large to wheel around in a manual wheelchair. Her response was this, “We at UQ only give mobility scooters to people with temporary injuries.” I was shocked. For a person in a wheelchair to even say out loud that they want to use a mobility scooter is a BIG thing, I had never used one, and I was devastated and petrified of having to use one, and not have the comfort and familiarity of my wheelchair.

I told her with a quivering bottom lip that I was truly struggling wheeling myself around and that I was thinking of dropping out of my degree. The disability support person then explained to me that I would need my GP to write a letter explaining that I was mentally capable of driving a mobility scooter and that I needed one because of my physical limitations. Was the fact that I have a driver’s license not enough? I will now list the documentation that UQ needed for me to get disability support, without which I would not be physically capable of completing my speech pathology studies:

• Every semester I required a letter from my GP stating that I still had my disability and that I would need to do my exams in a wheelchair accessible computer room, and that I would need extra time.
• I required a new, additional letter from my GP each year to state that I had a physical disability and hence would need to park in the disability parking on campus. My Queensland Government-issued Blue Disability parking permit was not acceptable or recognised at UQ. I also had to pay $150 a year for the privilege of parking in disabled parking . . . even though in Queensland disabled parking in the city is free for people with disabilities
• I required a letter from my GP every semester/year to state that I am disabled so that I could ‘qualify’ to have a person assist me with note-taking.
• I had to re-apply for my mobility scooter every semester, with a new letter from my GP. If I failed to do this, they would enter into the scooter garage and re-posses it.

I only did one year of my 4 year Bachelor degree at UQ. I do want to finish my degree but I shudder when I think of having to go through this ridiculous bureaucratic process for disability support as a woman in my thirties. I am a competent, confident, driven, experienced woman but I found attending UQ daunting, nerve-racking and stressful. It is essential for people with disabilities to have an education; I believe that many people with disabilities don’t attend University because it is physically impossible and spiritually damaging.

So what has all of this got to do with you? There are hundreds, maybe thousands of people with disabilities right now out there who just want to have the opportunity to study in an accessible, teacher-focused, open-minded, commonsense institution.

The only person who can tell you what a person with a disability will need is the person living with it. If you believe you have one of those education and training institutions, then there is a pool of potential students out there waiting for the opportunity to study and learn.