"They definitely make an effort," she says.

The Alternative

Harvard needs to make special individual accommodations because the alternative--renovating all buildings to make them comply with ADA--would be completely unrealistic.

"If we were to devote the resources to make all our buildings compliant as soon as possible, we would have to freeze everything else," Zewinski says. "It's obviously a huge amount of money to make Harvard ADA -compliant."

At present, the University spends sums "in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per year" making existing facilities more accessible to disabled individuals, estimates Michael N. Lichten, director of the office of physical resources for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Installing a new elevator can cost between $140,000 and $300,000, a lift costs around $30,000 and a ramp can run anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000.

The costs are so significant that Zewinski estimates about 10 percent of the total budget on any construction job goes to making the building handicapped-accessible.

MAAB does sometimes give exemptions to accessibility requirements if meeting the code would impose an undue financial burden. But with an endowment that exceeds $13 billion, state and federal authorities aren't particularly sympathetic to Harvard's cries of poverty.