HEW Funds Television Shorts, Informs Handicapped of Rights

September Productions of Boston filmed a 30-second public service television commercial outside Lamont and Widener libraries yesterday on the rights and educational opportunities of the handicapped.

"I was kept out of college in 1964 by prejudice, ignorance and fear. They said I wouldn't fit in because I'm disabled," Charles G. Drafts, who now attends Harvard, said as the production crew filmed him. The University of Pittsburgh rejected Drafts in 1964.

The film is one of five produced to inform the disabled and the general public of handicapped people's rights. The Department of Health, Education and Welfare is funding the series.

The university working committee for the handicapped and faculty coordinators at each school provide a shuttlebus, a tactile map of the campus, and tapes that explain the layout of the university.

Volunteer Services for the Disabled, a student-run aid group, organizes readers for the blind and assistants for handicapped students with wheelchairs.

Drafts said he believes "universities have a responsibility to recruit disabled students because universities initiated the special educational programs which enabled handicapped students to get to the point where they can go to college."

"This does not mean, however, that disabled applicants should not meet the same qualifications as other students," he added.