The painful story of a fire alarm

At the start of 2018, Leiden University signed a declaration for more inclusive education. As of July 2022, it is required to hang a smoke alarm on every storey to be alerted as quickly as possible of fire or smoke. At first glance, these two news headlines appear to be unrelated, however, there is in fact a connection: Leiden University has too few fire alarms that are accessible for deaf people.

Many university buildings have no accessible fire alarms at all. If a fire were to break out at this moment, then this group of people would not be notified on time. This problem was first pointed out during the previous century. Let’s take a look at a fire alarm at Leiden’s humanities campus…