Recommendations

BYU as a whole needs to be more accessible, vocal, and transparent about disabilities and the facilities it provides. Through statements, we learned that BYU students have little knowledge on the resources available to them from services like the UAC on campus. This must change.

We have created a comprehensive list of recommendations. The following is a brief overview of the areas of recommendations we provide. A comprehensive list is provided in PDF format by clecking on the button. While we understand recommendations will not come to fruition all at once, we are committed with working with the university to, one-by-one, complete feasible recommendations that could change lives here at BYU. We understand this may take years, but we will maintain continue close contact with the university administration and the UAC in order to improve campus and address the significant obstacles disabled students have encountered at BYU. BYU’s progress forwards towards implementing recommendations can be found below as well.

We would like BYU administration to read through the Final Report policy document we provide and meet together to come up with and implement a plan to improve accessibility at BYU. We would like them to focus on the culture at BYU, compliance with ADA and 504 laws, and involve disabled employees and students in these plans. If BYU chooses to admit disabled students, it must give them the same opportunities as any other admitted student, through accommodations.

BYU Contracted Housing:

BYU contracted housing should be accessible and compliant with ADA and 504 laws. BYU should only approve housing that is accessible.

Counseling and Psychological Services:

We would like increased funding and support for the CAPS so they can provide the services students need, especially for disabled students and students during finals and midterms weeks.

Cultural Change:

We would like to see more of an open conversation about disability and accessibility on BYU campus. We want all disabled students to feel welcome and comfortable in all aspects at BYU. This would include training of TAs, RAs, and all student, employee and faculty positions.

Implementation of Student-Led Projects:

Students have come up with and provided BYU with projects that are realistically implementable and would make BYU more accessible. We would like BYU to implement these and include and support students in future projects that will make BYU more accessible.

Physical Campus:

We have noted several areas of campus that are physically inaccessible. This includes wheelchair buttons to open doors not working, buildings being inaccessible, elevators being behind closed doors, etc. We would like a prompt corrections of all these oversights. We have provided a comprehensive list of the violations and corrections needed that we have found.

Testing Center:

We would like the testing center to collaborate with the UAC and allow reasonable accommodations for all disabled students.

University Police:

BYU police should closely monitor proper use of handicap parking.

University Accessibility Center:

The UAC should monitor and follow up on accessibility issues across campus. They should allow a non-biased entity to audit the UAC annually in compliance with the rules and regulations set forth by the various state and federal disability laws. We would also like to see more transparency in the UAC.