State Road 50, addendum

[mariness]

As usual, when I try to write about a real life thing when my mind is most definitely occupied by another real life thing, I mess up what I was going to say, especially when both are fairly closely related to the main issue, disability, and when I am finding myself angered to be talking about this crap yet again when, as I keep saying, I'd rather be talking about Falling Skies. (A nasty post about that show is brewing in my head, but, later.) I mean, I certainly was going to complain about the road conditions on State Road 50 – it's habitual by this point – but what I meant to focus on, instead of just mentioning as an aside, is that the article completely failed to mention wheelchairs and pedestrians.

This is fairly typical for the road. Without exception, arrangements have always been made for drivers to get through, but not wheelchair users, even though I live in an area with several wheelchair users. (At least five live on the four blocks of this street alone, to give you an idea, and a very disability friendly townhouse complex is right next to one of those intersections that has been mostly filled with holes for the past years.)

And this is fairly typical. Because unless we are right there when a decision is being made, we tend to be forgotten about. And even then.

Which brings me to the Hugo Awards. I watched bits and pieces of them on Saturday night and read the Twitter feed and laughed and enjoyed the happy Hugo moments and congratulated all of the winners, but as I watched I couldn't help feeling an uncomfortable tingle down my spine as each and every winner and presenter climbed up stairs to hand out/accept their awards.

No wheelchair access.

And based on Twitter and the various reviews/responses to the Hugos that I've seen, the only people who noticed were me and laurelhel.

I flashed back to a person representing another con, telling me, "Well, if you do decide to come and participate in a panel, we'll make sure that panel platform is ramped, or we'll have someone lift you up."

And then I flashed back to my college graduation ceremony where (for completely different reasons) I was on crutches, which meant a long, long pause while I struggled up the stairs to get my diploma (and since I graduated from a large class at Binghamton, this also meant realizing that approximately 20,000 eyes, maybe more, were on me, which made me feel faintly ill). But on the other hand, I'd gotten to and across that stage without anyone lifting me up.

Alas, out of sight, out of mind seems to be one of the chief operating principles here. I've noted that aside from the State Road 50 construction issues, much of my town is actually fairly wheelchair accessible – this because it's filled with fairly visible wheelchair users. And yet, even here, where you can always see us on what sidewalks exist, we live in a town with missing sidewalks, frequently hellish curbcuts, and a new shiny water fountain play thing opened up just this year that is surrounded by stairs, where the ramp was tucked out of sight, hard to find and difficult to see. Even here, we frequently can't cross or access the main business road.

Leading to the conclusion, alas, that visibility isn't everything.

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

No, political pressure is the other jaw of the pliers.

Ugh for your graduation. In the same situation I'd decline to accept the paper to avoid those eyes-eyes-eyes.

[mariness]

To be fair, I was getting honored -- most students didn't get to go up the stage at all - and I'd been really looking forward to that part. So it was something I wanted to do, right up until I did a number on my knee a couple days before graduation. Not one of my more intelligent moves, that.

[trouble]

Yeah, I've noticed that at other awards ceremonies and cons and presentations and the like. Dal at least asks students who are graduating to let them know if they can't climb stairs so that other accommodations can be made, but.....

And then, of course, the construction work. They regularly made whole blocks of Halifax unpassable for wheelchair users and it took multiple phone calls before anyone acknowledged there was something I was calling about.

[mariness]

Yeah, that but...

When I've called about the construction, I've been told that "lanes are open," which is true, but ignores the problem that it's neither safe nor legal for wheelchairs/mobility scooters/my trike to be on these lanes. I don't have a problem with the state accommodating drivers, mind you -- State Road 50 is a heavily travelled road mostly because drivers don't have that many alternatives. I just want them to remember that wheelchair users need to cross the road too. And drivers need to be ABLE TO SEE US, which right now, they can't. I was already hit by a truck because of this.

[trouble]

D: Oh my gosh. I hadn't heard, I'm so sorry. D:

[mariness]

This was a couple years back and the trike and I survived, although the trike needed some severe repair and was never quite the same afterwards, which is why I had to replace it this summer :(

The cops decided not to cite either me or the truck driver -- I was on the "sidewalk" and the truck driver honestly couldn't see me (and otherwise has an excellent safety record), and instead cited the intersection and complained again to the state of Florida, which responded with "lanes are open," ignoring the fact that the intersection has become one the most deadly in Florida even though everyone -- motorists, cyclists, pedestrians, wheelchair users -- is only creeping through it.

[brigid]

I was talking to a friend of mine about a now-defunct con-- Visions, I think?-- that had accessibility as a core tenet from its very inception. They routinely and from the first con did things like book accessible hotels and hire ASL translators etc because they knew that if they didn't codify it as essential to the con and the general FEEL and culture of the con from the start, it wouldn't happen.

[lauredhel]

Something that I don't think people get is the potential ripple effect of normalising universal design by putting it front and centre, whether or not you know about people with mobility impairments at your event/location. I hate the idea that backdoor accessibility is enough, because it isn't.

And it works for EVERYONE - the con/hotel is not to know that someone won't become injured or ill or impaired in the days or weeks leading up to the event, even if they didn't specifically ask for accommodations on whatever form was used to collect this data months before (says she, being all optimistic and stuff).

Which is quite aside again from the issue that we should have to "just ask" every bloody second of the day, where everyone else gets to just assume that the world will be accessible to them. Second shift, third shift, fourth shift... where does it stop?