Something this article misses is that many people act totally inappropriately to people using various aids. They used to have people question why they needed a chair. They had people call them wheels in public.
Indeed. It's especially hard in a poor areas. I used to live with a disabled person and things like cracks in the sidewalk, or bumps from roots, or potholes, look like nothing to people who can walk. To someone in a wheelchair they can prevent them from going through. They city was too poor and run down to get to it. Older parts of town, are also almost impossible to access.
> They used to have people question why they needed a chair. They had people call them wheels in public.
I noticed this is at the airport. People in a wheelchair often get priority sitting. But to request a wheelchair doesn't require any proof. So, people learned to take advantage of it. May even get an assistant to push them around the airport. And then, as soon as the flight lands, people are miraculously "healed" and don't need a wheelchair any longer.
They think it's a harmless thing: "it's allowed anyway", "I paid a lot of money for this ticket", "not breaking any rules", etc but what they are doing is they are creating animosity and suspicion in the general public who now feel anyone in a wheelchair in the airport is "cheating" to get ahead of the line and get a better spot for their carry-on luggage.
The comment you're replying to talks about someone needing a wheelchair from time to time. Many people who use wheelchairs do not need them all the time.
A trivial example would be someone who can walk from the airport to a car when unburdened, but cannot stand in line for an hour while carrying luggage. The available assistance isn't necessarily individually tailored, so "I need to check a bag without extra charge and skip the security and boarding lines" is not an option, but a wheelchair is.
> A trivial example would be someone who can walk from the airport to a car when unburdened, but cannot stand in line for an hour while carrying luggage.
Of course. And not all disabilities are visible, either. It's better to have a few cheaters to abuse the system and provide more accommodation to people who need it than go the other way. But the way people are, even if they witness a small minority cheating, they'll start forming an opinion. As a rule, especially as far as I have seen, traveling and living with disabled people needing a wheelchair, most people are willing to help and are accommodating.
No. The faceless people who wrote the crap rules are doing that. Blaming people who use the system to their advantage doesn't fix the system.
A lot of people rushed over to help and were quite upset when I hopped up and ran off with the wheelchair.
Many people may be able to get up the wheelchair and walk a little, but may not be able to walk a mile in the airport... Or may not be able to navigate the complicated airport environment.
Exactly. And not all disabilities are visible either.
I was just replying to someone saying that there is animosity towards disabled people ("people question why they needed a chair. They had people call them wheels in public..."). I haven't heard or seen it verbalized explicitly, with that one exception of airports, where people publicly mumble and mention it. I don't like to see it and I don't support that but that's what people do.
The person I know is perfectly able to stand for a short while, or walk around a shop or food court for a couple of minutes carrying items with really no obvious problems. But navigating an airport all the way through, quickly making it to a connecting flight on the other side of a large terminal, or standing for minutes in a check-in line is basically impossible without days of pain afterwards.
If it becomes a big problem, you just switch it around, wheelchair-bound people get boarded last. Then the advantage of faking it is somewhat removed.
(Though for my personal experience, boarding first is kind of sucky unless you're in first and getting drinks.)
My dad can’t even use the restroom on the flight cause he can’t stand, it’s truly hell for wheelchair bound folks. They deserve all the help and accommodations they can get to travel and live a normal, rich and fulfilling life like the rest of us able bodied folks.
They also seem to have a terrible habit of putting them in the inconvenient places that they want you to walk, not where people actually walk. E.g. set back 10m from a t-junction. So even if there are dropped kerbs it's still significantly more inconvenient if you actually have to use them.
And they're rarely retrofitted; there's one missing on a path we take and I always forget about it, and even just a stroller is a pain to get over. I don't see how a wheelchair could; they'd have to go down the (relatively not busy) street to the nearest driveway.
Consider that accessibility is a quality of life concern, when governments have to consider the cost of everything, even the "reasonable" cost of averting death.