by Lorie Reilly in Accessibility, Civil and Human Rights, Public Health & Safety, Seniors
Posted on December 1, 2010 at 2:08 pm
Last Modified on December 4, 2010 at 3:23 pm
loading…
A Plan Is Hatched
We were having a discussion about diversity when a friend posed this question: “Why don’t we care enough to make the most basic adjustments to our streets so that people with disabilities can participate in the public realms of our city?” What was she talking about? I see curb cuts and ramps all over the place—isn’t that enough? At that moment, I decided to borrow a wheelchair and see what was what.
Getting the Chair
I called on the friend of a friend with an ambulatory disability to borrow a wheelchair for my experiment. During the visit, I was not my usual amiable self. I was afraid of saying something wrong or insensitive, and my fear was getting in the way of being relaxed and easy. My awkwardness was compounded by embarrassment over my anxiety — which I was certain was writ large on my face.
As I sat in the wheelchair in her apartment, I actually started to believe that I couldn’t use my legs. I had felt such enthusiasm about this experiment, but now, sitting in the chair, I felt depressed and deflated.
From the first moments of struggling to put the wheelchair in the car and myself in the shoes of someone who needed one, I experienced a conflicted relationship with it. The wheelchair represented mobility, a form of independence, a way to get from one place to another, but my need for it felt like a bad turn of events, one that I deeply resented. My friend turned to me and said: “Hey, it’s your new pet!” I strained to smile in return.
Wheelchair in My Living Room
Our brains are wired to make associations in ways that keep us safe and cause us to avoid things that invoke fear or discomfort. What I realized as soon as I had the wheelchair sitting in my house is that these defenses were being called up by the wheelchair’s presence.
Not having had any direct experience with a wheelchair before, I knew that some of my negative associations were related to its being foreign and unknown. In addition, I felt these threads of association going from the wheelchair to other pieces of scary medical equipment like stirrups, forceps, restraining devices, even electric chairs. Probing even more deeply, I dredged up negative feelings around vulnerability, decline, confinement, mortality, and loss.
Black Cats
Superstitions are the false pathways in the brain that persist even when we know the truth. When my daughter came home from school and saw the wheelchair in the living room, she said: “Mom, I hope you’re not jinxing yourself with that. What if using the wheelchair when you don’t need it causes you to actually need one?” When she said this, I realized how there were strands of this fear somewhere in the back of my own mind as well.
Before I had even tried wheeling around outside the house, I had already uncovered in myself some of the major barriers to paying close attention to accessibility: ignorance, fear, negative associations, embarrassment, and superstition.
Now I Understand
We drove to East Somerville so that I could go to the library with the chair. My first mistake was parking the car three blocks away. I was calibrating the parking distance with my walking brain, and I was about to learn how far this would feel in a wheelchair. I put two quarters in the parking meter—of course we’d be back in 30 minutes — and that was the second mistake.
I hopped into the chair and started wheeling my way down Broadway. Suffice to say that a task I had glossed over as an easy piece of cake was broken down for me in the most excruciating details. The hardest part to believe was that the curb cuts I had walked over hundreds of times and believed to be sufficient had suddenly become death traps.
Numerous times, I sat stuck and helpless at the bottom of a curb cut. It was either too steep to wheel up, or it was separated from the street by lateral or vertical space — just enough to catch and trap my front wheels. I had equal difficulty controlling the chair on the way back down. My attempts ended in jumping out of the chair to save myself from a major head injury. And what about the 21 seconds graciously provided at the crosswalk to get across four lanes of traffic? I was wheeling my little arms like crazy, and there was no way to make it in time. The cars at the red light were penned up like bulls behind a gate, and when the light turned green, I felt certain they would charge forth, not seeing me at wheelchair height in the crosswalk. I was terrified.
The Importance of Small Details
As someone who does not own a car, I am already accustomed to the life of a pedestrian and cyclist living around the edges of a world designed for cars. But I was completely unprepared for how much more dramatically marginalized I would feel trying to navigate the streets by wheelchair.
I’d like to emphasize that the ramps, ruts, angles, and changes in height that gave me so much difficulty in these three blocks looked completely inconsequential to my untrained walking eye. It was only when I sat in the wheelchair and attempted to move across this landscape that I discovered how impassable it was. Suddenly very tiny measurements in height (like .25 to .75 inches) and slope (like 4-6 degrees) had huge implications. And I mean huge. If I had not had legs that allowed me to jump out of the tipping chair, I would be in the hospital right now with serious injuries. Allow me to emphasize: These accidents would have been caused by allegedly accessible street features. I’m not even venturing to discuss the many buildings and intersections that were NOT accessible.
Lessons Learned
We have so much work to do in order to make our public spaces navigable for all our citizens, and it’s going to require something from each of us:
- Overcoming deeply engrained fears, beliefs, and discomforts around our vulnerabilities.
- Real exercises in empathy that test our assumptions.
- Questioning and rearranging our fiscal priorities so that safe mobility for all is rated as highly as other capital improvements.
- Changing our attitude about what comprises “good enough” accessibility.
According to the 2000 census, 20% of Middlesex County residents over age 5 are listed as “disabled.” Would you be surprised to learn that this percent is much higher than the percent of Hispanic residents recorded in 2009 (5.9%)? When I showed these numbers to my kids, they asked a question we should all be asking: “Then where are all those people?”
Mobility is what allows each of us to get out of bed each day and shape our lives in meaningful and sustaining ways. What are we telling ourselves and the disabled population when we ignore their needs to get where they need to go?
loading…
Great article. A real eye opener for me as an able bodied person.
As cyclist I occasionally see wheelchairs in the bike lanes that I ride in. It would be great if the bike and disabled communities could get together to make the streets themselves more bike & wheelchair friendly.
loading...
I live in a neighborhood where the sidewalks and streets are dangerous even for those without mobility concerns. Thanks for heightening my awareness of this issue.
loading...
I never thought about this problem until I had to get my wheelchair bound grandmother up and down streets and into and out of buildings. Of course, she had it easier since I was pushing, but I remember it being a nightmare then– 15 years ago. I’m sorry to see not much has changed since then.
Thank you for getting me to revisit this issue and to get to work bringing this problem to light.
loading...
WOW. You’re an incredible writer and journalist, Lorie Reilly. Thank you so much.
loading...
Maybe there could be an event in some square in the city where the able bodied have to try to get around in a wheelchair — even if people had the experience for just 10 minutes — crossing the street, maneuvering into and around a store — it would leave a lasting impression.
Nice article Lorie.
loading...
I’m SOOOOOO glad you did this and did it so well! Your observations make the experience live for us conventional perambulators.
Many years ago, a good friend of mine became paraplegic after an encounter with a drunk driver. I remember going into paroxysms of solicitousness whenever I saw him, but I felt out of my depth in knowing how to even accommodate him sufficiently in whatever activity we tried to plan. This is really a consciousness raising piece you’ve done.
loading...
As a wheelchair user I appreciated the way you expressed the emotional struggles you had – the fear and uncertainty – not just the difficulty of doing something in a different way. You showed the impact we all have to live with in order to navigate an unfriendly world. Good job.
loading...
Bravo, Lorie! This issue should concern almost everyone who either might one day need a wheel-chair or currently does.
By the way, this article just got picked up by Adam Gaffin @ Universal Hub
loading...
Fantastic article, Lorie! So glad you took the time to raise some awareness on this issue. I do a lot of thinking about barriers for people with disabilities – what I see is that the barriers are not only physical barrier such as you found in your experiment, but myriad other barrier – to appropriate services, lack of stigma, access to employment, etc. Often we don’t “see” people with disabilites because many have “invisible” disabilities: hearing loss, mental illness, or other physical disabilites that are difficult to notice just by looking at a person. Your insightful piece is a great reminder for all of to be more mindful. Thank you!
loading...
It should be noted that Lorie’s eye-opening account is actually quite a damning indictment of the City’s failure to live up to its legal and moral obligations to incorporate accessible design into its street-scape, buildings, and other construction projects. As eila has noted numerous times, on this blog especially, poor accessibility design continues to be a problem in modern City projects under a seemingly uninterested administration.
loading...
Most of the curb cuts you see were designed for “convenience” not wheelchairs. ADA was passed in 1990 and only projects that began their planning after that had to meet the slope and width standards. Of course, most of our curb cuts are from the 30s or 50s, not the past decade.
Of course, it shouldnt take the 50 year lifespan of a sidewalk for a curb cut to be replaced to something actually usable.
The worst part are the new ones in which the contractor placed them incorrectly and they become giant puddle collectors.
loading...
Unfortunately ADA Regulations are no where up to par meeting the needs of wheelchair users to sport facilities or even retail shops.
Try pushing a tennis wheelchair with racquets and gear over a Snowbank in a everyday wheelchair to go and play indoor tennis thru the Winter months.
We take things for granite and really don’t know what we have until you lose it-mobilty of legs.
Take the Challenge-Try Wheelchair Tennis or Support it!
loading...
Awesome article Lorie. Kind of sad to think a smaller city is so hard to get around for some people!
Glad you completed your assignment safely
!
loading...
Terrific article!
A number of years ago I had an severe back spasm while I was leaving work downtown. I literally collapsed in the gutter. People walked past me as I struggled back onto the sidewalk and crawled and hobbled back to my office building, where I called a taxi to take me to the clinic.
The emergency clinic doctor evaluated me for short-term disability (as it turns out, I was out of work for 3 weeks). While I was waiting for a taxi home, they put me in a wheelchair. I remember the grim feeling I had while I was getting myself around in the wheelchair and, once home, with a walker.
“I’m disabled now. Get with the program.”
loading...
Thanks for the in depth reminder. I have been spending time with my older parents and find that even though they “walk” the reality is that every single step is a challenge, every incline, bump, hole, additional foot of the trip is monumental. This is a serous problem. With such a large portion of the population aging this needs to be addressed not only by disabled and bikers, but by all of society.
I hope we can all figure out how.
loading...
I would like to comment upon your well written article and thoughtful experiment concerning disabilities. As someone who has been disabled all of my life, I bring some additional perspectives on your article.
First, the feeling you first described regarding interacting with a wheelchair and initial discomfort in how to behave with someone who is mobility impaired (one type of disability) is known as phobia disabilism. Phobia disabilism is the fear of the disabled or the fear of becoming disabled. Phobia disabilism is an unwarranted negative reaction/association people with disabilities experience very much from the abled bodied community. Phobia disabilism was “coined” several years ago in a study regarding society’s Anti Human Development attitudes concerning people with disabilities.
Second, it is important to emphasize one key point you have made in your article. You were able to jump out of the wheelchair before further injury. People in wheelchairs do not have that luxury and that is truly an experience you cannot replicate no matter your empathy. You had a choice the person with a disability does not. This is key to remember.
You also must remember that those in wheelchairs are not the predominate disability group although they are an important group regarding accessibility. The hearing impaired and visually impaired are larger in percentage, meaning you have only touched the surface of the iceberg of discrimination people with various disabilities experience.
When performing a similar experiment again (if you choose), it would be interesting for you to report not only on your personal enlightment but on how the abled bodied treated you during this experience. Did they treat you as mentally or intellectually challenged in a negative way because you sat in a wheelchair? These are also stereotypes people with disabilities experience.
In regards to Mark’s comment in suggesting that bicyclists come together with the disability community to make streets safer for both groups, this issue was brought up at a MOVE Massachusetts meeting during their fall meeting schedule. The suggestion that bike lanes be set up to also accommodate those with mobility aids was met with full opposition by the bike community advocates in the room. So you can see there is much education that needs to be done as there are many people in wheelchairs who ride in the streets because of the problematic issues as described in the above article.
As a former Somerville resident, I enjoy reading about and keeping informed on the activites by the disability ocmmunity in Somerville and encourage you to stay active in the push for full intergration and full citizen participation within the Somerville community. Please note that disability communities outside of Somerville are aware of the poor attitude and poor access provided by the city of Somerville. These issues have been pointed out and documented in a civil rights complaint report where the state has been a willing partner in what we contend to be ADA civil rights violations. I and others filed this complaint with the federal government over a year ago. We are happy that the Somerville disability community has recently filed complaints as well on similar experiences we met in Somerville. Good luck in your continued efforts to educate the general public on the ADA and the rights of people with disabilities.
loading...