As a mother of disabled children, I can fully appreciate all of the upgrades that the ADA has provided to make it easier for disabled people to get around in the city. There are tweeters on the crosswalk signals, so that the blind can know which direction is safe to cross in. There are little rails in every bathroom, so that people can raise and lower themselves onto the thrones, there are doors that open automatically at the push of a button. If you are in a motorized scooter, you can drive around town in that, because every sidewalk curb has been gently sloped for ease of rolling.
These can be some very wonderful additions to any town and city, to make life easier for those already struggling to adapt to a normal life with big obstacles. When I see businesses that are ADA Compliant, I notice and I thank them by spending a bit of my hard earned money there. I do the same when a place goes a step above the rest, and offers something that is not required, but is useful.
I am really struggling with a few things though. In our area, there is a guy who is not disabled, who goes around everywhere, and sues businesses that have something that is not 100% compliant.
"Wow! That is some dedication! What a noble cause!" Right? Well, because of his lawsuits, some places have shut down, and others have had to find a way to comply. If these were major issues, I wouldn't care, but now they are affecting MY disabled children in a bad way.
For example:
My mother lives in a gated community. There are special handicapped units, with wider doors, lower counters, open shower, and handrails. The parking space is less than 20 yards from the door of the apartment, and you can roll there without hindrance, as well as all around the complex, and into the pool area. The pool and spa had to be fit with taller hand rails for entering the pool, and that was done. Once upon a time, the pool has a bathroom, where a person could go potty while spending time in the pool area, but because the complex is unable to adapt that bathroom to ADA standards, it had to be permanently locked up.
OK. So a person in a wheelchair can stand up, step down the steps and go swim, but they can't stand up and sit down on a toilet? Ok, I guess I can see that line of thinking. Barely. Here's the thing, not all handicaps are the same. My children have skin that rip and blister with the slightest of friction, and walking TO the pool from Grandma's house is hard on their feet, even protected. By the time they get to the relieving cool waters, they are already fragile. After swimming in water for awhile, they have to potty. We used to just carry them over to the bathroom, and assist them through the processes. Now we have to bandage their feet, add socks and shoes, walk to the apartment, undress, redress, walk back to the pool, unbandage and ease back in. If the pool waters weren't so healing for their skin, one might consider it a big hassle.
I do understand the logic on much of the ADA rules, but there is another one that is making no sense when it comes to practicality. They have started putting these yellow bumpy plates in the sidewalk ramps.
The knobs on them are hard and pointed, spikey almost.
When they first got put in on our neighborhood sidewalks, I thought
Oh, those must be to help the wheel chairs get traction up the slope. Which soon proved very confusing, as the gentleman in a motorized wheel chair who lives in my neighborhood started going around them, and driving on the street instead. After a few weeks, my oldest went out to rollerblade a bit. Not 5 minutes later, I am running out into the streets to her screams of pain. She had tried to go over the yellow plate, it locked up her wheels, and threw her to the ground. The yellow plate collided with her knee, and she had a 5 inch diameter wound across her knee and a sprained wrist that took weeks to heal, along with many other wounds from the landing.
We talked about the yellow plates, and agreed that they weren't for wheels of any sort (they wreck havoc on your eggs coming out of the grocery store too). A few months later, I am again running outside to screams. She was WALKING on the sidewalk, and when her feet came in contact with the yellow plate, the feet stopped, and her body kept going. The jarring motion dislocated her patella, which knocked back into place when she landed (on the yellow plate). The wounds from the fall were again nasty, and took time to heal. It's hard to hobble about on crutches, when your palms are blistered up and raw.
So now, we the disabled are actively avoiding these ADA yellow plates, as they cause us too much damage and absolutely no assistance. Whatever purpose they serve, I only see people of all types avoiding them. Easy enough, they are only on the sidewalks, right? Wrong.
These were taken by my hunny recently, in our own small suburbia.
Can you see the raised CURB protecting the yellow plates? There is not a sidewalk here, yet they painted a crosswalk and added the yellow plates at all the corners. The curbing is avoided by motor wheelchairs and bicycles alike, as well as by the vehicles that need to turn. The bicyclists swerve out into the lane of traffic to negotiate these areas, as do motorized wheelchairs.
Same Neighborhood, no plates:
This last one is again, in the same neighborhood, yet they carved out the area for the plates, and there is no sidewalk in sight!!!
Honestly, this is taking it all a bit too far, and is a waste of our tax dollars.
I am not saying that there shouldn't be ADA rules and compliancy, but I think some Common Sense should be used in creating and enforcing it, and I think that people that have no disabilities have no business suing businesses and towns over something that MIGHT not be needed. I am saying that when the rules that are designed to help ease the life of the disabled is now harming the disabled and are not USED by the disabled, there is a problem.
