I have a parking pass for a reserved stall right by the Maeser building. I have a car with a ramp in it so I park in the van accessible stall. However, the ramp area does not have a wheelchair accessible curb. The parking stalls back right up to the street, so to get to the sidewalk you have to go into the street (on the oncoming traffic side). Getting from my car to the sidewalk is fine because I can easily see oncoming traffic but getting from the sidewalk to my car is where I run into a problem. Since I am at a lower level than a standing person while sitting in my wheelchair I can’t see through the window of my car so there is no easy way to see if there is any traffic coming. It took me almost getting hit once to realize how dangerous it was. It’s not too difficult to navigate once you know what to look out for, but I am worried other people might not realize how close the street is.
Finding a wheelchair accessible stall in the restrooms can be difficult. During the busy hours on campus, it is not uncommon that I have to go to multiple different bathrooms just to find an empty wheelchair stall. Additionally, sometimes I will find the wheelchair stall occupied even though many regular stalls are available. Everyone has a right to use the wheelchair accessible stall, but I just wish there was some type of sign encouraging people to use the regular stalls if possible
Many wheelchair accessible bathrooms on campus have a double door system. The first outside door leads to a tiny hallway with the door to the actual bathroom at the end. The hallway is extremely narrow despite being a wheelchair accessible bathroom. There is no way to open the door by yourself unless you are right in front of the door. If anyone opens the door they end up hitting you. In addition, it is even difficult to have someone open the door for you. Since the hallway is so narrow unless they open it in a very specific way (which most of the time they don’t) there is hardly any room for the wheelchair user to go through. It makes things unnecessarily difficult and awkward.
The doors are terrible. The buttons to automatically open doors are so hit or miss. A lot of them don’t work and are extremely slow. Also, lots of sets of double doors have two separate buttons. One for the first door and one for the second (similar to the situation I described for the restrooms but for building entrances). Not once have I ever wanted only one of the doors to open. Luckily, I am able to open doors in my wheelchair without any assistance so most of the time I don’t even mess with the buttons.
A lot of buildings–especially the older ones–only have one elevator. So if it breaks down you are out of luck. This has only happened to me once, but I thought I would mention it just to acknowledge that the problem exists and it would be cool if BYU tries to make sure this isn’t an issue for the new buildings.