The gamecock. (Columbia, S.C.) 1908-2006, June 26, 1975, Page Page 14, Image 14
* H4
From Page 1
24-inch doors." The average adult
wheelchair is 27 inches wide. But
Corbett said he believes the
average wheelchair student would
not have much trouble at USC.
Rita Addy, a 21-year-old
elementary education major, has
had her share of problems, though.
She has been in a wheelchair for 15
years. Addy is required to com
plete courses in music and art for
her degree, but McMaster and
Sloan, the buildings which house
the music and art departments,
are inaccessible to persons in
wheelchairs. (See special feature
about Rita on Page 15).
Mobility may be the han
dicapped student's biggest
problem. Long steps, the lack of
elevators and narrow doors
present obstacles that most other
students surmount with ease.
W.S. Turbeville, director of
physical facilities and planning at
USC, said officials are aware of the
problem. "We try to do everything
we can," he said.
It has been only in the past few
years, Turbeville said, that the
problem has come to the
University's attention because
very few handicapped persons
attended college previously. He
said the University has built ramps
for wheelchairs, cut curbs to make
them accessible and renovated
toilets so they were accessible for
the handicapped.
Blind &
"I accept that blindness is n
the worst di
done
BY ELLEN BILES
Of The Gamecock staff
Bill Deas is a tall, thin senior
majoring in broadcast journalism
at USC. He is a part-time disc
jockey for WCOS-AM and a ham
radio operator. Bill thinks there's
nothing extraordinary about that,
but others tend to disagree because
Bill Deas has been blind since
infancy.
"I accept that blindness is not
the worst disability," Bill said
recently. "I've done everything I
wanted to do." Of course, there
are times, he admitted, when
things get frustrating. "But
overall, I haven't lacked," he said.
When he was a child, even
though he was blind, he was in Cub
Scouts, climbed trees and learned
to ride a bike. "I never used
training wheels. But the first time
alone I fell on my head," he said.
Me first rode only in his yard.
he advanced to street bike
g. "On the street I would
w someone that I knew, and
andica
I n the construction of new
buildings the University has been
following the American Standards
Association's guidelines which
were adopted by the state in 1963,
he said. There are still ap
proximately 20 buildings on
campus which are inaccessible to
persons in wheelchairs, according
to Turbeville.
"To a large degree the
number of steps up to a
building determined what
my professional life was
going to be." --Bill East
These are generally' the older
buildings such as those on the
Horseshoe, he said. If a building is
renovated, attention is given to
freeing it of barriers to the han
dicapped, he said. Turbeville cited
as an example the McCutchen
House renovation which includes a
special elevator easily used by
persons in wheelchairs. That
elevator will cost more than
$30,000, he said.
Turbeville said the cost of
renovating old buildings to make
them accessible was prohibitive,
although the cost of installing
ramps and making curb cuts is not
so great. East said according to
research figures he has seen, the
cost of modifying existing struc
tures is usually less than % of 1 per
cent of the tqal construction cost.
itudent
O't
sability. I've
everything I wanted to do."
they would tell me if a car was
coming," he said.
Bill thinks his family's attitude
helped him learn to accept his
world. He remembers how his
sister Ginger got a spanking for
misbehaving on a shopping trip. A
couple of days later Bill went
shopping with his mother and
insisted on opening and closing the
glass sliding windows on a display
case.
"Mother was scared to death I
was going to break them and she
would have to pay for them," Bill
said. "She told me if I didn't stop
I'd get a whipping when I got
home."
Like a typical boy, Bill didn't
stop, and like a typical mother, his
mother kept her promise. That
was the day Bill greeted his father
at the door with, "Daddy, Daddy,
guess what? I got a whipping just
like Ginger."~
Bill said it wasn't until he was in
junior high that he was told he
couldn't do something hecause he
)ped St]
The notable exceptions, he said,
are special elevators.
"The vroblem with the
problem," Corbett said, "is that
it's hard to justify spending a great
amount of money on a few people."
Planning ahead, as the University
is doing now, will minimize the
expense, he said.
Part of the problem now, ac
cording to Turbeville and staff
engineer G.T. Perry is that there is
no state law in effect to use as a
guideline, but all building plans
must be approved by the state
engineer's office, they said.
L.P. Hamilton, chief engineer for
the State Budget and Control
Board, said, "We are in an interim
period. There is no legally ap
plicable law in existence in South
Carolina."
This interim period is the result
of a law signed July 9, 1974, by Gov.
John West establishing the South
Carolina Board for Barrier Free
Design. Bill East was made
chairman of that board which has
been meeting since January to set
building standards for public
buildings both publicly and
privately owned.
The board's purpose, East said,
is to see that there is no inherent
discrimination against the han
dicapped. According to East, the
board, will probably closely follow
the handicapped section of the
North Carolina building code.
"North Carolina has the jump on
everybody in developing stan
dards," Hamilton said. They have
not only set rigid standards, but
have printed an illustrated hand
book which was developed by a
handicapped architect, he said.
Overco
was blind. "That's when
everybody was beginning to learn
to drive and all the guys were going
out for football," he said. "The
world put it on me in junior high."
In high school Bill joined the
broadcast club. "I got my first
break in radio in '71," he said.
That year he won a statewide
award for the best individual
performance in radio broad
casting. The award was for a short
feature series called "Rock 'n'
Roll, Then and Now" which he
broadcast over WDXY in Sumter.
"That gave me the confidence to
be able to go on," Bill said. Now
he's the disc jockey for the 12-6
Sunday and Monday morning show
on WCOS. Bill is alone in the
station during that time.
He goes to work 45 minutes
ahead of time, types his log in
braille and gets his commercials
lined up. The staff has devised a
tagging method for records so Bill
can distinguish which category the
record fits.
Bill said the job has worked out
because of "a little ingenuity on
my part and a little cooperation
from the staff." His newscasts
require a little cooperation from
the outside world also. "The guy
ahead of me tapes the newscast,"
Bill said. "I run them throughout
the night and hope there's no
emergency."~
Soon, though, he will have a
braille teletype machine which
hooks up to the regular teletype
machine and prints the news out in
braille. It's being furnished by the
South Carolina Commission for the
Blind.
idents
Hamilton said his office was
approving building plans now on
the basis of the North Carolina
guidelines because he was
reasonably sure the guidelines
approved by the Board for Barrier
Free Design of which he is an ex
officio member would be equally
rigid.
Turbeville said his office was
fc!lowing the North Carolina
standards also. In the case of
existing buildings, Turbeville said
as renovation became necessary,
provision was made for han
dicapped accessibility when
possible.
According to East, the main
problem with architectural
barriers for the handicapped
centers around buildings built
"Handicapped people
typically can't work with
their bodies and have to use
their minds. So it's ironic to
have an institution of higher
learning not accessible to
them." --Bill East
before laws were in effect. Both he
and Hamilton agreed that the
board's guidelines when completed
would contain some provision for
bringing older buildings into
compliance if they undergo a
major renovation.
"The University has put forth
special effort to accomodate the
handicapped as the need arose,"
Turbeville said.
mes Dis
The commission has also fur
nished him with an optacon, a
device which enables him to read
print by touch. The optacon is
made up of a camera about the size
of a mike, Bill said. When the
camera is placed on the printed
page, it causes a little bar to
vibrate in the shapes of the letters.
His training on the optacon
began in September 1974. "1
haven't been reading print but that
long," he said. "It's like somebody
else learning in the first grade."
The training has side benefits for
Bill. "Before, I would read in a
story that someone skated in a
"I view the campus as part
build the world I
"The world put it on:
figure eight and I didn't un
derstand what it meant," he said.
Now lhe can feel the shape of an
eight.
Some textbooks are available on
recordings and some are available
in braille, but occasionally they're
the wrong edition, and Bill must
find alternate ways to study. He
can use the optacon some, but his
reading speed is only about 33
words a minute so friends read to
him or record his texts.
His mother also records text
books sometimes. "She's reor
East agre nat the University
has reacted well to the needs of
handicapped students. "But I
would like to see more affirmative
action rather than just reaction,"
he said. "What I would like to see
the University do is take more
positive effort to become the
mecca in the state for handicapped
students."
One way of doing this would be to
start an outreach program to
encourage handicapped high
school students to attend the
University, he said. Another
method he endorses would be the
development of a program for the
severely disabled, those who need
assistance in mobility and housing
or semi-skilled nursing care. He
also said he believes a program to
renovate old buildings and make
them accessible is needed.
"Handicapped people typically
can't work with their bodies and
have to use their minds," East
said. "So it's ironic to have an
institution of higher learning not
accessible to them."
Ed. Note: This ends part I of a
series looking into problems of
handicap students at USC. Next
week, a report from the University
Advisory Committee on Aid to the
Handicapped Student.
ability
ding my Human Sexuality book
this session," he said smiling. "I
didn't think she was going to do it
at first, but she finally agreed to."
University life has presented Bill
with no insurmountable problems.
"I view the campus as part of the
world -and they don't build the
world for blindness," he said.
Friends, roommates and
professors have been helpful, but
like any senior, Bill is looking
forward to graduation. "I love the
social life," he said, "but I'm just
sick of taking tests."
Bill's hope for the future is that
"people will look at blindness as I
of the world, and they don't
or blindness."
me in junior high."
do and accept blind people as
humans rather than individuals
with a disability.
"I've been a ham operator siflce
August 1970," he said. "One day a
guy asked me a question that
would require sight to answer so I
told him I was blind and couldn't.
He said, 'God, man, you don't
sound like you're blind.' I asked
him what blind sounded like," Bill
said.
Whatever that ham operator's
stereotype of blind is; it certainly
isn't Rill l)e