Disability & Accessibility: How Massey fails to provide for students

There’s been ongoing yarns online and in person for years now; students face so many barriers to simply accessing their courses. Students struggle with accessible routes to classes, facing stairs and unsafe curbs. The Palmy campus in particular has faced criticism, with one student calling the accessible options “exhausting” and even avoided going to class as a result. Quite simply, it’s just not fucking good enough.  

There are three major areas of improvement that have been identified in the discussion. Massive sat down with Maddie and Maria, two fourth year Honour’s Design students at Massey, to talk through some key concerns. Boy, oh boy, did they have a lot to say. 

1. Mobility

The first area of concern is mobility. Many areas of Massey, whilst technically wheel-chair accessible, significantly add large amounts of time to any journey. In all honesty, they feel like an afterthought rather than a priority. For campuses which are so huge, it’s already draining enough to walk a direct route from class, let alone have to make several weird detours through buildings just to avoid stairs and other obstacles.  

The location of lifts on campus and at halls are not available via a map, which presents a major obstacle to the mobility of students. The University’s response was that “a number of years ago the location of elevators on Massey University campuses were removed from physical and electronic maps along with a number of other aspects because maps were becoming too cluttered and hard for people to read”. Maria, who suffers from chronic fatigue and therefore has physical mobility needs, went on to describe how frustrating this response from the University was. “We are a design and communications university... it’s fucking disappointing and just sounds lazy.” Maddie reckons you could just use “a different colour and key”.  

In Maddie’s first year, in-between classes, she got stuck in the Tussock elevator for 40 minutes, leaving her avoiding elevators for a year as a result. The University said that it “has not received any feedback regarding elevators being ineffective and slow, forcing students with physical mobility needs to walk long distances and/or climb lots of steps. As a university we have compliance requirements that need to be adhered to in regard to accessibility in buildings that includes the speed of elevators and these have been met. Anyone that wishes to raise any issues around elevators should report this to the operations service desk.”   

This confused me, I’ve been hearing about this for months and everyone I know at Massey complains about the elevators. So, I asked random students in Tussock whether they could direct me to the “operations service desk”. Surprise, surprise, it didn’t matter if they were freshers or Honour’s students, they had no clue where the desk was. If they don’t know off the top of their heads where to go and file their complaints, other students won’t.  

2. Courses

Students have complained to Massive about an unofficial disclosure policy which exists where students must disclose their conditions/disabilities in order for the courses to be made more accessible, which has raised concerns over privacy for some students. Massive has also received reports that online recorded lectures do not have closed captioning abilities. There’s also been issues this year of some lectures not even being recorded at all, as well as campus Wi-Fi generally being fucked. To put it frankly, for a university that prides themselves on distance learning, the technology to ensure ease of access is far from perfect. 

When I asked Maria about their courses and how accessible their courses were, they brought up that their lectures are not recorded. “There were a couple recorded during [the] Covid-19 lockdown last year, but immediately stopped after. I’m missing out on a lot, when I don’t show up or even when I do show up, it’s content heavy.” Maria explained that lecturers often combine about a week’s worth of content in one hour, that means that it’s “difficult to digest and I can’t even refer back to the lecture”. 

“Half the time it’s the University’s microphones (in the lecture theatres) that are cooked,” Maddie chimed in. “Or it could be that my laptop speakers might not work so well, and I can’t afford to buy a new laptop! That doesn’t necessarily mean I could access Disability Services.” 

On top of that key issue, Maddie has found that important course information like deadlines isn’t up to date on Stream, but are shared in class verbally. She says “you have to be there to know”. Overall, there are the usual complaints about difficult to navigate websites. Maddie and Maria both had multitudes of complaints about the Massey Website, Stream, and Portal. “Just poorly laid out.” 

Massive asked the University about the accessibility of the courses to which they responded that they are “committed to ensure its study material is accessible to all students. Massey University’s disability services regularly assist students with solutions such as captioning of multimedia content as well as accommodating a range of different needs for the students that are registered with the service.” Lol, okay. 

3. Housing

Maddie and Maria were right, the website was ridiculous to navigate. I tried to find out whether all the halls of residence are wheelchair accessible. Gotta be honest, couldn’t tell. The only tidbit I managed to find was a stock standard line - “Massey’s (insert city name here’s) campus accommodation offers accessibility options for those students who require it. Please outline any requirements you have in your accommodation application.” Massive reached out to the University to try suss whether they had any proposals on improving the accessibility at their halls of residence. Their response? No proposals to the Uni or by the Uni.  

At the start of 2020, 1,170 students declared their disabilities to the University. A Massey spokesperson said, “a significant percentage but not all of these students go on to register with our Disability Services”. They added that there are students who only learn of their disabilities during the academic year, which aren’t included in their initial numbers. 

1,170 is a significant number of people who need the places, people, and things they encounter to be accessible. Disability Services is a student support services and resources provider. They can help with courses, getting around, access and participation. Whether via distance or on campus, they urge students to register with them.  

Maria only learnt of Disability Services from our interview, despite being a fourth year Honour’s student. If students don’t have the information and resources, and feel the Uni doesn’t “GAF” where does that leave them? Well, for the students I talked to, this means that they struggle and each day is an uphill battle, quite literally.  

If you have more to add to this discussion, contact rimu@massivemagazine.org.nz