When Logan Fisher came to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in fall 2023, he didn’t really understand what F&S did…now, after time as a student employee, his future career as an architect will call on the memory of positive impact he personally left to future students, faculty, and staff.
Fisher worked with coordinator of special programs in building maintenance Patrick Wood and sign shop foreperson Kevin Westray to find, detail, and, if necessary, replace incorrect braille signage. The braille checks were performed by Fisher at Everitt Laboratory, the Siebel Center for Computer Science, the Grainger Engineering Library, the Electrical and Computer Engineering Building, and Campus Instructional Facility, among others. Fisher, a first-year student in the Master of Architecture program, got to find out how details can make a crucial difference.
“Logan has been on the project the longest and is doing a fantastic job,” Westray said. Fisher had not read braille before the project, but learned it to complete the work.
“It’s one of the seemingly miniscule things that I never gave any thought to as an Architecture student,” Fisher said. “The braille project has opened my eyes to how wide and complex accessibility is in the United States, and I’ve now become more sensitive to all of that when I’m designing projects in my classes.”
The project will always bring back fond memories for Fisher, and comes with a few tangible benefits to his current experience on campus, as well as his future career. He did not attend Illinois as an undergraduate, so Fisher found value in the work to discover parts of campus that would otherwise go unvisited. And knowing braille may give Fisher an advantage in the job market, too, as he considers himself “proficient” at reading it; many advocates for the blind worry about falling braille literacy in the U.S.
For more about Fisher and a few of his student employee colleagues at F&S: https://fs.web.illinois.edu/Insider/2024/04/26/students-at-work-with-fs/
Westray was glad to have Fisher complete some of the work, and also believes the experience will help him understand all the details that go into a building.
“This project started about a year ago when it was brought to our attention by braille reading students that some of the braille was incorrect in a few buildings,” Westray said. “We produced a plan to do an assessment and fix the problem. We hired students to go through the buildings with cheat sheets and catalog all the signage that was incorrect or did not meet the current Americans with Disabilities Act standards. It has been a long process, but we have recently started to replace the signage in the buildings that have been assessed.”
Fisher will finish his time at F&S in a positive light: “I’ve had the chance to participate in a wide variety of projects and experiences that have and will positively impact my future.”