Students experienced the challenges of piloting a wheelchair and blindly navigating a campus sidewalk during Thursday’s “Step Into My World” presentation, a part of Disabilities Awareness Week.

Bridgit Breslow and Brooke Heithoff, graduate assistants in educational leadership and policy studies, also explained the services the Academic Success Center provides for disabled students.

“We help out over 600 students,” Breslow said.

Disability Resources helps disabled students in transitioning to college and offers various forms of academic accommodation, such as personal testing arrangements, sign language interpreters, captioning and alternative textbook formatting.

“There are so many disabilities out there you can’t see,” Heithoff said.

Most of the students who use the provided services have “invisible” disabilities, and many of Disability Resources’ services are designed to assist students with ADHD, high anxiety and dyslexia.

The center also helps students with mobility difficulties and other physical impairments.

To help students see what living with a physical disability is like, Breslow and Heithoff handed out cards embossed with the Braille alphabet and asked students to decipher a message printed on it.

“‘This is written in Braille. Can you read this?'” answered Nick Thelen, freshman in computer engineering and the first to figure out the message.

Breslow and Heithoff also blindfolded volunteers to simulate blindness.

Andrew Teply, junior in music, donned a blindfold and was asked to find different objects on a table as well as write his name.

“The most difficult thing was finding the pen,” Teply said. He shared with the group how he used his senses of touch and hearing to find objects and arrange the paper in order to write legibly.

Breslow and Heitoff then took the group outside to take turns piloting a wheelchair up and down a sidewalk ramp, and other blindfolded volunteers navigated the sidewalk with a cane.

Participants said the simulated handicaps were difficult but eye-opening experiences.

“It’s important as a campus to know what [disabled students] are going through,” Breslow said.