University of Maryland student Shreya Vuttaluru could have picked any topic to spend months investigating.

       She chose one that saw her pushing automatic door buttons across campus and considering what also comes to a halt when elevators stop working.

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       Last week, Vuttaluru and a group of students who work for the Diamondback, U-Md.’s independent student newspaper, published a project under the headline, “Disability on Campus.” For it, they scrutinized multiple aspects of accessibility on the College Park campus and interviewed students, workers and faculty members with a wide range of disabilities.

       The project’s aim, a note to readers explained, was “to document the experience of individuals with disabilities at this university.”

       What those student journalists found is important, and I’ll share some of it with you. But arguably more important is this: They made a point to look.

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       So often shared spaces don’t equal shared experiences. A broken sidewalk might go unnoticed by most people who walk across it but prove an obstacle to someone who uses a wheelchair or is blind. Or maybe it’s not a broken sidewalk that splits experiences and instead is a too-narrow doorway, or excessive red tape for accommodations; or a construction project that blocks off nearby parking.

       Last year, I told you about a high school student in Maryland who started looking at the buildings in her school system differently — and then more closely — after a fire drill. As she exited the building with other students, she watched a friend who lacks depth perception scream in fear as they crossed over a steep sidewalk and uneven grassy field. She also noticed that it took three people to push another friend’s wheelchair on that path.

       A frightening fire drill forced a teen to see her school through a disabled friend’s eyes. Then, she couldn’t look away.

       What surprised the teenager, she told me, was that despite the safety issues the route posed, no one had questioned it, until she did.

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       She hadn’t yet graduated from high school and she already understood that the burden of identifying accessibility issues too often falls on disabled people, and it shouldn’t.

       The U-Md. project caught my attention because it showed a college newspaper staff taking on that task. Students with disabilities deserve accessible campuses, and the project made me wonder what we would learn about our country’s higher education institutions if all college newspapers looked at the infrastructure around them through that lens and publicly shared their findings. Maybe they would find egregious examples of students with disabilities being failed by the places that are supposed to build them up, or maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe they would find schools doing much more than the minimum to provide funding and staffing toward accessibility and accommodations. The only way to know is to look.

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       “Everybody deserves an education and an experience with education that doesn’t physically exhaust them every day,” Vuttaluru said when I asked her why she believed the Diamondback project mattered. She described it as letting the disabled community know that their experiences on campus matter. “And not just on campus. This project looks at the scope of their experience on campus, but it matters in life. It matters in every space that they want to be in. … I think it’s our responsibility as a society to make sure those spaces are inclusive.”

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       The 20-year-old, who is a junior and served as the project editor, recalled a scene she witnessed on her first day as a student at the university. She was sitting outside, taking in the campus, when she saw a man in a manual wheelchair struggling to get up a hill. She started to stand up to ask if he needed help, but someone else approached him first.

       That moment was brief, but it stayed with her, and she thought of it in February when she came up with the idea for the disability project. She said she started recruiting staff members that month to work on it, and it wasn’t hard to find volunteers. About 20 people contributed to the project.

       The staff worked together to test automatic door buttons across campus. They pressed 102 buttons over a three-week period. Of those, 96 worked. They noted in the report that while most worked, “many are hard to get to and away from the main entrance.”

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       The report also explored building layouts, accommodation requests and how construction projects on campus can keep some students from reaching their destinations or force them to find longer routes. “But aside from creating a barrier to travel around the campus, construction and a lack of sidewalk maintenance can also be dangerous,” reads a part of the report that describes a student as falling out of his wheelchair multiple times because of uneven sidewalks.

       “It’s kind of like accessibility is just an afterthought,” that student said. “A lot of people just … aren’t aware of these things.”

       The project consists of six stories and they are filled with the voices of people with disabilities. Among them: a faculty member who uses a wheelchair and once found himself stuck for two hours in a building after the elevator broke. A student who told of missing classes often her sophomore year because the path between where she lives and where her classes were held “was largely inaccessible.” And a student with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder who described receiving an accommodation that helped her feel less overwhelmed but also cost her a scholarship.

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       The project wasn’t a scathing review of the university. While pointing out challenges and frustrations people have encountered, it also highlighted many of the efforts the university has made to address the needs of people with disabilities, including hiring a new Americans With Disabilities Act coordinator.

       When asked about the project, the university provided this statement: “Student journalists worked with the university to provide valuable data and information that helped highlight the many ways the campus supports its diverse community. As was reported and provided in the findings, the university will continue to prioritize and strengthen accessibility services now and in the near future.”

       Vuttaluru said the Diamondback staff has received encouraging messages from the campus community since the project was published. Her hope, she said, is that university officials really are paying attention.

       “I hope they know that, despite what I’m sure are their best efforts, people with disabilities still face so many struggles on campus and they deserve a ‘college experience,’ too,” she said. “They deserve an academic experience that allows them to thrive. I just hope the university is paying attention and knows there is more work to be done.”