Harking back to the accessibility workshop that I attended at the synod meeting, during the discussion of church facilities installing ramps and such things as sound systems with earphones for the hard-of-hearing, one pastor commented that, as far as his church was concerned, all of this discussion was academic. There would be no point in his church going to the expense of building ramps or installing other facilities because there were no disabled people in his congregation.
Well, now! That's when I think I got in one of my better licks. I stuck up my hand and asked him, "Have you seen the movie 'Field of Dreams?'" (The movie had just come out a couple of years before). He blinked at me, a bit befuddled. Several other people smiled, nodded, and chuckled.
"I don't understand your question," the pastor said.
"'Build it,'" I quoted, "'and they will come.'"
Public rest rooms are veritable vortex of design boo-boos. I don't know about the rest of the world, but in this area, the rest rooms in McDonald's Drive-Ins are always reliable. Usually two booths, one standard and one large enough to back a wheelchair up parallel to the toilet, complete with raised seat and grab bars. Not that I eat at McDonald's all that often, but if I'm out and in search of a rest room, I can usually rely on McDonald's. Others, however. . . .
At that same synod conference, I made my way to a rest room that had the blue and white wheelchair logo on the door. It was indeed equipped with a wide booth, a raised toilet seat, and grab bars. But the booth door swung inward rather than outward. When I backed my wheelchair into the booth, I couldn't close the door. I wasn't concerned with modesty. The problem was that the door was between my wheelchair and the toilet. I couldn't transfer to the toilet because the bloody door was in the way! And I couldn't swing the door shut because it was blocked by my wheelchair. All they would have needed to do was mount the door so that it swung outward and it would have been fine.
I did manage to make use of the facility (desperation can inspire ingenuity) by removing my detachable footrests to decrease the size of my chair, swing my legs off to one side, and horse the chair back and forth several times like trying to squeeze a car into a very small parking space, until I was able to squeeze the door past the chair (removing a bit of paint from both!). When finished, I transferred back to the wheelchair and repeated the horsing back and forth until I got the door between me and the toilet again, reattached my footrests, and emerged from the booth like the Batmobile exiting the Bat Cave.
Now, my arms and shoulders are (were) pretty strong, so I was able to manage the contortions it took. But not everyone could have managed that.
Another public rest room I find most interesting is in the Cabrini Medical Tower not too far from where I live. The booth is plenty large, with raised seat and grab bars, and the door to the booth opens outward. Hosanna! Just as it should be.
But you have to enter a small alcove and make a ninety-degree turn through a narrow doorway to get into the rest room in the first place. Can't do it in a wheelchair!