I just want to thank all of you. It’s comforting to know I am not alone.
Yep. There are some places that I just won’t go to, because those places are a pain to navigate for whatever reason. So I go to another place, one that’s more welcoming.
Back in college at Oregon State University, we had a wheelchair ramp that lead to the basement of Strand Agricultural Hall in the back. I could barely walk up it without holding onto the rails, it was so steep. It literally was the same length as the stairway that it was next too, it didn’t loop around, or start/end earlier at all. So dangerous, and so poorly designed. There WAS an elevator that went to the basement though, so I guess that’s how they got away with it.
are you sure it was a wheelchair ramp and not a hand truck ramp?
If you could manage to roll anything up or down that ramp with a handtruck, you’d deserve some sort of medal. The thing had to be at a 50 or 60 degree angle.
AFAIK, the ramp was completely useless, other than for making me and my friends laugh and constantly wonder what the point of it was.
Having had to retrofit a building to be ADA compliant, it is a pain to find out what needs to be done to be compliant - without going bankrupt. It is not just wheelchairs - it is crutches, blind, deaf, etc. The locality has some rules, the state has others and the Feds have their own. You can hire 3 consultants, and get different opinions from each one.
THEN you find out that your modifications create DIFFERENT violations of code in different sections. yaaarrrgggh.
Please note - this is minimal compared to what it is like to actually live with the disability. I am just saying that even the best intentions can get caught up in all of the steps necessary to be compliant.
Oh, they only assume that for ramps and heavy doors. Bathroom stalls, not so much. I used to go out with a friend who needed help transferring from her chair, and lots of places don’t have a handicapped stall large enough to accomodate a helper.
When I was out with my mom, we would often run into situations where she could get her chair into the stall, but couldn’t close the door behind her. Then she would barely have room to transfer to the toilet, and sometimes she needed help. My job was to lean over her chair and give her a hand if necessary, then hold the stall door closed.
One more huge pet peeve: restrooms that only have one toilet, but still have that toilet in a (usually too small) stall, even though the restroom door locks. WTF?
Not at all; I just said it didn’t make any sense to me. See, the parking lot where the handicap accessible spots were located had a two foot embankment directly in front of the spots (there are regular spots located next to the accessible ones). Now the users of the regular spots could get out of their cars and walk up a small set of steps to get past the embankment. The handicap parkers, however, had to go all the way into the middle of the parking lot and into traffic just to get to the front doors. Now why couldn’t a path have been made through that embankment in order to let the handicapped patrons safely access the building? They (the designers of the parking lot/building) made sure the able-bodied had a safe path, why not everyone?
Last year I was dating a girl, and we went to get something to eat at a Coney Island near my place (I know, Coney Island?? we were hungry). Typically I don’t eat greasy, heavy crappy food but we had had a long night the night before (out of town party) and what the hell? So I ordered some kind of western omelette, complete with hash browns, bacon and pancakes.
Well I was about 10 minutes into my feast when I felt a very ominous “gurgling” somewhere in my intestines. I knew all too well what that feeling was telling me; “Get yourself to a toilet immediately”. So I got the waitresses’ attention and I asked her where the restroom was. “Oh it right over th…Oh but let show you where the handicap accessible restroom is.” I thought this was good, if not a little surprising, an old Coney Island like this having two different restrooms, but hey, I was happy.
So she walks me over to the restroom door and I thank her and she is off. I go inside to find a very large bathroom. The floor is wide and open and I can do all sorts of wheelies and break-dancing on it (if I so choosed). However, I go to the stall door (there is only one) and find that I cannot even get my front frame through the door, much less my big wheels on the sides. I am getting to emergency status by this point.
I race back out to the waitress and tell her that the bathroom is not handicap-accessible. She looks at me incredulously as says “Sir, we have many patrons who use wheelchairs and we have never had any complaints.” 
I told her that I didn’t see how that was possible since no wheelchair could fit into the toilet stall. She repeated herself, this time a little more annoyed. The only thing I could think of to explain what she was telling me was that it was primarily older people who frequented this diner and those who used wheelchairs did so not because of spinal-cord injury (or other disorders) but moreso because of simple old age and frailty. So, when faced with this obstacle of the narrow bathroom door, they simple got out of their chairs. But I don’t know, it’s speculation on my part but I can’t think of anything else.
I went back to the table where my friend was still eating. I tried to make it through the rest of her meal and make it back to my place but I couldn’t. I shit myself right there at the table where my date was eating breakfast. And it wasn’t like I was caught off-guard or anything. I tried to take care of this. But because this Coney Island had “handicap accessible” toilet stalls which had no capacity of fitting a wheelchair, I was shit out of luck (pun intended).
Jamie, you’ve talked about scooting yourself around on your ass before, so was there no way you could have gotten yourself onto the toilet? I realize the stall was not accessible by your normal means, but this was a dire situation. I think before I did what you did, I would have asked a stranger to help me if I couldn’t have somehow hoisted myself up there.
The bathroom was empty and I was nowhere near the toilet. I couldn’t even enter the stall. And it’s difficult to describe here in print but such volatile movements like getting myself down from my chair to the floor and then pulling myself up to the toilet would have definitely caused me to have an accident. When I am in such a state, I have to be very careful not to make sudden, lifting movements of any kind. Even transferring from my chair to a toilet, in ideal settings, can be disasterous.
Forget handicap accessible for a moment. How about parents of very young children?
I spent a good deal of Saturday hanging out with a baby and his mother. It amazed me how difficult it was to move through the world. We met at a subway station, and the only way we could get out was by her carrying her son up the very narrow escalator and me dragging the pram up the stairs. I’m not sure how she could have done it on her own. Her best option would have been to go to another station and push the pram through narrow sidewalks and over wildly uneven bricks and cobblestones.
I’ve gotten a new appreciation for people who have to live in a mostly unaccessible world. Mad props to those of you who can manage it!
My mother has been known to need changing just from standing up. She doesn’t have any more mobility difficulties than those related to being 70 and having had “bad bones” her whole life, but tracking “where the nearest bathroom is” while out and about with her has become ingrained in the whole family. There was an incident recently when she was out with the 5yo, said “oh shit! :eek:” and the kid figured out instantly what the problem was and pointed her to the nearest bathroom, “hurry hurry hurry maybe we can get to that bar on time!”
There was at least one incident when she entered a bar, the bathroom was locked, she asked for the key and was told “customers only”. “Miss, I’m about shitting myself. I can do it in your bathroom or I can do it out here - your choice.” The waitress figured out it was best to hand the key over, yeah.
Combining that kind of required reaction times with a chair has to suck balls and then some 
Where are you that the subways have escalators but no elevators?
This particular one was the Green Line in Boston, at Government Center. Looking at the web site, it looks like about half of the stops lack accessibility features. This one has a wide escalator going down, but a narrow on going up. It was too narrow for a stroller.
I was expecting you to say London. It is getting better but I had a horrible time a few years ago finding a route I could use whilst using one crutch and a big suitcase on wheels.
They do say that Boston is the most European American city!
Really, so much of that construction is ancient, and most likely difficult to modernize. I’d hate to have to negotiate this city in a chair. I wonder how other cities rate.
Do NYC subway stops all have elevators?
ETA: Did you think I was talking about London because I said pram? I can’t think of a better American word for it.
That doesn’t surprise me. Boston’s mass transit is pretty darn good for the able-bodied; it’s reliable, fast, and pretty darn cheap. But I can’t imagine navigating it in a wheelchair.
I think most, but not all. You also need to check which elevators are out of service.
http://www.mta.info/accessibility/stations.htm
If you are on crutches you probably check the escalator status. That is a lot of stairs to go down on crutches.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/29/nyregion/subway-elevator-operators-dwindle-in-new-york.html
That’s cool that they have that.