Comments on: Discrimination

By: William

William — Mon, 05 May 2008 02:52:18 +0000

I’m not disabled, but my wife is in a wheelchair, and when we had our house built, our contractor gleefully ignored our instructions on door sizes and framed them in such a way that her wheelchair wouldn’t quite go through. That’s irritating, but if you know my builder, it’s not at all surprising.

So I went to Home Depot to get some fallaway hinges for the doors, which would gain enough extra space that her chair would pass through without rubbing. I couldn’t find any, so I asked the Dude with the Apron, and from the way he reacted, you’d think I’d inquired as to the availability of yak bladders, not fallaway hinges.

Here’s a nationwide store whose “door and door hardware specialist” had never heard of anything like fallaway hinges. That just stupefies me and, even in my state of advanced cynicism, surprises me.

I don’t have a point, except for the obvious one that Home Depot is too busy selling credit cards to stock fallaway hinges or shower benches.

By: treadmarkz

treadmarkz — Sun, 04 May 2008 01:39:09 +0000

I meant “but we can’t use the ones that are not built for us (non-accessible stalls, for example).

By: treadmarkz

treadmarkz — Sun, 04 May 2008 01:30:57 +0000

But also, I understand what you mean when you said that there are things that are built for us, even though other people can use them too, but we can’t use the ones that are built for us. I have written the mandatory treatise on the handicapped parking/bathroom stall problem myself.

By: treadmarkz

treadmarkz — Sun, 04 May 2008 01:27:11 +0000

You know what I do when I go to the movie theater with my wife and the seats with the cut in space for me wheelchair to go are taken? I use another seat. I sit where I want to sit and I park my chair right in front of me. I pull it as close to me as I can so I don’t trip some innocent victim. But I sit where I want to sit. I mean, not absolutely where ever, but I don’t let that one space being taken ruin my movie going experience.
How do you recommend we make every seat accessible to us, and every seat on the bus accessible? You are right that every building should be getting to be made accessible. The ADA should make that happen. It doesn’t but should, and eventually may. But there are things that are going to come up and we as disabled people just have to realize that life is not perfect. We cannot scream discrimination whenever we find that it is not. Majority groups hate that, remember, and it gets us nowhere.