Continuing our tradition of hosting students for Alternative Reading Week, the Innovation Hub partnered with the ARW student leadership team and Accessibility Services to assemble a visual project capturing Signals of Hope on campus.
Written by Arshdeep Kang (Communications & Operations Lead, Honours Bachelor of Design), Diana Radenko (Graphic Design and Communications Coordinator, Honours Bachelor of Arts, Book and Media Studies), and Ruth Rodrigues (Research Lead, Master of Education, Social Justice Education)
Every year, the Alternative Reading Week (ARW) program provides students with an opportunity to develop a community project during reading week. For this iteration of ARW, we partnered with the ARW student leaders and challenged their teams to deliver a visual design project exploring Signals of Hope in campus spaces. Based on our 2024 report, Signals of Hope: Engagement & Belonging for Students with Disabilities, we found that disabled students relied on small gestures and signals that told them that disability was welcome in campus spaces. Participating students explored the St. George campus to collect photographs of these signals, which they mapped into a sprawling collage. The resulting display was a mosaic of hope that showed how the campus can be more inclusive.
Day 1: Learning the Language
Students filtered into the iHub space around noon following the ARW kick-off event. Over the lunch hour, chatter filled the Innovation Hub—although they’d never met each other before, the group bonded right from the start. Something that makes ARW special is that students from all different backgrounds and disciplines are drawn to the program. No two students had the same combination of majors and minors, meaning that each of them would be approaching the task with their own unique perspective.
On Tuesday afternoon, our team led a mini-workshop to introduce the iHub and provide an overview of the project that students would be working on that week. During the workshop, we discussed the Signals of Hope: Engagement & Belonging for Students with Disabilities design research project. Reviewing this report together gave students the language to communicate their own observations of accessible infrastructure on campus.
Diana: One thing that stood out to me was that every student came from a different program. My personal experience working on interdisciplinary teams has always pushed me out of my comfort zone and encouraged me to think creatively, so I was excited to give students that same learning experience in our space. It made me look forward to presentations, and how everyone’s perspectives would reflect on the final project.
Day 2: Documenting Signals of Hope
On the second day, students walked into the room with excitement. Though the weather had taken a turn for the worse and snow poured in tufts from the sky, they were ready to walk around St. George campus to capture their photos. The first thing we did that morning was examine the first couple of signals they’d found on their way home the previous day. A theme emerged: so far, signals of hope meant existing together on campus spaces. For example, one student brought in a picture of a ramp that led to the same door as the stairs. To contrast, another student explained that accessible entrances which are far away from the main doors of buildings can make students feel alienated from their classmates. With this in mind, the ARW team split up into two groups and strategized their route across the campus.
When teams returned for lunch, we discussed what they had found so far. Signals of hope appeared in different ways for each team, yet a theme of imbalance resonated through the pictures they’d collected so far. Both teams found signage as a positive signal, but one that was sometimes misused on campus. For example, teams reflected that the wheelchair icon wasn’t reflective of invisible disabilities, yet this was the icon used to denote accessible spaces on campus. Insights like these would help the two groups map their photos to form a holistic image.
Arshdeep: When the student teams shared their collected photographs, it made me realize how providing something as little as ear plugs in a study space can make students feel welcome. Sometimes these accommodations may go unnoticed, but for a student in need, it can dictate how they experience the same space as their peers. From this process, I learned that change really does begin within the community.
Day 3: A Mosaic of Hope
Once the teams had collected their photos, they were ready to put together their final collage. For this part of the project, they used a design research method called “affinity mapping.” Affinity mapping is a design thinking tool that organizes pieces of data according to shared themes and commonalities. The ARW teams used this method to foster empathy for disabled students by illustrating positive and negative experiences they had navigating campus using photographs as their data. Teams unpacked their printed photos and compiled them while thinking about design principles from the project report.
After lunch, everyone gathered for presentations. We were fortunate to host two staff members from Accessibility Services, so that the students could share their project and insights. During their presentations, we watched as students reflected on their projects and the impact it had on them. The main takeaway we got from student teams was how it helped them look at spaces differently and find opportunities for improvement. At the end of their presentations, students agreed that working on a project like this gives them hope for the changes they can make in their communities and empowers them as student advocates. They emphasized how much they learned about the process of design thinking and were excited to apply these newfound skills in their academic learning.
Ruth: I really enjoyed watching the team build and present their affinity maps, as it makes for an immersive approach to analyze physical spaces on campus. Mapping these campus spaces proved to be effective in fostering empathy—it made me visualize exactly what it’s like to be a student on campus who is looking for a space to rest or study.
If we take time to pay attention to the spaces we visit and notice how they meet our needs, we might find signals of hope. Thinking about how spaces foster empathy by meeting diverse needs unexpectedly helps us pay attention to how we can better advocate for others.
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