I received an email from Kings, and I wanted to share some of the points with you. I have included what Kings said in the quotation marks:

“At King’s we take accessibility seriously and try to do everything possible to meet the needs of our students and staff…” - actions speak louder than words, and currently those words have absolutely no meaning when they’re not backed up with action. 

“an audit was undertaken earlier this year to identify what we could do to improve the accessibility of our music teaching spaces” - that is true, I was there, but there have been no changes or adaptations since then, therefore I don’t see the relevance of it. 

“We have moved your lectures to {the accessible room}” - okay, but what about everything else? I can get to one teaching room in the whole of the department? And there is also another wheelchair using music student who needs that one room too… It doesn’t change the fact that I can’t access any of my professors offices, rehearsal rooms, other teaching rooms (that are available to everyone else), practise rooms etc. 

“Some of our buildings are of historic importance and have a Grade 1 listing which means it is not always possible to make changes to the external and internal structure and decisions on what are allowed to outside of the university’s control.” - that may be true, but it is also illegal to deny disabled people access, but clearly a building is more important than people…

“Due to building regulations, it is not possible to build a ramp” - that is not my problem. I don’t really care what the ‘regulations’ are. There are ‘regulations’ to ensure disabled people have rights, but you conveniently don’t mention them. 

The ‘progress’ Kings claims to have made:

Submitted planning permission last week to make adaptions to allow some disabled access - that is brilliant, but why has it taken so long to submit the application, when I raised these issues over a year ago? Also, they say they won’t hear back until at least the end of November, and it will likely take years for these changes to be made.

They have said that  “we are looking into a wider plan for the campus which we hope will improve accessibility more broadly.” - that would be wonderful, if it happens. I am hopefully for the future and really want to believe change will happen. I am not seeing much evidence of it so far though. 

I want to be completely transparent with all of you. I understand that these things are difficult and take time, and it is difficult with it being a listed building, but that doesn’t make it okay to neglect disabled people and deny us access to our own university facilities. Thank you again for all your continued support.

Additionally, it has been suggested that tweeting Kings directly may be effective too. Click this link to do so, or feel free to copy and paste this message: 

"All students should be treated equally and have access to their university facilities, but Kings College London has repeatedly failed to provide disabled access. @KingsCollegeLon change must be made."

Link: https://ctt.ac/560Sy