Don't I Have Enough to Deal With?

The BBQ Pit
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The “Resolved: The ADA Has Done More Harm Than Good” thread in GD got me riled. Riled, I tell you!

I’m very aware that the ADA is sometimes abused. I’m of the somewhat educated opinion that the true abusers are in the minority. File the ADA abuses under “It only takes a few assholes to fuck things up for the rest of us”.

I’m exceedingly aware of how tough it is to live life as a wheelchair-user. I think many non-disabled people have no true conception of what it’s like. I’m not saying they’re remiss in not having that education; they’ve never personally had to. Even non-disabled friends whom I’ve known for a couple years still say things like, “Why isn’t something done about ____?”.

I’m gonna try and explain to you what things are like from my end, the end on which many wheelchair-users sit.

To be a wheelchair user in the U.S. is to often feel like a third-class fucking citizen. Yes, we’re not “shut-ins” anymore. Yay. :rolleyes: We’re still shut out of the degree of normalcy & dignity to which I think we’re entitled as humans.

I daresay many wheelchair-users know firsthand what it’s like to live with being stared at, made fun of, and asked inappropriate questions by strangers; every wheelchair-bound person I know has had these experiences. They know the frustration of trying to flag down a conductor to help them onto the train before it leaves the station.

Getting someplace “on foot” is no picnic either - at least in Manhattan. Curb cuts are sometimes barely a dent in the sidewalk, if present at all. Sometimes they’re on a corner, but not the opposing corner. I once walked with a wheelchair-using friend from Penn Station to a bar on Ave. A btw. 12th & 13th. That’s a good 23 blocks if you go straightaway. We, however, kept running into curb cut problems that ended up adding seven blocks to our trek.

Speaking of bars (& restaurants), I’m pretty sure that many wheelchair users have had to enter through a kitchen at least once & have felt the sting of being objectified as “the wheelchair” by a mother cautioning her child to watch out or a hostess confirming the number of people in a party.

Then there’s the problem booking hotels - one has to do copious research & then cross-examine the person taking the reservation:

“Is it a handicapped accessible room? How wide are the doors? Are there bars next to the toilet and in the shower? Is there a bath seat in the shower, or will we have to ask for one? Should we pre-order it?”.

Although the bathroom situation in many public places has improved dramatically, it still needs work. I spoke in another thread about the time that I tried to use a “handicapped accessible” bathroom at my former college; the stall was wide, but not deep enough. In order to have room to maneuver on & off the toilet, I’d have to keep the stall door wide the fuck open. Not that I have a problem with that - when you’ve had to show as many doctors as many body parts in as many states of undress as I have, you end up not caring who sees you doing what.

(Or maybe that’s just me? ;))

Many para- & quadraplegics have experienced the hell of trying to get incontinence items they need in order to maintain urinary health or new wheelchair parts so that their motorized wheelchairs don’t go dead in the middle of a street or their manual ones have decent brakes. The healthcare supply companies they deal with have them by the short’n’curlies; there’s only a finite number of companies one’s insurance will deal with.

Enough of that - time to return to my beginning point. We’re not “shut-ins” anymore, but we’re still shut out of many places that are open to any other members of the public.

How have we gotten as far as we have? We’ve had good role models who’ve lobbied & rallied for our interests & put forth intelligent arguments. Often a small population must shout in order to be heard, & shouting is very difficult & tiring when one has to deal with what many disabled people must deal with.

That’s why I’m especially grateful to disabled-rights activists like Justin Dart & Dr. Henry Viscardi, Jr… They pissed some people off, but their points & thoughts were rational. They never wanted to lift up disabled people to the point of fucking over the general public; they wanted to help disabled people to be as equal as they could possibly be.

Some things might be impossible to implement, but without pushing, how can one really know? Without those individuals & others like them, many disabled people might never have gotten an education & been physically able to work in some of the establishments where they’re currently employed.

So yeah, the ADA has loopholes that’ve let assholes take advantage of the system. Yeah, there are disabled activists who are extremists. However, the ADA is, I think, a basically good piece of legislation that has helped many & I’m comfortable in my belief that the general disabled population doesn’t take an extremist view of disabled rights. Most of us are reasonable human beings who know very well that some things aren’t possible - we just want to push the definition of “possible”, like many of us have been doing in our own, small ways.

:rolleyes:

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I can understand forgetting to put a link in the OP, but you didn’t even tell us who you’re yelling at. Details!

Other than that, I agree with everything in your rant.

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I think this was a reasonble enough statement to have actually been in the GD thread unless you just particularly want to have it in here so december can get another roasting.

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Miller, I’m not really yelling at anyone in particular; I’m yelling at anyone out there in Doperland who is of the opinion that things have swung too far in favor of disabled rights. If you want names, I’ll take a look back & see who inspired the thread.

Off the top of my head, the list includes december, (for his ridiculous thread title as well as some of his comments), Sam Stone, JohnBckWLD (the “disabled militancy” title of his first post on page two was insulting to me), & probably others whom I’m forgetting.

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december is well known for his “debates” which border on trolling.

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I’ve been pushing a baby carriage for about 3 months now, and therefore I’ve started to become very aware of curb cuts and ramps. Or rather, the lack of curb cuts and ramps. Even in brand new construction. It’s pretty astonishing.

(p.s. linkety link link?)

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Linkity link link

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Cosmopolitan, I was honestly so disgusted with the title of the thread that I decided not to open it. (I didn’t think december would really want to honestly debate the issue, anyway.) I can’t even imagine what disabled folks go through. When I broke my ankle, I used a wheelchair for a combined total of maybe an hour in public. It was an awful and humiliating experience. I couldn’t believe how people stared, even scowled angrily at me for no reason. Funny, they had no problem when I was on crutches and people often stopped to help me. I guess crutches are for “normal” people, and wheelchairs somehow aren’t, in their minds. Stereotypes are an interesting thing.

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Several years ago, I had a problem with my foot (details not relevant here), that caused me to have to walk with a cane for about six months. Curb cuts were not generally a big deal for me - I could stand on my good foot and lower myself down to the heel of the bad foot, stabilizing with the cane - but building layouts were. Most buildings that have been made “handicap accessible” seem to only consider wheelchairs, and to work on the theory that horizontal distance doesn’t count, since the person will be sitting down, anyway. :rolleyes: Many times I was faced with a choice between stumping very slowly up a flight of steps, or walking one or two extra building lengths in order to use an elevator.

A friend of my mother’s is in a motorized cart. Mom asked her once what she disliked the most about the way we handle handicaps, and she said it was the lost time. She resented always having to wait until every single other person was off the plane before she could move, and taking long, circuitous routes to move around within buildings. It’s hard to see another way to do it, since it usually makes sense to inconvenience one person for the sake of many, rather than the other way around, but it sucks to always be the person that is inconvenienced.

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Motherfucking hell. I almost completed a long, involved, well-worded fucking post and it was eaten! here we fucking go again.

CelticCowboy, thanks for providing the linkety link link that I forgot to. I’m a doof. :slight_smile:

Originally posted by Fluid Druid:

That’s because december didn’t want to debate the fucking issue. He wanted to fucking spout off like he tends to do. I mean, look at the title of the thread; “Resolved: The Americans With Disabilities Act Does More Harm Than Good”. Well, if december says it, it must be so. …Right? Wrong.

First of all, december, nothing’s been fucking resolved regarding whether the ADA does more harm than good. Second, if you’re so fucking convinced that the issue is resolved, what in ass-felching hell are you doing putting it in a forum called Great fucking Debates? There’s nothing to discuss; the matter has, in your mind, been put to bed.

As I mentioned before, however, the issue is not “resolved”. Yes, the ADA might let assholes slip through the cracks & make frivolous claims. Does that mean it’s done more harm than good? Not necessarily. As I said in my OP, the disabled community needs to shout to be heard - this law has done wonderful things. Sure, it needs to be tweaked. I don’t argue that. I argue with your Chicken Little scenario.

Do you know what life was like for disabled people of all stripes before (and, as I’ve stated, even since) the ADA was enacted? Are you truly aware of the depth of discrimination that physically disabled people encountered? Do you think that might be one of the reasons why such broad language was used in crafting the ADA? Lemme give you some information.

In the early 1960’s man named Henry Viscardi, Jr. & his associates endeavoured to build a school for severely disabled children - children who would otherwise have to be home schooled or remain uneducated because other schools couldn’t or wouldn’t accomodate them.

He’d already built a company called Abilities, Inc., housed in Albertson, Long Island, NY. It was a work center that demonstrated that even people with physical disabilities could work in industrial jobs. He wanted to build the school on that same tract of land, but it wasn’t zoned for a school; he’d have to get a zoning variance. The variance was protested by many people who lived in the suburban neighborhood in 1964:

“They had their reasons, about the traffic, the noise, many reasons that sounded good to them - although how could a handful of children really cause that much traffic, that much havoc?”
…

“A hint of the underlying feeling of some of these neighbors was expressed more openly at a meeting that was to come a little later in the battle, at a zoning board hearing when one of the protesting neighbors, not realizing whom she was addressing, said to the mother of one of our children, ‘Let’s be frank about this. If you had to look out of your kitchen window at a child in a wheelchair, don’t you think that would be a horrible sight?’”

That was the attitude that needed to be dealt with. Extreme measures needed to be taken in order to allow disabled people to prove themselves in the educational system & the workplace. The ADA is one of those measures. It has allowed them a freedom of movement and a sense of equality which many had been denied.

Does it need tweaking? Yes. Is is crushing the independent businessperson under thw wheelchair wheels of ridiculous regulation & robbing the taxpayers by virtue of frivolous lawsuits being filed under the ADA umbrella? No, I don’t think so.

(The above two paragrahs of text in quotation marks are taken from The School, authored by Dr. Henry Viscardi, Jr., copyright 1964, published by Paul S. Eriksson.)

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Actually, I’d like to know why there are so many more things altered for the blind than there are for other physical disabilities. Seems to me I read somewhere that lobbyists for the blind have been a lot more effective in getting their needs met than groups for deaf or mobility-impaired people (don’t ask me for a cite, I read it a long time ago and I may even be out of context, which is why I am asking, not telling.) Does anyone know anything about this?

About the OP - I hear and understand. I used to THINK I understood, until I became good friends with a man who is paraplegic. You’re not kidding - life for those who have physical disabilities can be sheer HELL, and most people can’t even begin to imagine how difficult simple things can be. I think the ADA needs to be refined and a bit more specific about what defines a disability, but at this point it beats hell out of NOT having the ADA.

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I CAN imagine, and I get so annoyed when I hear people bitching about it.

When my friends were at a vo-tech school, taking allied health, one assignment was to spend a day in a wheelchair (in class). She said she absolutely hated it, it was awkward, uncomfortable, she had a terrible time getting around and she felt horribly self-conscious.

Perhaps one day, we should all have to spend time in a wheelchair, perhaps. Just to walk in someone else’s shoes, so to speak.

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Taking no position on the merits of the ADA, I would note that “Resolved:” is the traditional language for framing a debate… i.e., “Resolved: Idi Amin Was Just Misunderstood.” Debaters may then take pro and con positions and explore the issue.

In other words, Cosmopolitan, the use of ‘resolved’ in debating circles has a meaning different from the one you seem to be ascribing to it.

  • Rick
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I watched my father-in-law get ALS and die. I learned a lot about being disabled from watching and hearing about his trials and tribulations. I feel blessed to have most of my faculties intact. It sucks to be disabled, and lots of people are totally insensitive.

From people nearly running you over to inaccessible buildings, it is a different world for the disabled.

I agree with everyone who has stated, from the OP down, that there have been abuses and excesses. However, the basic premise of the ADA is a good one.