Exactly, it is the reality in which you live. And me. And everyone else on this planet. That reality says a morbidly obese passenger is going to have to buy two seats and use a humiliating and dignity-reducing seatbelt extender. That reality says that blind people cannot sit by emergency exits on planes. There are many instances where people are forced into situations that they might deem humiliating or undignified. However, they accept that it is a necessity to live in society, because there are simply no alternatives.
No, you don’t,accept help from others, or at least not when flying. Given the confines of an airplane cabin, you do need help as a result of your disability. You just choose not to accept that.
This is a complaint that hits close to home for me. My sister-in-law is essentially a quadrapalegic, thanks to MS, and my wife and two other sisters are her primary caregiver.
We haven’t been able to take her on a plane in years, partly because of the bathroom issue and partly because of the way we were treated by the airline staff last time we flew. It’s humiliating for her, and unbelievably difficult to get her in and out of airplane seats.
In my opinion, a reasonable accommodation by the airlines would be to replace one aisle seat per plane with a mobile/removeable seat narrow enough to move up and down the aisle. This seat would have a seatbelt and would be secured to the floor of the plane for travel and could be used by any able-bodied passenger as well as the disabled.
In the case of a wheelchair bound passenger, the seat could be wheeled out to the terminal for the disabled passenger to be tranferred, and then wheeled back on to the plane and secured in place.
This would require some safety engineering to make sure the seat is secure, but would not require re-designing the plane or reducing the available seating. It would also enable the disabled passenger to be wheeled to the restroom (not necessarily under their own power).
Anyway, it’s just a dream. I feel bad for my SIL who misses out on family vacations or visiting faraway friends because she can’t travel by air.
In the specific circumstance of airline flights. THAT is what I meant by “what everyone else takes for granted.” Not life itself. Geez. And I disagree with you when you say “no one is going to be able to give you that.” It can be done.
Some of us don’t. I’d love to be able to take walking for granted. Better yet, I’d like to be able to run. But structural and nerve damage make running impossible for me. Just walking has found me sprawled on the pavement.
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You sir are completely mistaken.
YES!
And when someone who is famous, say a well-known politician, goes through security at the airport and gets pulled aside for a random search, should they expect not to get searched because the TSA person immediately recognizes them? That protocol cannot be broken, period.
It’s not that much different here. Protocols have to be followed 100% of the time. You might be a bit embarassed by needing to be escorted to the plane, but for every one of you, there’s probably plenty more who need that escort, even if they insist they don’t. Have you never seen someone who is disabled and insists they can do something when they realistically can’t? The moment they don’t follow protocol, one of those will slip through, and someone will get hurt, and then they’re liable. Like it or not, you being a bit humiliated because you insist you can do it yourself is utterly irrelevant next to risking injury and legal liability for someone else who insists they can do it themselves and proceeds to roll uncontrollably down the ramp.
You even admitted that you’re a small subset of handicapped who are already a small subset of the general population. I submit that there are other larger sets of individuals that are not accomodated than the set you represent (the handicapped who are physically able to wheel themselves and actually are offended by being required to get assistance), say, the very tall, very fat, or people with unusual religious or cultural practices that could make using the bathroom difficult or impossible for them. At some point or another, they simply can’t accomodate everyone and you seem to believe that your set is large enough to deserve it. But if so, if you think you deserve this sort of treatment, shouldn’t you also be a proponent for those other individuals in other larger sets who are also aren’t accomodated?
Well, in the case of you being “inconvenienced”, you still get to USE THE BATHROOM. In the case of me being “inconvenienced” I am stuck outside the stalls, staring desperately at the empty toilets I can’t use.
If they are subjected to any sort of similar treatment; then yes, absolutely.
Like I have said, it doesn’t have be a “wheelchair” in the sense that is typically thought of. The system of propulsion could be with some sort of hand crank device or even a kind of “push-pole” on each side. It’s not simply the fact that I am being pushed to the bathroom that i find unacceptable. It’s the ENTIRE experience of being put on this little seat and “wrapped up” in belts AND being pushed.
The way I see it - I pay the airline a price, and they bring me from point A to point B as fast as possible. In return, I deal with a lot of inconveniences, but in the end I determine that putting up with them is worth the time savings.
Afterall, my other options are to drive, take the train or take a bus. All of which take far too long and inconvenience me even more.
Thats also my general attitude towards people who take great umbrage with the TSA and security proceedings. By purchasing an airline ticket, one has inherently decided that time is more important than virtually any inconvenience they have to endure. Some may read that as to say that I’m all for treating people like crap - I’m not. On the contrary, you vote with your dollars - which is a far more powerful voice.
No, not walking. The ability to take a leak on an airplane without it being such a hassle.
Ok, but you have NEVER dealt with anything approaching the “inconvenience” of the “aisle chair” experience.
Ok, so you might have to wait a few minutes. Big deal.
If I was in a handicapped stall, and you showed up and said “Hey man, I really need to use the bathroom and this is the only one,” I’d try to stop what I was doing as fast I could and move to another stall. It’s the polite thing to do. Hell, even if you said nothing, I’d try to hurry it up.
But if you’re not sitting out there about to piss your pants, just chill out and wait. You’re not special.
One thing I’ll point out is that there are not that many wheelchair users using restrooms to begin with. It’s been years since I’ve even seen someone in a wheelchair in the restroom. So while obviously everywhere you go you have to deal with this, for everyone else, you’re asking that they alter their behavior all the time for the 0.01% chance that it will inconvenience a wheelchair user. It sucks, but that’s not reasonable.
You’ve said before that most other wheelchair-bound don’t use the restroom on the plane, but you do because of the way you train. Would you have all the airlines but these special seats on all their planes just in case you decide to fly with them?
You don’t read things very clearly. I said most other wheelchair users dont use the restroom because they CATHETERIZE. I don’t, that is why I need to use them. And I’m not the only one in such a situation. AND, this is not to say that wheelchair users in general don’t EVER use the bathroom on a plane, it’s just relatively rare. And just because I am the one who is experiencing these imbalances in regards to TRUE accessibility, that doesn’t mean that they aren’t things that need to be corrected.
I would argue that a fat person being forced to buy two seats and use a seatbelt extender and may, in fact, not even fit in the bathroom is subtantially more humiliating than your situation. I would argue that a very tall person who simply does not fit in a coach seat and has to buy First Class because of how long his legs are and may, in fact, not even fit in the bathroom is substantially more inconvenient and humiliating than your situation. It’s not on the plane itself, but what about the people of Arab descent, or even those who aren’t but to a moron look like they might be, who disproportionatly get pulled out of line for security screenings and ID checks just to get on the plane are far more humiliated than you are in your situation.
I have, in fact, met multiple examples of each of those situations, but you’re the first person I’ve ever even heard of being offended by being required to be pushed down the aisle. How many others do you know who is so offended by these circumstances? AFAICT, the vast majority simply don’t care, they accept it as a necessary part of their disability.
That is neither here nor there with my statement that you have the option to spending your money elsewhere on another form of travel, which, according to your OP, you will be doing from now on anyway.
Save the luxurious, relaxing dumps for the ones you take at home. We’re talking about public toilets here. I have the right to the access to usable toilets just like you do. And when you CHOOSE that stall when others are available to you, that access is compromised. I will and do wait, just like everyone does, when ALL THE STALLS ARE OCCUPIED. THAT is a fact of life. HANDICAP-ACCESSIBLE STALLS ARE STALLS OF NECESSITY. PERIOD. THis is not unfair, this is not “special treatment” for the disabled, this is leveling the playing field (and not even that really).
That isn’t always an option and you know this. Sometimes air travel is unavoidable. But yes, in all opportunities where I can avoid it, I will not fly on an airplane. Maybe I could have clarified this, but I felt that was relatively unimportant to the overall thread.