FWD/Forward » accessibility

FWD Retrospective Week: Accessibility Edition

Staff — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 16:00:34 +0000

Welcome to FWD retrospective week! We’ve taking a look back at some of our favourite posts on a variety of themes over the next week.

s.e. smith:

Accessibility Policies Done Right: The Legion of Honor in San Francisco

I think that this policy really speaks to the amount of activism which the disability community has been involved in across the Bay Area. In Berkeley in particular, people with disabilities have been very active and very outspoken and have played a major role in shaping policy and pushing for accessibility. The Legion of Honor’s policy isn’t the result of forward-thinking museum employees, it’s the result of pressure from the community and efforts to increase awareness of disability issues.

Accessibility Is So Much More Than Ramps

Considerations about accessibility and accessible spaces should be on the forefront of the mind of anyone tasked with building, arranging, or coordinating a space, not just people who need accommodations, and people need to expand the way they think about accessibility, actively seek out and solicit information to make the spaces they control better. People often seem to think that accessibility is something you add when someone asks for it, which presumes that people with disabilities will always ask for it, when instead, more commonly, we go ‘oh, that space isn’t accessible or there’s not clear information about accessibility, so I won’t bother attending that event.

I’m Disabled and I Vote

An estimated 20% of the population of the United States is disabled. That’s a pretty big percentage of the electorate. Given that we are not actually a hivemind, it’s safe to assume that we have some very diverse views on politics and that those of us who do vote probably vote very differently. Those of us who can’t vote would vote differently as well, if they were given an opportunity to do so. It’s important to make sure that these voices are heard, to ensure that votes are cast not only by people who can walk up the stairs to a polling place, stand at a polling booth, and interact with a touchscreen or paper ballot, but by everyone.

lauredhel

Am J Cardiol concern-trolling: “But mobility aids will stop them EXERCISING!”

Researchers are urging doctors to consider the risks of scooter use before making recommendations to patients invest in a scooter.

“*Doubletake*”, thought I. “Doctors should consider the risks? Doctors? Not, say, people with disabilities? Just doctors? Doctors should weigh up the risks before offering any options at all? Doctors should decide?”

It’s a scooter, not a Mack truck

Something I’ve noticed a lot since starting to drive a scooter is how TERRIFIED people are.

Activism suggestion: How about shade for “accessible” parking spots?

Parked cars in the Australian sun get way too hot at the best of times, no matter how able-bodied you are. But lots of people with disabilities have further issues with temperature regulation and/or high temperatures making them sick. People with spinal injuries can have major issues keeping their body temperature stable. People with multiple sclerosis can be made very ill very suddenly by overheating. People with CFS or fibro can have similar issues with temperature regulation or overheating. Head injuries or Parkinson’s disease or stroke or diabetes or lung cancer or extensive burns scars or who take certain medications can all reduce a person’s ability to stay safe in the heat.

Anna:

Accessibility is not an individual problem

We don’t act like putting a door in the front of our building is a favour we are doing. We assume that doors are necessary. And yet, people treat having a ramp to that door as a favour they are doing, when the ramp serves the same purpose: it allows people to come inside.

Politicians Care So Much They Make Their Message Nonsense

Every political party in Canada “cares” about “the disabled”. They really do. Each one has a little subsection of their website dedicated to explaining how they “care” about “the disabled”.

I think it would be awesome instead of telling me how much they cared, they’d show it. And one way of doing that would be subtitling their ads, so everyone can know what their message is.

abby jean:

How Can We Get More Bilingual Health Providers?

The report lists 39 distinct languages and almost 10,000 residents speak another language not on the list. About 29% of county residents are Limited English Proficient (LEP), which means they have some degree of difficulty communicating in English. All of these people will have some contact with the health care system at some point in their lives and ideally, at more than one point.

Shame and Blame with African-Americans and Mental Health: Let the Circle be Unbroken

To me, all of this suggests that the psychiatric profession hasn’t really figured out how to provide psychiatric treatment and care of the African-American population with the African-American individual’s best interests in mind. History speaks to using psychiatry to control, torture, sedate, and oppress African-Americans, even creating fictionalized diagnoses to help support the structures of slavery.

Spotlighting Kirstenbosch Garden!

Chally — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 00:00:45 +0000

Do you know, readers, it struck me that I have never posted about South Africa’s Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden? As the Garden is both stunning and disability friendly, I do not know how this is possible! I must correct it at once.

Kirstenbosch is set on the slopes of Table Mountain in Cape Town and, according to the website, ‘was the first botanic garden in the world to be devoted to a country’s indigenous flora’. It’s part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site!

Kirstenbosch is famous for its Braille Trail. Signed in Braille and large print along a guiding rope, the trail is designed specifically for blind visitors. You can read more about the Braille Trail here. It begins and ends with a fragrance garden, where the sensory emphasis is on touch and smell. Most of the garden is wheelchair accessible, including the Trail.

WheelchairThailand has a video called “Wheelchair access Kirstenbosch – South Africa”:

Video description: Video opens with a panning shot of a paved area surrounded by buildings. At the bottom is the word ‘Kirstenbosch’ in yellow. The next title is ‘Botanical garden Cape Town,’ then ‘Wheelchair friendly areas’ and then ‘South Africa’. Through this, relaxing music plays and there are shots of wheelchair users and non-wheelchair users moving about pathways, experiencing the gardens. There’s a shot of a green signpost, focusing on the ‘Braille Trail’ sign, and then a white sign titled ‘The Forest Braille Trail’. There are then shots of a Braille sign, the rope leading along the trail, and then some guinea fowl doing their guinea fowl thing. After that, we’re back to shots of wheelchair users experiencing the gardens. The ending title card says ‘produced by www.gehandicapten.com’

Address, contact details and operational hours are available here.

New book: Living the Edges: A Disabled Women’s Reader

lauredhel — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 04:50:25 +0000

Here’s a book for your list, if you’re celebrating a gifty holiday soon – or just splurge on it for yourself!

Living the Edges: A Disabled Women’s Reader, edited by Diane Driedger, was launched last week in Canada, and it should contain plenty of interest for readers of FWD/Forward.

The McNally Robinson book-launch blurb is as follows:

Diane Driedger has written extensively about the issues of women and people with disabilities over the past 30 years. Diane is an educator, administrator, activist, and researcher in the area of disabled women’s issues in Canada and internationally. She is also a visual artist and poet, and holds a Ph.D. in Education. She lives in Winnipeg.

This collection brings together the diverse voices of women with various disabilities, both physical and mental. The women speak frankly about the societal barriers they encounter in their everyday lives due to social attitudes and physical and systemic inaccessibility. They bring to light the discrimination they experience through sexism, because they are women, and through ableism, because they have disabilities. For them, the personal is definitely political.

While society traditionally views having a disability as “weakness” and that women are the “weaker” sex, this collection points to the strength, persistence, and resilience of disabled women living the edges.

A partial contents list, from Disability Research Forum reveals a whole lot of must-read articles:

“Feminism, Disability and Transcendence of the Body” by Susan Wendell

“Living on the Edges” by Charlotte Caron and Gail Christy

“Mirror Woman: Cracked Up Crazy Bitch Conja Identity” by Marie Annharte Baker;

“Margins Are Not For Cowards” by Cheryl Gibson;

“Triple Jeopardy: Native Women with Disabilities” by Doreen Demas

“Coming Out of Two Closets” by Jane Field;

“Performing My Leaky Body” by Julie Devaney

“To Be Or Not to Be? Whose Question Is It, Anyway? Two Women With Disabilities Discuss the Right To Assisted Suicide” by Tanis Doe and Barbara Ladouceu

“Living Poorly: Disabled Women on Income Support” by Sally Kimpson

“‘Have You Experienced Violence or Abuse?’: Talking With Girls and Young Women with Disabilities” by Michelle Owen

“The Geography of Oppression” by Joy Asham

There was an audio interview with Diane Driedger at CBC’s Weekend Morning Show last Sunday, in which Diane speaks of the book and of her experiences with invisible disabilities and workplace accommodations.

My transcript of the Weekend Morning Show interview, titled “Double Jeopardy”, is below the cut. All errors in transcription are mine.

Kerän [host]: Every once in a while, a brand new book appears on my desk, and I’m always keen to break open the envelope and see what a Manitoba author has produced this time. A few days ago, one arrived from Winnipeger Diane Driedger. It’s a compilation of stories from Canadian women. But these women, including Diane, share something in common. They each have a physical or an intellectual disability. The book is called “Living the Edges: A Disabled Women’s Reader”, and in it women write about what it’s like to be different in a world that seems to prefer nothing but normal. Diane Driedger’s on the line now: hi there!

Diane Driedger: Good morning!

Kerän: Well, for those of us who haven’t had a chance to read the entire book, what would you say it’s about? What would you say is in it?

Diane: Well, there are essays, and poems, and art from over forty women from East to West to North here in Canada, and it’s about the barriers that women with disabilities come up against in their daily lives. And most of these are imposed by society. Things like attitudes, that people don’t understand that perhaps you have limitations, especially if you’re a person who has invisible disabilities like myself: people often look at you and say “But you look so good! What do you mean, you need accommodations?” You know?

Kerän: What are your invi- do you mind talking about your invisible – ah

Diane: That’s fine! Yes, I have fibromyalgia, and I’ve had that for eighteen years. And I also have asthma, and I’m a breast cancer survivor, almost five years now. And what a lot of people don’t know is that breast cancer treatment in itself is also disabling to people in different ways. Chemotherapy and radiation is a big assault on the body. But all of these things mean that I have fatigue and chronic pain problems, and of course winter is really the worst time. And so living in Winnipeg you can imagine the barriers that are imposed within the environment here.

Kerän: And if was interesting that I called and said “Are you able to come down?”, and you said “Is it really necessary?” and I said “No, no it’s not necessary to come down, you stay at home” because I think it is hard for you, it is hard for you to get around in the wintertime.

Diane: Oh yes, I was just sitting here waiting for your call thinking “What if I had gone to the studio this morning? I think it’s minus 29 outside

Kerän: Mm hmm

Diane: Yeah. The body is feeling pretty creaky this morning.

Kerän: So’s mine.

[laughter]

Kerän: What do you think have been the most difficult barriers that you’ve experienced?

Diane: I would say, ah, there are a lot of barriers around employment issues. For people with disabilities in general, and for many of us women with disabilities who have invisible conditions it’s very difficult to talk with employers about accommodations and to receive them. Often people are wondering if you’re making up the story because you don’t wanna do work in a certain way. And for me, a barrier is, you know, I cannot sit at a desk nine to five any longer. Just because sitting is my worst position. My best positions are lying down and standing up. And because I do an administrative job, that becomes an issue. But my current employer has made accommodations for me where I work at home in the morning, and a lot of that work takes place with me lying down on the couch, talking on the phone, I write lying down, I read lying down, and in the afternoons I go to the office and talk with my staff and have meetings.

Kerän: And you’re the provincial coordinator for the Manitoba League for Persons with Disabilities, so they understand?

Diane: Yes.

Kerän: Listen, you’ve had some interesting experiences when you applied for jobs. And I found, when you were telling me about them, I found they were quite astounding. What happened to you?

Diane: Well, I think the one that really was quite astounding to me was about eight years ago I applied to a quite prestigious non-profit agency here in Winnipeg for a position. And I was successful, the director called and offered me the job, and then I asked for the accommodation of, I said, “Well you know I don’t think I can come into the office every day, I would like to work at home some parts of the time.” And then there was silence, and she said “Well, no, part of the job is you have to be in the office, because you have to be part of the team. And you can’t be part of the team if you’re not here in person.” So then she said, “Oh no, now we have to start all over again and look for somebody else.”

Kerän: So it was YOUR fault, that you caused the problem for her?

Diane: That’s right. Yes.

Kerän: And you focus on women in this book I think because – is it true that women, more women than men suffer from invisible disabilities?

Diane: Definitely true. There are a lot of these, what they call these “new disabilities”, right? Chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and then long-standing disabilities like lupus, depression (women tend to have higher rates of depression than men), those are just a few examples of conditions that are invisible but can be very disabling.

Kerän: Diane, over the years we have seen some changes, physical ones anyway, you know, we’ve made buildings and sidewalks more accessible. What – What do you want to see happen right now to change the attitudes toward invisible disabilities?

Diane: Well, I would like employers to understand that work can take place in any format, and work goals can be achieved often in different ways that we’re not used to, but we need to adopt a flexible attitude toward work: where it takes place, how it takes place. Particularly in this computer age, there should be no reason why we can’t have many more home-based employees who may not be able to get out as much. That’s my message: let’s think outside the box when it comes to work and how we work.

Kerän: Good thoughts to think about. Thank you so much!

Diane: Thank you!

Kerän: Alright take care.

Diane: Bye bye

Kerän: Bye bye.

Kerän: Diane Driedger’s one of the editors of “Living the Edges”. which is a disabled women’s reader. She’s also the provincial co-ordinator for the Manitoba League for Persons with Disabilities. And I’d like to hear from you on the subject. Are you someone with an invisible disability, or as Diane puts it someone with Double Jeopardy of being woman and disabled? What are your thoughts on this? Why are we not makign progress? Why are we still blind to the fact that the world doesn’t have to be full of “normal” people? That there is lots of room, and that room should be made for everybody no matter what the differences are? You can call our listener line 788 3102 or email us weekend@cbc.ca .

The book is $30 direct from the publisher (I think they’re Canadian dollars), $30 USD from Amazon, or $57 AUD from Emporium Books Australia. And if you’d like your local academic or public library to stock it, how about putting in a request to the librarian?

Constant Vigilance

Chally — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 20:00:44 +0000

To quote Harry Potter.

It’s difficult to separate out my life into the disability stuff and what life would be like without it. I don’t remember much of my life beforehand. Something I’ve been aware of for years is how distrustful ableism has made me.

I’ve been primed to be constantly aware of other people’s attitudes. I worry that people I’ve known for years think I’m exaggerating or lying when they ask how I’ve been. The sad thing is that this isn’t an unmerited fear. I have had people turn on me. I’m all too often aware of the need to watch what I say, watch people’s faces, watch my back. Because a rumour might start, or a friend might “forget” my access needs, or someone in a position of power might make life difficult for me. It can go wrong in a split second, and it has.

I’m not the most trusting person in the world in any case, but being disabled in this ableist world has taught me that complacency is something I cannot afford. I can’t expect that people will treat me like a person, and I can’t expect to go outside and not have to worry about accessibility issues all the time. That’s so terribly sad. And this constant vigilance is now so much a part of how I deal with the world, how I go about my day, that I don’t know how I’d go about teasing it out of myself, letting myself relax, even in the event that ableism and inaccessibility suddenly disappeared from society.

[Cross-posted at Zero at the Bone]

First UK Survey in 13 Years Reveals Significant Barriers to Participation in Society for Disabled Persons

s.e. smith — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 10:13:26 +0000

A Life Opportunities Survey in the UK, conducted for the first time since 1997, surveyed 18,000 Britons and the findings on disability are striking. (As are the way the headlines about the survey are framed.) Bottom line? There are significant social obstacles to full participation in society for people with disabilities, leading to increased isolation in comparison with nondisabled people.

There’s a reason we talk about the social model of disability a lot: Because it matters. Many of the obstacles encountered by people with disabilities are created by society, yet disability is framed as a personal failing, and we are told that it’s our responsibility to get the inclusion and access we need, even when this is functionally impossible. One person cannot fundamentally rejigger the very structure of society; I, for example, cannot singlehandedly make sure that every new construction in the United States, or even in my own community, is accessible, because there are too many obstacles in the way. Access and accommodations are treated as a tremendous hardship and a nuisance and disability is framed as a burden: On society, on family members, on schools, on hospitals. This contributes to persistent social attitudes about disability that make it harder for us to achieve inclusion.

This doesn’t mean we should just give up. But it does mean that looking at disability solely from the perspective of a more personalised model makes it inherently difficult to address a lot of issues impacting people with disabilities. Making the focus on individuals, rather than institutions, also allows society to get a free pass on the barriers it creates; it’s our fault, evidently, that we are more likely to experience poverty, rape, sexual assault.

In employment, 56% of adults with impairments experienced restrictions in “the type or work they did or the salary they were paid” compared with just 26% of the general population.

This income inequality severely disadvantaged those with disabilities. Almost a third of households with an adult with impairments said they could not afford a week away on holiday each year – compared with just one in five of other households.

Shockingly, 12% of adults with impairments experienced difficulty “accessing rooms within their home or difficulty getting in or out of their home” compared with just 1% of adults without impairments. (‘Disabled people ‘twice as likely’ to miss out on careers, courses and holidays‘)

The survey also found that stress is a significant contributor in the lives of many people with disabilities, and when you are disabled, you are much more likely to be living on the edge. From the same article:

An unexpected bill of £500 would leave 38% of impaired adults struggling compared with 26% of their able-bodied peers.

“It is hard to know whether this is because people with impairments have reduced incomes or because they have higher living costs,” said Howe.

I would note that the UK is also in the process of putting through brutal cuts to the disability living allowance, making financial hardship even more likely in the future. Writing at Comment is free, Sharon Brennan notes:

A disabled person’s disability will not go away just because the government has decided to save 20% on its DLA bill. The only change will be that those affected will have to fund the higher costs of living out of their own pocket. And these pockets are already threadbare. These cuts will affect a sector of society that the Disability Alliance UK states is already twice as likely to live in poverty as other citizens.

The Daily Telegraph took the ‘but disabled people really want to work‘ tack in its reporting, stressing the barriers to employment for people with disabilities and how this translates into increased financial hardship.

Almost half of households where at least one person had a disability (45 per cent) were unable to afford expenses or make loan repayments, compares to 29 per cent of households where no-one had an impairment.

Barriers to transport were also noted as a significant obstacle, whether people with disabilities are trying to get to work, socialise, or access an education. We are more likely to rely on public transport, for a variety of reasons, and we often encounter inaccessible transportation, essentially trapping us at home. This is a social obstacle, not a personal one. Wheelchair users, for example, are not inherently immobile; they are immobilised by inaccessible transit, by broken buses, by drivers who refuse to pick them up, by sidewalks that are not maintained.

The study also noted that some social obstacles, like high costs for housing and transport, impact nondisabled people as well. Addressing those barriers to access would benefit not just disabled members of society, but low income people in general. Making changes to work towards a more inclusive society, in other words, isn’t just about ‘the disability agenda.’ It’s about basic measures that would be helpful for all humans.

These results are being called ‘enlightening,’ which is what happens when you ignore people who have been shouting loud and clear for decades about barriers to social access, and when you decide that conducting surveys to learn more about the specific needs of the disabled community is so unimportant that you only need to do it every 13 years or so. These results are only ‘enlightening’ and ‘shocking’ to people who haven’t been paying very close attention.

Meanwhile, in the United States, another study recently released notes that people with disabilities are twice as likely to experience violent crime.

More Notes to Web Developers: How NOT to do RSS

s.e. smith — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 21:56:23 +0000

Way back in the dark ages of the Internet, I had a massive bookmarks file. And a few times a day I would go through bookmark by bookmark (this was before the heady days of ‘open all in tabs’) to see if those sites had updated. Then, people started generating feeds, and my whole life changed. Instead of laboriously checking for updates by hand, I could load those puppies into a feed reader and read at my leisure.

Massive time saver! Almost everyone I know these days uses a feed reader because it’s just not feasible to keep up with this stuff any other way. I heart my Google Reader very very ferociously (it’s in my quick access bar). There are numerous other RSS readers out there, of course, including desktop versions which look pretty neat. (I fear change so I will never adopt them, but I sure will comment about how purdy they are!)

But there are also some disability-centric reasons to want to use feed readers, like being able to control how content appears when it displays to make it readable. There are a lot of sites I just plain will not read because they are not just inaccessible, but they actively resist accessibility requests. Some people are less bullheaded than me and really want to be able to read what someone has to say even though that person says it in eight point dark purple font on a black background with random flashing animations. RSS makes that possible; you can adjust it to display however you like it best et voila, you’re happily reading again! The ability to file stuff to read later is also very handy for people with limited energy. Basically, RSS=accessibility win!

Which is why it really, really pisses me off when people intentionally break RSS feeds.

Perhaps the most obvious offender is truncation of feeds. I know a lot of sites that do this and I’ll tell you right now, when sites start truncating their feeds, I unsubscribe and stop reading. There are a lot of reasons why people truncate feeds and I understand the arguments behind it (it can prevent scraping, for one thing, and some people are worried about ads and pageviews), but I don’t support it. And in fact a lot of people argue against it, arguing that truncating feeds can actually cut down on traffic and make people feel like your site is not user friendly. I’d be interested to see some studies on traffic (and I suspect some commenters will have links for me!).

And, for some people with disabilities, truncated feeds means they can’t read your content. Not the stubborn people like me who won’t read you if you truncate, but the people who are using your RSS feed because they can’t access your site. If you’re going to make an inaccessible site, you might want to consider at least leaving your feeds whole so disabled people can read it. Unless you don’t give a shit.

Fixed fonts, images, and colours. One of the greatest things about an RSS reader is the ability to completely configure it. If you need white sans serif fonts on a black background, you can do that. If you need text magnification, you can do that too. Using RSS is awesome for this and it’s a terrific accessibility tool in that sense. That is, until people force specific fonts, colours, and sizes with HTML. I’d pull an example for you from my own RSS so you know what I’m talking about, except that I don’t subscribe to sites that do that. (I told you, I’m stubborn.)

A lot of people use HTML this way and it really pisses me off. They will often say pompous things about ‘artistic integrity’ and ‘thinking about design’ but, in fact, if you are a good web designer, you should be able to design a site that looks good at any magnification, not just in 10 point or what have you. In RSS, this is really frustrating, because your settings usually can’t override the imported text. Consequently, you end up with annoying things like vanishing text, etc.

Embedded ads. I understand why people feed ads to RSS. But I wish that a little bit more thought went into them, because, guess what, flashing ads in your RSS reader are as problematic as flashing ads on a website. So far I don’t think anyone has come up with a method for making interstitials that work in RSS, all thanks be to ice cream, but I suspect it’s coming. I use pretty aggressive ad blocking and even with that I encounter ads in RSS. One animated ad can shut down my brain for a surprisingly long period of time and I freely unsubscribe from sites that inflict them on me.

Images without alt tags, embedded videos lacking subtitles or transcripts. Guess what! They’re annoying on your website, and they are also annoying in your RSS feed! And by ‘annoying’ I mean ‘significant barriers to accessibility that inform disabled users they are not welcome on your website.’

RSS, as we know, stands for Really Simple Syndication. Make it simple for your disabled readers: Feed plain, full text, reject flashing ads, and commit to making image, video, and audio content accessible. This angry cripple, for one, will thank you.

Portly + Powerchair + Pedestrian = Panic

lauredhel — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 03:35:44 +0000

Ow. My head hurts.

And this is why.

Power chairs: older and fatter Americans are on the move – St. Petersburg Times:

“A man on a moped crashed into a man in an electric wheelchair the other night in the middle of Fourth Street. There on the front page of the paper was a police tape picture of one of those objects we see all over. The wheeled mobility industry calls it a power chair.

A what? A “power chair”? Wow, I’ve never heard of one of those before! Whatever could this “power chair” item be? What is it for? Should I be frightened? It’s something to do with teh fat, right? Cos there’s “fatter” up there in the headline.

They’re everywhere, it seems, dotting the downtown streetscape, a kind of ant trail from the condos to the Publix and back.

The temptation is to declare these are the new symbols of this city. Used to be folks sitting on green benches, God’s waiting room and whatnot, and now it’s folks sitting on … these.

Truth is, though, power chairs and mobility scooters are far from just a Florida phenomenon, and mishaps are not unusual.

WHAT? These … contraptions … are in places OTHER THAN FLORIDA too? SOMEbody really did just discover powered mobility devices for the first time. And they’re not happy.

[...] Electric mobility devices, or EMDs, are everywhere because of trends in geriatrics and bariatrics. Those are the portions of the health care industry that deal with old people and fat people.

This is America, getting bigger and older, fatter and grayer, rolling into the future.

[Snip prolooooooonged agonising - they're not quite motorised vehicles, they're not quite bipeds, what do we CALL them? How do we TREAT them? The sky is falling!]

They don’t need to be registered, after all, and they don’t have state plates. And what about the people in them? They don’t need a license. Does that make them pedestrians? They’re clearly not using their feet.

[More agonised whining. Did you know that now and again, old people drink alcohol? Shocking, I know.]

State law also says sidewalks are for pedestrians. No motors.

Hmm.

Reeeeally? Are you sure about that State law? Did you, say, look up what “pedestrian” means? Here’s a clue, from a the 2010 Florida Code, TITLE XXIII MOTOR VEHICLES, Chapter 316 STATE UNIFORM TRAFFIC CONTROL , 316.1995 “Driving upon sidewalk or bicycle path”, which I found with a 60-second Google search:

(1) Except as provided in s. 316.008 or s. 316.212(8), a person may not drive any vehicle other than by human power upon a bicycle path, sidewalk, or sidewalk area, except upon a permanent or duly authorized temporary driveway.

(2) A violation of this section is a noncriminal traffic infraction, punishable as a moving violation as provided in chapter 318.

(3) This section does not apply to motorized wheelchairs.

Section 3 is fairly recently clarified, but it’s clear from other law sites that motorized wheelchairs were considered pedestrians by custom before the clarification.

Now that that’s settled, back to the “older and fatter” article:

This is to say nothing of the fact that the manufacturers of EMDs say (even if they don’t really mean) that their products aren’t meant for outdoor use. Medicare, which last year paid out $547 million for power chairs, won’t pay for an EMD unless it’s specifically meant for indoor use.

Did somebody not quite bother to, oh, I don’t know, talk to an actual person with a disability? Somehow who, say, I don’t know, maybe…. uses a scooter or powerchair?

No, let’s just assume that the ridiculous requirements of subsidy schemes, which assume that PWD are confined to quarters at all times, must reflect reality. Crips, right, they oughtta stay indoors, y’see? Because others enabled folk will NOT KNOW HOW TO DEAL with their freaky wheelymobiles. AWOOOGA.

Newsflash, folks: We crips go outside. We go to the shops, to the library, to the doctor, to friends’ houses, to bars, to restaurants, to arts events, to work, to university, to our kids’ schools and friends’ houses and sporting matches. And some of us go on wheels. And – shock, horror – there are wheeled mobility devices made for our outdoor needs. There are even wheeled mobility devices made for rugged terrain and hiking trails.

Yes, there are also products designed mostly for indoor use (personally I wouldn’t want to deal with a three-wheeled scooter outdoors, not with our sidewalks, but YMMV.) Those are generally marked “For indoor use”. To differentiate them from, oh, I don’t know, the products that are designed for outdoor and indoor use.

Do you not believe me? Do you need some examples? Here are some just from my local vendor [they don't pay me, I'm just a happy customer]:

The SHOPRIDER™ 889E represents prestige and class combined with unparalled stability and style, all at an economical price. The four 330 mm tyres provide added safety and comfort when utilised for any outdoor activity.

Traditional rear-wheel drive and compact design enable the FPC to easily manoeuvre and negotiate many obstacles both inside and outside the home.

The SHOPRIDER™ 778ER not only manoeuvres well indoors, it is also ideal for the open spaces provided outdoors.

The SHOPRIDER™ 778DXD allows you to travel in comfort and style to all the favourite outdoor activities you enjoy.

This St. Petersburg Times article, if the published product bears any resemblance whatever to what the journalist wrote, is just ignorant, unresearched twaddle. Not even poorly researched. Unresearched.

Moving on, the article hits the usual fat epipanic buttons:

[...] Meanwhile, two in every three Americans are overweight, one in every three is obese, and childhood obesity has tripled in the last 30 years.

‘We’re going to see more and more people riding around in scooters and wheelchairs,’ said Mike Moran, the executive editor of a leading home medical equipment trade publication, ‘because we’re going to see more and more old people who can’t walk and more and more heavy people who can’t walk.’

And there are no other categories of mobility device user. They are:

1. OLD;

2. FAT.

Do you know what words this article doesn’t use, not even once?

“Disabled”.

“Disability”.

“Disabilities”.

Their only mention of disability is to briefly mention that in the UK some people call motorised mobility devices “invalid carriages”.

And here’s the kick in the tail:

And last month, at a medical equipment trade show in Atlanta, Moran saw a product on its way to market that made him gasp.

‘Oh. My. God,’ he said. A power chair for a 600-pound person.”

I can’t help wondering if this quote is massaged or invented. Because Mike Moran‘s publication, HME News, carried an article back in 2003 with the following quote:

Bariatric bed frames and support surfaces are now being reinforced to handle up to 1,000-pound patients. “We have a lot of patients in the 600-pound range and 400-pound patients are very common,” one vendor said.

And in 2004, an article at his publication referred to a code for a powerchair with a capacity of up to 600 pounds:

EXX16-Bariatric, Captain’s Chair (patient weight capacity equal to or greater than 450 pounds up to and including 600 pounds) frame motorized/power wheelchair.

And alllllll the way back in 2002, they referred to an actual product, a powerchair with a weight capacity of up to 1000 pounds.

Mobility equipment is nothing new, fat people are nothing new, mobility equipment for fat people is nothing new (on account of if there are fat people, there will be fat people with disabilities), and I’m finding it incredibly hard to believe that this item is any sort of novel concept for someone running a medical equipment trade publication. I would find it much easier to believe that he is disgusted, because people are arseholes, but surprised? Nope.

Wonder if he knows they’re depicting him as a gormless twonk who doesn’t know his own business?

And d’ye know what the fart icing on the shit cake of this article is?

The caption on their image reads:

A man in a motorized wheelchair legally crosses Second Avenue S, just west of Fourth Street S in St. Petersburg.

Oh noes! A wheelchair user is legally crossing the street! Outdoors, in the room with the big blue ceiling! On a PEDESTRIAN CROSSING! Sie’s not even using hir FEET! How could this possibly be LEGAL?

[Cue internet cake-farting fetishists. They'd be more interesting than this contemptuous clueless claptrap.]

Disabled? Don’t Plan On Driving to the 2012 London Olympics

s.e. smith — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 21:00:39 +0000

This post has been edited with updated information.

Here’s a completely bizarre policy move for you: Planners of the 2012 London Olympics announced today that a request to allow disabled ticket holders to use the games lanes set aside for athletes and dignitaries will be turned down. 100 miles (161 kilometers, if you must) of roads are being set up with a prioritised scheme to move official Olympics traffic along¹, and disabled drivers don’t get to use any of those, although they might have benefited from the accommodation, avoiding the stress of traffic or inaccessible public transit.

The reason?

…it would not be possible to distinguish between bona fide ticket holders and disabled drivers using the lanes illegally.

That’s right. Because there’s a possibility that a person with a blue badge might use one of the games lanes without necessarily holding a ticket to the games, the organisers have decided to just go ahead and bar all blue badge holders from the lanes. This reminds me of a lot of the ‘fraud prevention’ policies when it comes to disability benefits; everyone’s got a passel of stories about ‘benefits cheats’ or people who use placards without ‘really’ being disabled, and thinks governments ought to move the earth to prevent even one person from falsely claiming benefits, even if the expenses of programmes aimed at addressing fraud far outweigh the payouts in terms of catching people.

We talk about placard panic here a lot, and there’s a reason for it. The media likes to devote utterly absurd amounts of attention to the idea that there are scores of people out there using disabled placards to get away with sneaky sneaky things, like parking closer to the grocery store. There seems to be a very common assumption that a car with placards should be viewed with suspicion because the driver is faking or someone is using placards for a family member of any number of other things, and the level of parking and driving policing that goes on in the media while ignoring other stories of far more importance and relevance is pretty breathtaking. This, of course, reinforces social attitudes and encourages media consumers to also get involved with placard policing.

It’s things like that that lead to decisions like this, where out of fear that a handful of people might abuse their disabled placards to take advantage of the dedicated lanes, people decide to just bar all disabled drivers from those lines after a reasonable request for accommodation. Including, I’m assuming people attending and competing in the Paralympic games, if the policy about the games lanes is taken to its logical conclusion. Which is, uh. Yeah. Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Caroline Pidgeon, quoted in this article, puts it well:

When less than one in four Tube stations is wheelchair accessible it is appalling that the ODA have ruled out such a modest proposal.

So, basically, what organisers here are really saying is that they think disabled people shouldn’t bother attending the Olympics. For some people interested in attending, I’m sure that getting to various events was a concern, and being able to use the games lanes would have made it easier and more possible. Have an interest in sports? Too bad. Your kind are not wanted here. Which is interesting, since the organisers have indicated they are interested in accessibility issues; for example, there’s a discussion about making volunteering accessible, and their website has an accessibility statement. I guess accommodations only go so far, eh?

Methinks either the right hand knoweth not what the left hand is doing or someone has some seriously confused priorities.

I would note that Londoners are already not very stoked with this idea; congestion is a serious problem in the city and many people are concerned that the Olympics will make it functionally impossible for people who actually live and work in London to go about their business. This has been a problem for other Olympic hosts, as has the very high cost of costing compared to limited returns, but that’s a different kettle of fish. ↩