Goal of the event:
Mapping the university buildings of VUB (Campus Etterbeek) on its accessibility for people with a disability.
We promoted the event through our own communication channels but also reached out to our university. The disability office was contacted and the university knows now about the MappED! project. Through the event we also wanted to get more acknowledgement for the activities we plan.
Short description of the event:
▶ WHY:
Having a disability could can make it more difficult to go on exchange but therefore not impossible. Through the ExchangeAbility project we want to make going on exchange more accessible for students with a disability. More specifically the MappED! project was set up to map the accessibility of all Higher Education Institutions
▶ HOW:
Students with and without a disability will investigate the buildings by answering all kinds of questions. This way students without a disability will get the opportunity to experience what it is like to study at the VUB when having a disability! One of the disabilities we are trying to recreate is being visually impaired. So some of you will be blindfolded to have you experience how it is to be visually impaired.
► SOCIAL PROJECT STAMP CARD ◄
For each activity you join, you will get a stamp on your personal Social Project Card. You will get your card at the first activity you join and earn stamps throughout the semester by attending our social project events. At the end of the semester, you will get a reward according to the amount of social activities you joined. The more activities you have joined, the better the prizes!
How did your event go?:
We had planned the start of the MappED! around 16h00 when classes were still going on. This can explain the low degree of participation while we promoted it through our own social media channels and the communication channels of our university.
We were able to rent crutches and collect some blindfolds through which we could mimic some disabilities. We wanted our members and students to comprehend better what true accessibility means and how we often take much for granted. This was appreciated by the students and helped us to better fill in the questionnaire. The participants did like the event and saw the importance. If we had more participants, we could have split up the buildings and map the university faster. Now we all stayed together.
We wanted to get our hands on a wheelchair to include more disabilities, we should try to ask our university sooner for this so we can rent one through them. The timing was not ideal but some of the campus buildings close earlier so we had to start mapping them at the planned hour. Next time we could ask the security to leave the buildings open for longer so more students can join after their classes.
