And speaking of wheelchairs, there is the matter of those who allegedly design public areas for wheelchair access.

In a medical building near where I live (yes, a building full of clinics and doctors' offices!), the booth in the men's room is wide enough to easily accommodate a wheelchair, and it's complete with grab-bars. Very good! But the entrance to the rest room itself:   you have to enter a small alcove, then turn 90^o to get through the door to the restroom itself. There is not enough room in the alcove to turn a wheelchair 90^o! All the rest rooms in the building are designed that way. Useless!

This sort of thing is a common problem in private homes. The entrance to the bathroom is often a 90^o turn from a hallway, and both the hallway and the door are too narrow for the wheelchair to make a 90^o turn. A wider hall, or, easier, a wider doorway would solve the problem.

I encountered another rest room in a public building in which, once again, there was a large booth complete with grab-bars. The problem was that the door didn't swing out like they do on a properly designed wheelchair accessible booth, it swung in. So when you backed into the booth, the door was between you and the toilet. And with you and your wheelchair in the booth, you couldn't swing the door closed to get it out of the way. Again, useless!

It would be idiot-simple just to have someone who uses a wheelchair do a run-through on these things before declaring them finished. Or better still, have someone who uses a wheelchair involved in the design.

I've written a fairly long article on accessibility problems that I've run into during the past fifteen years, but it's too long to post here. Fairly humorous, but with a bit of a bite to it. I take a sort of Dave Barry approach to the problem. Gotta send it in to some appropriate magazine.

Don Firth