angelbaskets
(?)Community Member
- Posted: Sun, 09 Aug 2009 21:32:27 +0000
I am questing 1,000,000 sunflowers. The reason for the quest is to raise Accessibility Awareness for the disabled. Approximately 1 in 5 people is disabled - 1 in 250 is in a wheelchair. This makes them the largest "minority" group.
Making a new building accessible adds less than 1/2 of 1% to the cost of the building. However there are a huge number of buildings being built every day that aren't accessible or if they are the entrances are thru the back of the building making the disabled feel like 2nd class citizens.
I hope with this quest to raise your awareness to how difficult it is to function on a day to day basis in the world when you see it from a wheelchair.
Imagine:
Having to wait for a bus to be sent just for you because the teachers forgot to request the wheelchair bus in the first place.
Being unable to sit with your friends at a show because you aren't allowed to have your wheelchair in the aisle.
Being unable to open doors for yourself because they are too heavy to pull from your chair.
Being told to sit off by yourself because the gym teacher thinks you are "unable" to do anything.
Being treated like you have a mental disability just because you are in a wheelchair.
Having to wait back stage thru an entire concert instead of sitting with the rest of your friends and watching the show from the front.
Being unable to go on the jazz band trip because it is a ski trip and the resort isn't accessible.
Dealing with people that block handicapped parking spots because there is no place else for them to park.
Having someone block in the back of your car so you are unable to load your wheelchair and drive home.
If you can imagine even a small iota of how any one of those things feels you might have a tiny insight into how important accessibility is - only on an every day basis it is multiplied by about a thousand.
Someone I love sees the world from between wheels and I know how hard every day is for them just to function in the "normal" world.
THANK YOU TO SHANYUME FOR POSTING THE FOLLOWING IN THE THREAD. I WISH MORE SCHOOLS ETC WOULD REQUIRE THIS AS PEOPLE MIGHT COME TO UNDERSTAND MORE ABOUT JUST A FEW OF THE OBSTACLES FACED EVERY DAY BY THE DISABLED.
I took a class on Universal Design as a part of my Interior Design program for my Bachelors degree. We had one eercise that required us to
1) wear black out glasses and try to get around with a walking stick or someone guiding us to note how much sounds affects us and textures of the floor surfaces.
2) wear glasses with a pin hole in it to know how it feels to see with tunnel vision and we were to throw a crumpled piece of paper in the air and catch it.
3) listen to a video where they give you directions normally, then have noise in the back, then muffle the persons voice to show us what's it's like for people who have trouble hearing.
4) wear gardening gloves and try to do normal things like typing and writing with a pen to show us what it's like to have limited mobility in our hands.
5) Walk around with ear plugs in which is self explanitory
6) go around campus in a wheel chair. We found out how inaccessable our campus really is, the slopes to get inside are too high. The button to open automatic doors were either hard to find or too far from the door. Threshholds going into one room were too high and if they were over 1/4 inch it was almost impossible to go over. In some areas it is just plain dangerous because of how steep some of the hills are. That and mosst bathrooms are too small to accomidate sufficient transfering space to use the toilet.