Wheel a mile in their chairs
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By Melissa Coulter | Sunday, July 13, 2008 |
“For those who have no patience with the handicapped, try spending a week in their shoes, trying to get around in a wheelchair. Then hopefully you will get what the argument’s about.”
Commenter Ex-Clintonian suggested this change of perspective in response to health reporter Deirdre Cox Baker’s Monday story on the weak spots in accessibility in the Quad-Cities. Babyrn1 found it easy to relate: “It’s hard enough to maneuver a stroller through some of the stores. I can’t even imagine how difficult it is to maneuver a wheelchair!”
Obstructed store aisles or heavy bathroom doors are minor annoyances to most of us. But they can be insurmountable obstacles to Quad-Citians with disabilities.
Yolanda wrote, “I’ve seen the need for handles, both higher and lower, to close the handicapped stalls. Having toilet paper available on both sides of the stalls can help for some. A friend of mine has had a stroke; he can’t reach the TP easily. He has to take some with him.”
In all my years as an arts event planner considering accessibility logistics, toilet paper location never crossed my mind. And how could it? So many challenges faced by people with disabilities are unimaginable to those of us who navigate the world with ease.
I found one particularly interesting example in the video accompanying Deirdre’s story. Photojournalist John Schultz accompanied Davenport resident Mike Hoenig, who is blind, on a trip to his neighborhood Hy-Vee. As he walked down the sidewalk with his cane, Hoenig pointed out the sound cues he uses to know when he reaches the bus stop. From there, he knows it’s four driveways to the Hy-Vee. He probably knows the layout of that street better than a sighted person.
While she’s not handicapped, Marismom found the Americans with Disabilities Act helped her perform daily tasks. “Once I started having kids and had to bring everyone with me to the store, handicap bathrooms made it so much easier to take everyone in there and do our business,” she wrote. “At one point I had three kids under 5 and two in diapers.
I felt disabled when I was out in public!”
Other commenters’ lack of empathy was appalling. “I, like millions of others, could care less about people with disabilities,” Bobbie1665 wrote. “Why? Because all they have been doing for years is complain about every little thing that just doesn’t go right for them. They make businesses make more parking spaces than they will ever use, all the doors have to be wider even if they will never use them, and now the cities have to use money that could be used to help everyone to replace all the curbs that will never be used.”
I happen to use those curb breaks all the time. It’d be a rough bike ride coming off the Government Bridge onto 2nd Street in Davenport without them.
Reading Bobbie’s and others’ comments prompted Red Lady to move the discussion over to her blog on Quadsville.com, the local social network connected to qctimes.com. There she wrote about the challenges she and her husband, who is in a wheelchair, face, as well as the odd attitudes toward disabled people they observe.
“The show ‘30 Days’ actually caught on film how people look at the disabled,” Red Lady wrote. “The glares. The looks of utter disgust. The fear. Those looks from children are one thing. It’s the adults who give those glares and looks that bother me. I may be biased, but my husband does not look ‘weird.’ He does not have a behavioral disability. He just cannot walk. His bones break. That’s it. It’s not contagious. He doesn’t look funny. Why the fearful and disgusted looks?”
Deirdre’s story illustrates the answer: ignorance. Not willful ignorance, just the ignorance of happenstance. The daily life of a disabled person may be different from yours or mine. But at some point the differences end and similarities take over.
“I would really prefer to have others come to understand disabled people are just that: people who happen to have a disability,” Red Lady wrote. “They have feelings too and deserve to be able to go out on their own. They shouldn’t have to have someone accompany them.”
Melissa Coulter writes on the online discussions at qctimes.com and quadsville.com. Contact her at (563) 383-2243 or at mcoulter@qctimes.com.
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