"About two per cent of students live with a disablement and about ten per cent have a chronic illness," Judith Hollenweger told the audience of around sixty who attended the specialist meeting in Zurich. The results of her survey "People with Disablements at Swiss Universities" also revealed that the majority of those concerned had hearing or visual impairments, or impairments of mobility.

Theology ahead of technology: Proportion of students with a disablement (dark blue) or a chronic illness (light blue) according to discipline. (Source: survey "People with Disablements at Swiss Universities") large

Guidelines for the construction of buildings adapted to people with disablements exist since 1989 (3). In addition, the "Equal Opportunities for People with Disablements" law (2), which came into force last year, requires that the needs of disabled people be taken into consideration in all public buildings, consequently also for all ETH buildings. According to Bernhard Rüdisüli from the Swiss Agency for Building Adapted to People with Disablements, up to 20 per cent extra cost on renovation budgets to bring buildings in line with the new law counts as reasonable.

Implementation held up by provisional respite and lack of information

The removal of obstacles in the buildings, however, is a long time in coming. Andreas Rieder, Federal Delegate for Equal Opportunities, partially puts the reason for this down to the long periods of respite accorded for the implementation, for example in public transport. In addition, building regulations are generally only applied to new buildings or when renovations are carried out and only if commensurable. Lack of knowledge was fortunately rare, but the lack of information amongst the administrative offices was problematic, for instance, to ensure that websites meet access standards. "A lot remains to be done to raise awareness and develop sensitivity," the delegate said.

Experts in the responsible offices at ETH have been working on the issue for a number of years. Two years ago already Daniel Genucchi, an in-house caretaker, tested the accessibility of ETH's main building in the company of a wheelchair user. "We established that with the exception of G3 and G5 all lecture rooms in the main building can be reached in a wheelchair," summarises head of House Services, Jürg Berchtold. Some locations though, such as the cafeteria or the students' bar, bQm, can only be reached in a complicated way or by using goods lifts. In addition, the person in the wheelchair needed to be accompanied, as the lift doors did not open automatically.

This is also a problem for 23-year old Julian Heeb, who is studying electro-technology at ETH. He suffers from spinal muscle atrophy and needs an electric wheelchair to get around. "The electro-technology building has only old goods lifts with doors I can't open myself, so someone always has to come with me," he explains.

Bad views and lack of writing surfaces

Another problem that Heeb has to deal with in his daily student life is that of suitable places for disabled people in the lecture rooms. If he goes up to the front he feels as though he's on display and, because of the acute angle, he has only a limited view of whatever is projected. This is why, in the lecture rooms that have a back door he can get to from a lift, he chooses a place at the back of the room. But here too he meets with various obstacles. In electro-technology, for example, he usually has a pole at eye level that obstructs his view of the lecturer. Moreover, he has hardly found a lecture room until now where he can park his wheelchair in front of a writing surface. "I usually write on a writing case on my lap, which means I can't write quickly or legibly," he says.

But at least in the main building House Services was now helping. "Just last week we removed two regular places from the back row of all the lecture rooms on floor D so that we can offer wheelchair users a surface to write on," says the Berchtold. They had also marked these places with a wheelchair sign, which is important because otherwise, in well-attended lectures, non-disabled students would set up folding chairs in these spaces, and relinquish them only reluctantly.

Studying electro-technology, Julian Heeb: "Someone has to come with me when I have to use the old goods lift because the doors don't open automatically." large

Obstacle-rich daily studies

Despite such adaptations, Heeb still meets with obstacles at ETH that make his daily life of studying from a wheelchair more difficult. For example, a huge ramp had recently been set up in front of the main entrance to ETH's main building. Nevertheless, his electric wheelchair gets stuck every time at the still existing door sill and keeps spooling until someone comes to help him.

Head of House Services, Berchtold, says: "There are no plans to remove the sill of the main door because that would mean replacing the entire door." Besides, this was not the official wheelchair accessible entrance. This was via the entrance to the parking garage or via the subway under the Poly terrace.

Practical considerations more important than aesthetics

This, however, is precisely what students in wheelchairs find annoying. At the meeting history student Elena Milovic talked about her everyday experiences in a wheelchair at the university. She criticises, for instance, the re-routing of access to secondary entrances or via underground garages and said that it seriously restricted her social life and her contacts with the other students. "When old buildings have to be renovated, practical considerations should take priority over aesthetics," is how Elena Milovic appealed to the planning experts present at the meeting from the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich. These planners are confronted with conflicting objectives time and again, owing to the diverse requirements of monument preservation, fire police and people with disablements.

However, the meeting did not only bring forth a list of deficiencies. Technical possibilities in medicine and rehabilitation, for example, were getting better all the time and this meant new possibilities and greater independence for students with physical impairments. For instance, for students with hearing difficulties, induction loops provided a great improvement in the transmission of the lecturer's voice on to the cochlea implant. Owing to such innovations the universities were faced with growing expectations with regard to the adaptation of buildings. New developments, like the implant of induction loops, were continually being taken into account in renovation projects. New technological innovations would continue to emerge, is the summary of the ETH Planning Department.

Overloaded curricula as complex barriers

Obstacles pertaining to the building are generally very easily perceived barriers and are therefore often the first thing to be addressed. In actual fact, however, the obstacles for students with a disablement lie at a far more complex level: the extra time needed to fulfil the heavy workload, for example, because of the longer route required to get to where one has to go and the organisation of special learning material, collided head-on with requirements at ETH of an exacting curriculum and courses of thirty hours or more each week. In addition, there is often a lack of special teaching methods, conditions or auxiliary materials adapted to students with disablements. Nor is public transport always accessible.

"Studying electro-technology is stressful enough for 'normal' students; last summer I had to drastically reduce my workload because of my state of exhaustion," says Julian Heeb. This means that his course of studies would take a year longer to fulfil than planned but he saw no other way out.

Theology ahead of technology

This is a major obstacle, which counts as especially burdensome in technical, natural science and economic disciplines, and is borne out by the fact that only around two per cent of students with a disablement choose one of these specialist fields. The numbers stand in stark contrast to theology as a chosen discipline, where around 8 per cent of the students have a disablement and around 14 per cent a chronic illness (cf. graph above left). Without flanking measures the situation at the University and at ETH will not improve very soon for the demanding Bachelors and Masters courses.