Iain

Video

Field trips

Transcript

I originally had decided, “Well I won’t go on the field trip”. They do provide videotapes of the field trip as such and it’s an interactive thing that you do on the computer. But of course it isn’t the same and they will do their best to get you on the site. So really the decision is made at the last moment. As long as I’m fit enough to go, I was going. You will have noticed that three of us were at the top of a set of stairs. I was ready to attempt the stairs with crutches but I have to admit I was pretty scared of the whole idea.

TUTOR: So we’re three kilometres west of Beachy Head and it asks for…

But they actually sent another tutor

TUTOR: ...and this place used to have…

She pointed everything out. We could look along the cliffs and look at all the different points of interest, which go with the course, the strata, the sedimentation, all that sort of thing. I didn’t go down onto the beach. I simply couldn’t do it. So they taught me at the top.

End of transcript

Recognising barriers

Transcript

This particular campus, it’s a very nice campus, but some of the buildings are simply not designed with disabled people in mind. In fact, to get into that laboratory you have to go through three lifts and eight sets of doors. But they’re not ordinary passenger lifts, they’re commercial style lifts for shifting gear around. So they’re not smooth and they jump and shake you about and that can be painful, especially at the end of a day. So, when everybody rushes out for a cup of tea, which they do half way through the morning of course, somebody has to open all the doors…and the tutor came with me, and opened all the doors and took me down in the lifts. She saw there was a need. I didn’t have to ask. She was just there and did it for me.

End of transcript