People First

The University of Pécs has been focusing on students with special educational needs since 1999. In the summer of 2005, for the first time in the country, a Support Service was established to facilitate the lives of students and teachers with disabilities.

The head office of perhaps the largest university Support Service of the Hungary is located on the campus of the University of Pécs on Ifjúság Road, on the ground floor of Building "A".
In their office, a computer room with internet, free printing and photocopying facilities helps students learn. Between classes, students can relax in the rehabilitation room, which also functions as a first aid room. What is equally important: the "headquarters" of the Support Service also functions as a 38 square meter community space, a kind of leisure center, where students with disabilities can meet each other or their peers who are interested and want to help.
Foreign volunteers are also regularly accepted.

Their services include passenger transport by barrier-free minibus from Monday to Friday from 6.00 to 22.00, labour market counselling, mental health and special education counselling, international mobility programs for students, physiotherapy.

Since the premises of the Support Service were intended from the very beginning to be a community space for people with disabilities, we are greeted with a good accessibility experience in the office.

To get to the office:
There are stairs at the main entrance, there is no ramp here. To the main entrance, the paving stone pavement once had tactile marks for the visually impaired, but today they are worn out and unusable.
Barrier-free access is possible through the entrance of Building "A", gate "C", from Pacsirta Street. Here you will find a ramp with a suitable inclination, which can be used to access the front door even with a manual wheelchair. The door is not barrier-free, as it is not photocelled and has a relatively heavy door puller on top. In most cases, help is needed here for wheelchair users.

As soon as you roll through the door, you can move completely autonomously within the building to the service office in a wheelchair. From the entrance to the Support Service office, the tactile guide lane for the visually impaired is clearly visible. In addition, a guide lane leads to the elevators, the reception, the service office, and the cloakroom on the way to the Support Service.

The front door of the service office is a large security, fire door without a threshold that opens inward. Wheelchair access is not a problem, as you just have to push the door in. Outwardly, however, it is difficult to pull towards us, so help is needed here. The staff of the service will be happy to help us with this.

Entering through the door, we come to a wide, straight corridor.
Immediately opposite there is a spacious barrier-free toilet with changing table and alarm bells. In addition, a washing machine for students was placed here.

Leaving the toilet, turning to the right, the next room is a small kitchen. Here the corridor rises a little, but it can also be rolled up without problems in a manual wheelchair. Further down the corridor, on the right hand side is the rehabilitation room, then the office of the Head of Support Services, at the end of the corridor. Opposite is the central part of the office, where the staff of the service are waiting for the students. This room also serves as a community space for students.
The rooms are equipped with an information board with Braille inscriptions.

In the corridor, there is a guide lane from the entrance to the common area, but it does not protrude from the floor, so it will not help us with a white stick. It can be useful for people with low vision due to its different color. For blind people, the wall is more of a guide.

The communal area also has a built-in and mobile induction loop to help the hearing impaired.

Website:
Unfortunately, the site is not technically accessible. Background and foreground colors do not have sufficient contrast ratios, which can be a problem for people with low vision. Image elements do not have [alt] attributes, i.e. captions, so they cannot be used by visually impaired people. The links don't have recognizable names, and text frame titles are missing, making them difficult to use with screen readers. The zoom function does not work.

Getting there:
by bus, lines 30, 30Y, 55, 103 to the "Ifjúság útja" stop, from here it is a 300-meter walk (4-5 minutes) to the barrier-free entrance from Pacsirta Street. Or take buses 2, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29 and 102 to the "Egyetemváros" bus stop, from here it is 600 meters (8-10 minutes) on foot, but you have to go up a steeper street (Honvéd Street). In most cases, buses are low-floor and have loud announcing.
The sidewalks on Ifjúság Road are barrier-free on both sides, paved with paving stone and asphalt. There are two pedestrian crossings on this section, one directly at the bus stop and one at the Honvéd Street intersection. Both are barrier-free, with deepened benches and tactile signs for the visually impaired. The pavement on Pacsirta Street is not barrier-free, it is fragmented in many places. On this 30-meter stretch, wheelchair users should roll on the road instead.

by car, it can be reached from the Árkád mall in 8-10 minutes and on Ifjúság Road. In front of the entrance of the "400 ágyas klinika" (400-bed clinic) there are 5 disabled parking lots. From here, 50 meters is the entrance to the university on flat terrain.