The increasing openness towards persons with disabilities, the willingness to make reasonable accommodations, and the creation of spaces that meet accessibility conditions means that, at long last, their presence is becoming a usual sight within the academic community.
Despite the challenges that still exist, they are increasingly active in the University space. More commitment and readiness is still needed, however, to create accessible conditions for education, employment, cultural and sporting activities and to achieve further milestones. These certainly include the issue of safety. It is also reflected in the provisions of the Act on support for persons with specific needs, which defines one of the minimum requirements as ‘ensuring that persons with specific needs can be evacuated or otherwise rescued (...)’ (Article 6(e)).
At the Jagiellonian University, this challenge was taken up earlier, already in 2015, when, in accordance with the Provost’s circular letter, training began for wardens covering disability awareness, ways to assist persons with mobility disabilities and two-stage evacuation under conditions that the existing architectural arrangements allow.
Evacuation drills
Evacuation drills are held annually at the Jagiellonian University to prepare the academic community in the event of an emergency and to develop patterns of dealing with such a situation. The relevant procedures take into account the presence of persons with disabilities in Jagiellonian University buildings and stipulate how both those with specific needs and staff tasked with organising their safe exit from the building should behave. The Jagiellonian University implements new solutions in this regard and systematically trains its wardens in the evacuation of persons with disabilities. During the exercises, their skills are tested often with the presence of people simulating a disability according to a prepared scenario.Training
In addition to the training courses for wardens conducted at the beginning of the academic year, staff and students of the Jagiellonian University have the opportunity to take advantage of training courses on the Moodle platform.
About courses on the Moodle platform