What would a disabled-friendly world look like?
Gwai
Epiphanies Host
[Note: Please assume for the purpose of this thread that we want to build a world that supports all disabled people without making them fit into a "normal" world. This is not the thread to argue about financial practicality.]
What would it look like if all disabilities were properly accommodated? I know that being really farsighted in one eye is not a problem for me unless I want to go to the Moon. I can literally do everything else I would ever want to do. That's proper support. But I can't even imagine what a world would like like if it supported people (like me) with clinical anxiety that way. Certainly it would accept panic attacks, but I think it would be more than that. Maybe it wouldn't cause as much anxiety in people? How?
Maybe we can generalize too about what a disability-friendly would look like. I know that yesterday I told someone that we didn't call people 'special needs people,' they were people who may have special needs. And I received a beautiful correction. "We like to say we have human needs." She was right, her needs aren't special though they may be statistically less common. So how should we meet human needs?
What would it look like if all disabilities were properly accommodated? I know that being really farsighted in one eye is not a problem for me unless I want to go to the Moon. I can literally do everything else I would ever want to do. That's proper support. But I can't even imagine what a world would like like if it supported people (like me) with clinical anxiety that way. Certainly it would accept panic attacks, but I think it would be more than that. Maybe it wouldn't cause as much anxiety in people? How?
Maybe we can generalize too about what a disability-friendly would look like. I know that yesterday I told someone that we didn't call people 'special needs people,' they were people who may have special needs. And I received a beautiful correction. "We like to say we have human needs." She was right, her needs aren't special though they may be statistically less common. So how should we meet human needs?
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Is that the sort of thing you mean?
I don't expect all such rentals to be compliant, but in reviews of places I stay I will indicate whether the rental is friendly.
In my house we did make it more disabled friendly. Our front entrance has two inclines, one from the road, the other from the driveway, with no steps. While we do have a mother in law type apartment on the lower part of the house, the outside path also has no steps to contend with.
In my book, there is a difference between compliant and friendly. Compliant means strictly according to local laws and regulations, friendly means accommodating as much as possible given the limitations of the facilities.
This is why I fear that the question is meaningless. Spaces can only be friendly to the people wanting to use them - it's not possible to have a universal setting where everyone will be equally welcome.
Some mobility impaired people prefer steps, as do many with balance issues. Slopes can be scary if you feel like you're going to fall backwards or forwards all the time. There is always, everywhere, a cost to someone.
That is true. Just the other day, I boarded an airport shuttle that had a ramp stowed at the entrance to the shuttle. The way it was stowed would have made me step up on an incline that I would not have been comfortable with. I asked the driver to put down the ramp which helped me walk into the shuttle.
While I am at it, I don't particularly like the mobility services at most airports, but I have to use them because I walk so slow and usually there is some distance between the terminal and the gate the plane is departing from.
But, now, I am of the age where I can claim I am 75ish and not have to strip down at security.
I did think of that after I posted it - I'd welcome brighter lighting but there are times when I love a dimmer atmosphere, especially in restaurants, as it's more relaxing. Unless they do some kind of set hours like the "quiet hours" in some supermarkets where lights and noise are turned down or off as appropriate, I don't think there can ever be any universal solution.
This is precisely what I had in mind when I talked about spaces being friiendly to the poeple using them. The potential for adaptation is the key here, therefore.
"Changing places" are fabulous but they are few and far between.
I think the best compromise is often to accommodate different people in different areas or at different times; for example, have the lights on at one end of the hall but not the other (as long as you can exit from either end). Or have a cinema screening one afternoon when it’s advertised as a quiet environment, and on another when it’s advertised as a safe space for people to be able to make a noise if they need to.
*loud tablet, bright noises, high physical activity
**very very quiet every music, hard to hear when you're next to it, dark lights, soft-sensory clothes
@MrsBeaky Not enough people will do it by choice but in practicality larger changing spaces like Huxley needs would make life easier for many parents too. Almost every parent I know has complained how hard it is to change a wriggling toddler on a changing table that barely fits them. A table that would support Huxley would be so much more pleasant!
I also think gadgets could potentially help with the incompatible needs issue - for example glasses you set to you preferred light level - that then dim when it’s too bright for you and light inside the frame when it’s too dim.
Adaptive technology
Access to information in any format needed
Based on input from people who actually deal with these human needs regularly, not what a single person or "team" dictates.
Access to information:
I have recently made a book I want to read a test case. I don't have to read it. It's expensive, and I don't want to own it, although there is a digital version available. I can still read printed books for rather short stints with help from my trusty bar magnifier. But there will come a time.....and how many other people already cannot.....I use a lot of digital books that I can either listen to with text to speech apps, or read enlarged on one of a number of screens.
I have exhausted nearly all the normal borrowing options a normally-signed, and a print-disabled person might use. It's a good time in my life to make this a test case.
An ideal world includes equal access to information for everyone.
At various key points escalators I needed were out of order and the only disabled toilet I could reach on a train was out of order.
Abled people had a choice of stairs or toilet facilities they could easily use and I couldn't.
If disabled provision is limited it easily becomes no provision at all and there's no fines for having stuff that's unreliable or limited and not having help or alternatives available.
The attitude is very often what determines the quality of the experience. I am blind in one eye and have poor sight in the other, as well as the risk of a detaching retina. It isn't obvious that I am struggling since one spectacle lens is tinted and I don't as yet need a cane. Like many others who have lost the sight of an eye, I have no depth vision. Often when I am in an unfamiliar place (an airport, restaurant, shopping mall) and ask if the steps are the same height all the way down (because uneven steps throw me off balance), the receptionist or assistant will brush this aside and say, "Oh you'll be fine." Or, "I've never noticed so I'm sure it's not a problem." Dismissiveness and minimising makes it harder to advocate for oneself.
What @Louise said: "If disabled provision is limited it easily becomes no provision at all," resonates with me too. So often I see that restaurants have created sloping walkways for those in wheelchairs or put in handrails, but somehow the designer has overlooked the small step into the cloakroom because they assume everyone has depth vision and can see that drop. No notice on the door, no luminous strip. And when I complain, they say they'll make a note of it and nothing happens.
In a more disabled-friendly society, those with disabilities wouldn't get so tired of addressing the same problems and oversights again and again.
If the mall entrance can have a sensor that opens the door automatically, why can't the hospital, post office, city hall, the bank, and the library have them?
Oh, and a repair ambulance service that actually keeps the door in operating order at all times.
Is accommodating everyone's needs always mutually compatible?
@Gwai mentioned wiggly people and people with a need for peace driving each other crazy. We withdrew eldest Cnihtlet from elementary school because the school couldn't accommodate her need for peace and quiet in the classroom. She'd have done well in a 1950s classroom with rows of desks and silence, but was not compatible with the "chatter while you work" policies of the local school.
If you need to talk, and I need you to not talk, I don't see how we can both be accommodated in the same place. "Reasonable accommodation" would seem to have to include both spaces where noise was accepted, and places where silence was the rule.
I'll also echo @MaryLouise's point that asking people what they need, rather than making assumptions about them, is a great place to start. Greeting someone with "how can I help you?", and actually meaning that, perhaps?
I recognize @Gwai's comment about adjusting lights in my own house. I'm not sure that any of it really rises to the level that you'd call "disability", but some members of my household like to have dim lights first thing in the morning and when they're preparing for bed. I can't abide the dinge, and want spaces that are either brightly lit or dark. Sometimes, we can just go to different places, but that doesn't work when everyone has to get ready at the same time in the morning. So we make do as best we can.
While not ideal, some pushchairs are narrower than wheelchairs so may be able to take advantage.
(They're not great for kids on inline skates or micro-scooters either, but I'll let you decide whether that's an advantage or a disadvantage.)
Absolutely true. I'd say that a world that accommodates disabilities definitely means being more understanding than most people are these days. My eldest needs a lot of quiet, truly needs it. My middle child needs to move, stim, and be generally active. They both know that they have the right to express their needs. Fortunately we have enough space that usually they can both have what they want and need in separate rooms. Sometimes when we are stuck together they can't. We have to compromise, but we do it without implying that quiet is actually better or moving and stimming is actually better.
https://stamma.org/your-voice/technology-what-goes-around-comes-around
It's not an either/or situation, anyway. Putting the bite out of the pavement somewhere with more room for self-expression benefits pushchair users as well as wheelchair users.
It's not just things like that, anyway. My mother-in-law's bath had a handrail installed to help her get in and out. I tried to use it myself once and nearly dislocated my shoulder, because it was installed too close to the end of the bath for anyone to use it as leverage, let alone a frail 80-something woman. This is what happens when 'accessibility' is approached as a box-ticking exercise, with no thought for how these 'accommodations' are actually going to be used by the people they are intended for.
I fully understand and empathise, but may I suggest *not solely* voice activated? I have arthritis in my hands and using voice control makes a tremendous difference to my working life in particular.
Fully understood! It's when there is only one way the geeks think things should operate that the trouble starts!
I did exagerate a little in the article to (hopefully) make it a fun read, but my grandchidren's Alexa is a nightmare!
On a positive note, our church commuinity is great and I have no problems giving homilies, public prayers and reading the lesson, etc. Lecturing though, can still catch me out. A sympathetic, or empathetic audience is crucial. I hate, and avoid, Zoom meetings, which now, alas, seem to becoming the norm. Ugh!!!!
Oh, it's not the geeks. It's the "user experience" people who get to own most of this.
On which front, I'm ready for my regular defenestration of Microsoft Windows. The stupid thing won't tell you, in plain language, what the problem is, because it thinks you might be scared of technical language or some similar nonsense. So what you get is useless anodyne statements like "something went wrong". Well, OK, but what didn't work? If you give me some sort of a clue, perhaps I can find the thing that didn't work, but it's determined to hide all the useful information.
During the pandemic, we spent a lot of time with zoom's auto-transcription running. It didn't do too badly with most UK and US accents - although it regularly ballsed up the technical language, there was enough context to figure out which vaguely similar sounding word had been substituted for the one that's randomly out of place. But then one of the Russians started talking, and what came out of the transcription was complete garbage.
Here's a small sample:
Almost none of these words were actually used by the person in question.
My personal issue with voice activation is that my little google box doesn't understand foreign languages. You ask it to play some piece of music with a foreign title, and it gets hopelessly confused and produces a random song I don't want. Sometimes, imagining how a stereotypical monoglot American would sound out the title works, but usually that fails, too.
14:28:32 So your permission system and but issue okay well you can just picture here, you can see how easy it is and stick out those files.
14:28:50 And I think we can just my proposal how we can move.
14:28:56 Eg and live in studio for outside on the mega parallel to the call me though. Roger clear or resoundingly led to healing speeches, we have the Cambridge.
14:29:10 Chicago you about your teachers, as you just spring.
14:29:18 More no Lou, and we're just moving in the direction, this is Prince William, well Gigi. And Linda fish. Either we can create tasks for you to get into my bloodstream."
Surreal!
Mind you, Mrs RR, (who has minor hearing difficulties) maintains she's heard worse sermons! Our church PA is not of the best, the mikes often are on the blink and Fatherincharge's diction is not the clearest.
I often have to explain the Sunday homily later. It's usually, I tell her, "about wives obeying their husbands." "Mega parallel good stream", she replies (I think), "No more lou".
Sounds like Ulysses
I can fit the words (just!) to 'The Times they are achangin'. Wow!
... And it pays to read, very carefully, how the Dragon has transcribed your dulcet tones. This very morning, a sentence about the 'working on the master version' was transcribed, well, interestingly, as 'working on the m*****bation.'
Oh, the fun and dangers of AI!
Yes, and to this I would like to add (I'd like to scream it at non-disabled folks who seem blasé about it), if your restaurant or doctor's office says there are handicap-friendly bathrooms, why do I have to risk getting hit with a heavy door as I'm trying to maneuver a two-wheeled walker? Seriously, I had that issue present itself twice today and half of the reason I feel so awful and exhausted 24/7 is having to deal with terribly designed handicap spaces! Don't even get me started on the annoyance of women's public bathroom stalls. Men seem to have designed these stalls to fit willowy sylph-types with a size 4 waistband! I don't blame ALL men. Just the clueless, skinny, never-been-sick-in-my-entire life types. Grrrrr!
I have been very blessed lately by the manager of the building where I live. She asked me how many safety bars I needed for my bathroom! And what actually got installed (after two months of waiting and worrying about me falling in the bathroom!) this week was three very big, very heavy-duty steel bars. One on the outside of the shower, near the toilet and two others in the shower. I was taken aback that a manager of a subsidized apartment building would actually listen to what I said I needed...
I'm actually surprised at the variability in size I encounter in public bathrooms. I'd think there would just be one standard size, but that doesn't appear to be the case.
@Lily Pad I'd like to augment your request for automated openers on all doors with a request to have those doors not automatically open just because someone happens to be hanging around near the door. I'm not entirely sure how best to fix this. Ideally, you want doors that open as people approach them with the intent to pass through, but do not open when people are merely loitering next to the door. I suspect you may be able to do this relatively inexpensively with a camera and a small computer, but fear that in practice, such a system might develop a habit of interpreting slow-moving people as loiterers who do not want to pass through, and so end up trapping the elderly and disabled inside.
Tricky for someone ) (like me) who stammers. Especially on vowels and 'S's'!
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/autism-pleasantville/transcript/
There’s an interview with Magda Mostafa, a professor of design and architecture for autism at the American University in Cairo (who according to the script 'created the world’s first set of research-based design guidelines for autism') about designing indoor and outdoor accessible spaces and discussion of that in schools and hospitals and public space.
Maybe some day things like 'escape spaces' or 'sensory zoning' might become a normal part of building design?
IME, if someone is autistic and finds some variety of plastic crap to fidget with helpful to them, they bring their preferred plastic crap with them, because it's relatively small and portable. It's much more difficult to bring your own "not having so many people in here".
However, in practice I've found the types of efforts at inclusion in schools are akin to someone having cancer and turning up to hospital and getting the diabetes treatment instead, because that's what the staff have been trained to provide. I live for the day when a parent walks into a school to tell staff their kid will be away due to injury or prolonged illness and the Principal will say. OK, we know what to do to help them.
It's been an endless frustration to me that kid was expected to attend school, and for us to participate in the process as described above. That was more harmful than helpful.
We also had to try to work around going to treatment both locally and interstate and keeping up with learning. Hospital schools exist for kids (but they are at their sickest when admitted) and not a lot of understanding about illness in schools. Outreach nurses do visit the schools, but I think there is a tendency for school to keep things in house and not consult outside their own department. Siloes are causing real harm.
Kinder teacher was taken aback when doing group work with the class about fears, when my kid said they were afraid that they would die. I'd have thought that might have been a given. Perhaps they didn't expect the kid to articulate it so clearly. Psychologists only employed part-time and not really doing much to be helpful from our perspective.
Kid also got many infections whilst at school and spent most holidays in the hospital. The whole thing was a poo fight. As well as impacting badly on the child it was also an awful time for their sibling and really, they were not supported at all, except in their last year of school where one teacher and one of their peers "got it". That's a long time to be invisible in the system and to be relying on over stretched parents to be filling all the gaps.
Much learning support was thrown back onto charities or relying on the goodwill of teachers. The post transplant period x 2 at home was mostly served by us, or the solution was the enrol into the school of distance education (which local school of one similar friends was told meant they couldn't maintain their local enrolment as well), we were phoned and asked to give up our child's place in the local school when the school results were highly rated after standardised testing results were made publicly available. Of course I indicated that I would go to the media were we pressured about this. Oh the fun and games.
From our perspective the whole illness things in schools is treated as an inconvenience to them and not from the perspective of the student and what might be best to engage their learning or ensure their social needs were being met.
Things are changing, but I suspect at snail's pace and nothing changed at al over the 13 years my child was in the education system.
I can't do Pride because the events are all *so*loud*, which frustrates me.
Fortunately the Beefeater our extended family regularly has breakfast knows us now and turns the piped music down in the corner where we're seated.