Susan, I wrote an article some time back about matters of accessibility, emphasizing the humorous, but making sure that the bite was plainly evident. This thread reminded me that I was going to see if I could get the article published somewhere.
On one of the first trips my wife and I took after I would up permanently in a wheelchair was to a synod convention on the campus of a college in a nearby city. Barbara was conducting a workshop, and although I was a free-agent, I planned on attending a workshop on making sure that church buildings and other church facilities are accessible to the disabled. Oh, boy! On that trip alone, I found a whole catalog of things that had me banging my head on a nearby wall. I concluded that, to a large degree, people's hearts were in the right place, but unfortunately, they had all too often left their brains in the broom closet.
There was a mezzanine floor in the building where the accessibility workshop was being held. I took the elevator up, looked for the room number, and noticed that the room was down about six or seven steps. So I took the elevator down one floor and found the room up six or seven steps. As I sat there contemplating the irony of it all, a man asked me if he could direct me somewhere. I told him that I had planned to attend the accessibility workshop, but had discovered that the room it was being held in was—inaccessible.
He looked horrified! He smacked his forehead and said, "I'm the pastor who is conducting that workshop!" And, he noted, the Powers That Be had scheduled it in the most inaccessible room on the whole campus. He said that he would put a word in someone's ear about that, then he rounded up a couple of bully-boys and they lifted me, wheelchair and all, up the steps.
Needless to say, it became a very interesting and enlightening workshop!
He had a most interesting way of opening the workshop. He started by saying, "Well, well! I notice that over half of you folks are wearing prosthetic devices." This had people a bit flummoxed at first. Out of about twenty-five people, there was me in my wheelchair and a blind couple. Everyone else appeared to be able-bodied. Then he dropped the other shoe: "Over half of you people are wearing glasses. Now, honestly: how well would you get along if there were no such thing as eyeglasses?"
Without going into the half-dozen more head-bangers that I encountered on that trip (and dozens more subsequently), I have concluded that when designing for accessibility or when retrofitting buildings, architectural and construction firms need to have a list of people with various disabilities as consultants, to go over the plans and/or do a run-through before construction or retrofit is finalized.
I have both a manual and a motorized wheelchair. I've found many public restrooms where the manual chair is a real squeeze and despite it's tight turning radius (it can turn in it's own "footprint"), I can't get the motorized chair in at all.
I'm going to see it I can get that article published.