Hacker News Reader

Comment by joker_minmax | Hacker News Reader

I do think this is important as an awareness exercise, however, it is worth noting that a lot of the issues CANNOT be seen unless you actually do bring the wheelchair. I learned this in 2018 when as a student I attended a conference with a fellow disabled student in Chicago. I was responsible for pushing her (she could use her arms but it was faster to navigate the city if one of us pushed). Not all train stations have a wide enough platform for wheelchairs to roll across, so your mobility is limited by which stations you can use for the train, which means walking farther from the station to where you actually wanted to go. Accessible hotel room with a pushbutton door shut too quickly for her to get into the threshold. Thankfully one of us was there to hit the button again each time she needed it reopened, but sometimes you had to physically catch and push the (heavier than normal) door before the button would re-open it. If you were just "thinking" about being a wheelchair user, and not actually trying to navigate this, you would not have a sense of the timing of this door. Another complication was her foot in a cast sticking out. The lovely, welcoming residents of Chicago catcalled her using wheelchair-related phrases, one guy on the train pointed at her and told her to kill herself, and someone kicked her cast in a crowd. The general attitude toward the disabled, in that environment, is unkind at best.

When I was a child (in the US), the science museum in my hometown had an exhibit dedicated to the ADA. You got into a wheelchair and tried to do tasks. It showed how payphones at a certain height are too high to reach, how difficult it would be to go up a ramp with an unapproved slope, etc. I wonder if it's still there, because that was my first foray into thinking this way. The Chicago trip however, basically radicalized me.

The article has a reference point of the UK and I don't know what their laws are with regards to accessibility. But it's clear that in both countries public attitudes toward accessibility have a very long way to go. And I'm sure most other countries can say this as well.

View on HN

> in Chicago. ...

And the sad thing is, in this respect Chicago is less bad than a lot of other towns and cities in the US and way less bad than many (most?) cities in other countries, including many that are much more progressive than the US. Chicago has been working on curb cuts for years and is in the midst of a years-long quest to upgrade all El (metro/subway) platforms for accessibility, and the ADA---33 years old---has much stronger requirements than, as far as I can tell, even current legislation elsewhere. In Canada, France, Spain, Germany I've seen whole rows of storefronts that are a half-storey up or down from street level, curb cuts are rare, and it's more usual for stores and other business to have steps than not. In other realms of accessibility, I've also noticed a lot more Braille and/or headphone access on ATMs and public kiosks in the US, and fire alarms that are rigged with lights as well as sound.

It's not a perfect mechanism, and the US gets a lot of other things wrong, but the ADA is something we got really, really on the right track (and keep improving).

A lot of this is undone by unofficially allowing parking in crosswalks and other routine "transgressions". The cutouts don't matter when there's a car over it. So many groups are affected by this other than wheelchair users too: parents with strollers, elderly or disabled with walkers or who simply can't lift their foot high enough to step onto a curb, young children on balance bikes or skates.

The enforcement mechanism of ADA being, literally, "sue us" is an absolutely massive barrier that makes its practical efficacy a fraction of what you'd think it is based on reading the rules.

I have spent four years, typically ~2 months a year between first complaint and it actually getting acted upon, getting Somerville to cut overgrowth from its own construction site that completely block a sidewalk that is used by hundreds of people per day (there is no sidewalk at all on the other side).

You couldn't use the sidewalk anyway as it is not ADA compliant in the slightest (random light posts in the middle of a half width sidewalk with tons of cracks and holes). But at least it should be vaguely passable...

Meanwhile literally 100 feet away they managed to redesign and repave an entire highway onramp without hiring a groundskeeper for their own property.

I hate having to bring up the ADA as the reason the city should respect pedestrians. They spent how much money on that highway onramp but can't be bothered to make the frontage on property it owns usable by pedestrians?

Highways are managed by the state DOT, not the city.

Oh boy, do I know... they say it's a city thing because the site is owned by the city or used for city construction or something. It's convoluted as you would expect. 311 and the state DOT disagree about who is responsible for no reason a mere citizen can navigate. It's a long and boring post.

An aside in any case.

A completely blocked and nearly useless sidewalk shouldn't be a thing that requires a resident to file a complaint just the right way to get fixed. Especially when it's in an easily visible area. Something being "compliant" isn't enough, and even publicly managed sites aren't necessarily compliant (and shouldn't take a lawyer to fix).

It's not asking a lot for a site run by a construction company to find a groundskeeper for a few hours a year without figuring out just the right way to complain first. When the same sites were owned by a private company it went without saying.

Well the old famous pizza places are not accessible in the slightest. Basically anything super freaking old is a lost cause unless you magically have room to make the bathrooms bigger or put an extension on the storefront, etc. I'm from the South, and it also shocked me how cars in Chicago would basically inch directly up to where you're walking, like they're just gonna run over you if you stopped, even if pedestrians technically have the green to cross. And they could see we were going slower because we're pushing a wheelchair! People talk crap on the South and how we drive, but at least we usually slow down when someone is crossing. (I can't vouch for Florida, but most of Florida doesn't count as Southern anyway.)

It's easy to take the braille in elevators or lights on fire alarms for granted, but thanks for pointing out how good it is that we have them.

> and it also shocked me how cars in Chicago would basically inch directly up to where you're walking, like they're just gonna run over you if you stopped, even if pedestrians technically have the green to cross.

I just spent the last week in downtown Chicago and in this regard I didn't find it any worse than the downtown areas of other major cities. Not saying it is acceptable but Chicago is not an outlier.

Many of the subway stations in NYC still don't have elevators, and when they do they're usually far from the platform, slow, and smelly.

I'm not even in a wheel chair, although I do have foot and nerve issues that can make stairs rather treacherous so I usually avoid them when possible. Like, I live in a 3 story house with stairs, and it's fine, but on possibly slick concrete or tile, with many other people around me (usually going faster)...that's something I avoid when possible.

I've noticed this as well. It depends on where you live, but in Brooklyn, almost none of the subway stations are wheelchair accessible. Buses are, and there are many free transfer options from the subway into the bus network, but in my experience living in NYC the buses are very unreliable. You can get to where you're going but half the time the bus you need will not arrive.

Just for fun I looked at a couple subway lines in Brooklyn. Very few wheelchair accessible stops:

- F train: 3 of its 22 stops

- G train: 2 of its 19 stops (a historically neglected line, but still I'm surprised to see this so low)

- A train: 3 of its 17 stops

... in fact, lets play a game. Here's a map I made of part of Brooklyn. The stars represent stops that are not wheelchair accessible. Can you find the stops that don't have a star? https://imgur.com/a/8PdzrOK

When I visited this year I never got out of lower/midtown Manhattan and it was 50/50 at best.

As I understand it, the ADA is one of those occasions where the US government leads the world in protecting its citizens.

> And the sad thing is, in this respect Chicago is less bad than a lot of other towns and cities in the US

Being a “progressive” city isn’t really correlated with being disability friendly. New York is terrible for disabilities. Many walkable and high dense areas are also terrible for them.

Like it or not, suburbia with giant parking lots, dedicated disabled spaces, wheelchair ramps, etc is about the best access you can get (assuming you can drive a vehicle and have one).

Or, new construction in general is more disability friendly. Historic construction isn't, and usually only has to update on renovations.

Plenty of new construction in New York that is still miserable. Show me a city famous for its dense walkability that’s considered disability friendly.

I kind of wonder if we're not solving a lot of these problems in the wrong place. We passed a law that requires buildings to change, but meanwhile we have the technology to make "wheelchairs" that can climb stairs. Something with a continuous track or whatever else human ingenuity can devise.

That would cost money, but how could it possibly cost as much as modifying every building everywhere? A wheelchair ramp is thousands of dollars. An elevator is hundreds of thousands. A person in a wheelchair might encounter a thousand distinct sets of stairs in a year but the median set of stairs doesn't encounter that number of distinct people in a wheelchair.

More importantly, there are stairs in places we're not going to do anything about it, like old buildings and private homes. And there are accessibility devices that become inaccessible, e.g. an elevator that can't be used because the power is out or the building is on fire. A solution that still works in those cases is better.

As far as I can tell we got stuck with the existing one because of politics. The per-person cost of a ramp at a large high volume business is negligible because it has so much traffic, so much so that they'd install one regardless. The real cost is putting them in every small shop and low traffic area. But then you have no opposition from large businesses to a law requiring them because it puts a disproportionate cost on their smaller competitors. Whereas a tax that paid for more capable "wheelchairs" would sensibly be paid mostly by those large companies, and then they object.

I once had a job where I listened to calls to a major US health insurance carrier. The amount of grief that people (especially retirees on privately administered medicare) go through to get a claim for a new wheelchair approved can be enormous. If we want to give disabled people better & more expensive medical equipment as a substitute for accessible buildings, we need to fix the system that is depriving many of new or replacement versions of the "dumb" mobility aids that are in wide use today.

Went through this with parents, ended up paying for a wheelchair for $500 myself from the manufacturer. I hate Medicare denying disabled stroke patients with a passion now.

But this is just the politics again. If a government program is paying tax money to people with a particular condition then they should just have a table that says how much money it's expected to cost and give you that money to use for whatever you want. Presumably you'll use it to buy an accessibility device, because you need one, which is why you got the money -- but you shouldn't be excluded from using it for something that functions as an accessibility device even if it isn't on some specific list, or devising your own and using the money to buy components.

Only if they did that there wouldn't be any middle men making rules for who gets denied or which company's products you have to buy, so they would be exposed to competitive pressure and have to make better stuff for slimmer margins. Which the existing system is designed to prevent, because politics.

Those tractor wheelchairs are not a fits-all solution! For one, they're huge and heavy. For another, I would assume they won't work well on irregular stairways or antique stairways.

Honestly, I'll make an insane hot take here: I think historic/antique buildings that can't be made ADA compliant shouldn't be used for anything important. Or rather, that they should be modified to accommodate.

History is important TO A DEGREE. Helping human beings feel more a part of society is more important.

> For one, they're huge and heavy.

So make one that isn't. There is nothing in them that has to be made out of depleted uranium.

> For another, I would assume they won't work well on irregular stairways or antique stairways.

How is that any worse than the status quo? If you have something that can navigate stairways then it will work on some of the structures which are old and currently inaccessible, as opposed to none of them as it is now.

> Honestly, I'll make an insane hot take here: I think historic/antique buildings that can't be made ADA compliant shouldn't be used for anything important. Or rather, that they should be modified to accommodate.

In many cases this is impossible without taking a wrecking ball to the existing structure and even when it is possible it will commonly be prohibitively expensive because it requires extensive bespoke professional engineering instead of off the shelf commodity products. You're essentially asking for all the old buildings to be torn down, which would not only be the destruction of history but have an extensive economic cost and exacerbate the existing real estate shortage.

It might literally be less expensive to give everyone in a wheelchair a personal flying car.

Physical changes to building codes and infrastructure have benefited not just those on wheelchairs, but just about everyone else with a wheeled thing for any other purpose. Parents pushing prams and strollers, people moving bikes into parking spots, carrying groceries with wheeled carriers, using mobility scooters, etc.

As others have mentioned: no, it’s the right tack; permanent changes to the built world benefit many and survive whatever byzantine rules might come in place to receiving high-tech wheelchairs from insurance or otherwise.

Commercial buildings have had loading docks and freight elevators since long before the ADA. There wouldn't be a law prohibiting ramps or curb cuts in any place where the value exceeds the cost. But then it would be engineers and competitive pressure doing the math instead of lawyers and politicians.

> permanent changes to the built world

None of that is permanent. Most buildings never make it to 100 years. The real estate consumed is a continuous cost. There is also a massive, ongoing cost to making new construction more expensive, because it increases housing scarcity and transfers wealth to landlords.

> benefit many and survive whatever byzantine rules might come in place to receiving high-tech wheelchairs from insurance or otherwise.

It seems extremely unlikely that in any non-apocalyptic future the technology will cease to be available in the market regardless of how dysfunctional insurance is. The least convenient plausible scenario is that you have to pay money for it. And the entire point is that on net this will be less money than people are having to pay for what's happening now, in the form of high rents.

By the way, those ramps also benefit people with children (pushchairs).

My city has been on a curb cut rampage recently. Pretty much every single corner, whether in a suburban neighborhood or downtown, has been ripped out and replaced with an ADA ramp that is bright yellow with these bumps on it.

> Chicago is less bad than a lot of other towns and cities in the US and way less bad than many (most?) cities in other countries, including many that are much more progressive than the US

You are seriously… I don’t know what to say. I live in Turkey. The treatment in Chicago is something unheard of. I cannot imagine this behavior outside of a tech dystopia, and apparently this is what West is now. Funny to see you think physical accessibility, wheelchair platforms etc. are more important than traditional bonds of family and community to support disabled people. Thank God we’re still not that progressive.

Having children and, thus, a stroller, has given me some small level of insight into what it must be to try and navigate Paris in a wheelchair.

I can only think of one, maybe two, Metro stations that I can access with my youngest without carrying him. Many stores I would not be able to enter if I wasn't able to tip the wheels up. Curb cuts are routinely blocked by tourist scooters and anyway people often take up too much of the space on the sidewalk with their vehicles to get through. Add on to the fact that apartment stock must be 95% inaccessible if you're in a wheelchair.

It might be why I have only twice seen someone in a wheelchair in my seven years here. My wife and I have discussed before that, as much as we love it here, we'd move out right away if any of us had accessibility needs.

Being a swede that sounds surprising. Does France not have regulations for accessibility in public spaces?

Paris is ancient and built on a bunch of hills, there are quite a few places where retrofitting the city to make it more accessible would be easier by rebuilding the whole thing than by making changes and that's not going to happen. Amsterdam has an easier time of it, not quite as old, though old enough that that isn't a big factor in the difference, the good bit is that it is mostly flat (other than the canal bridges, some of which can be pretty steep). Even so there are areas of the inner city that would be hard to navigate in a wheelchair.

Stockholm wasn't exactly built last year either.

True, but like Amsterdam it is mostly flat, right?

Having lived in both Stockholm and Amsterdam, I can assure you that Stockholm is not at all flat like Amsterdam!

No idea about how easy either city is to get around with a wheelchair. Pushing a fully loaded double-stroller is no problem for an average-sized, ablebodied adult in any of them.

Hard to tell for me, after decades in Bergen my sense of what people consider hilly is skewed.

Just the name of this city is an indication

I got this too. Another thing I notice is how common it is to block pavements with whatever - vehicles, bins, general street furniture, whatever.

Normally when I suggest a driver doesn't park on a pavement I get a grumpy dismissal, though I once suggested it to a DHL driver who immediately got my point and moved. That was refreshing.

The RATP should be ashamed of themselves with the poor accessibility of the Paris metro. Barcelona's metro isn't that much older but is almost 100% accessible.

Wasn't Barcelona's metro mostly either new or newly rebuilt as of 1992? Spain may not have had an ADA equivalent at that point requiring great accessibility at that time, but that's still way different than all the century-old Paris metro lines.

That's a great alternative measure, especially those wide strollers!

A double-wide stroller really makes you aware of exactly how wide doors are, even ones with automatic openers.

The easy way to measure things - if you couldn't barely squeeze a Jeep into the space, you're going to have a hard time maneuvering a wheelchair or doublewide stroller.

The quality of the pavement matters a lot too.

I once pushed my daughter’s pram down a path and hit the front of the next slab, and stopped dead. I’d not done her up and she shot out and was caught by the mesh of the sun shade. Lesson learned, belt them in.

I’m fairly certain every parent does this at least once.

Hopefully only once.

Yes, I'm French too and when I was on holiday in Thailand, in a mall I noticed that there were people in wheelchairs shopping, my first thought: in France they wouldn't be able to be here because the accomodations are so bad..

It's not 100% true and it's improving but very, very slowly..

There's a technology issue too: my German in laws gave us a baby carriage that seemed to have been built for ascending the Eiger -- though it seemed (and was) huge it made navigating Paris quite easy (had to carry it up/down the metro steps) and even fit in the prehistoric elevator in our apartment building. Frankly, supposedly-snooty parisians are quite accommodating towards people with babies (once they can walk on their own though...)

But I never saw anything like that in the parisian baby shops.

I agree though about unattended obstacles on the trottoir -- it's as if people forget they need to use them themselves.

> The lovely, welcoming residents of Chicago catcalled her using wheelchair-related phrases, one guy on the train pointed at her and told her to kill herself, and someone kicked her cast in a crowd.

Dear god. My wife broke her leg about a month ago, and I've been pushing her in a wheelchair when we go out. The spectrum of reactions so far has run from a quick smile to strangers coming up to ask what happened and wish her well. This is in the eastern Seattle suburbs. WTF, people?

I was surprised to hear GP's story about the Midwest, but not surprised to hear an anecdote of West Coasters being kinder to strangers than elsewhere.

Any one of those stories is worse than anything I've experienced in decades of living in large California cities

Chicago isn't the midwest, we disavow it.

Culturally Chicago has more in common with NYC than it does it’s Midwest neighbors

As I've said in a different reply, the KYS guy was definitely on drugs - his demeanor was abnormal even before he opened his mouth. And every city will have characters of that type. But the other people were just average run-of-the-mill folks from afar who decided to make her day worse.

A few years ago I was discussing my health problems with a group of vague colleagues and someone told me that because I have Celiac disease and type 1 diabetes, I should kill myself. I don’t even remember who it was who told me that, but now and then I ponder what sort of insensitive attitude one would have to make that suggestion. To me it makes them sound rather inflexible and weak. It’s actually something people say commonly in relation to Celiac, that if they couldn’t eat generic pizza or burgers, they would rather simply die. I wager that if put to the test, these people would not choose to end their lives if they had to be careful and selective about food. It makes me wonder, is eating some junk food really the only reason they have to live?

> is eating some junk food really the only reason they have to live?

I doubt it. But it’s probably high on the list of things they would miss most.

Not being able to walk, meh. Not being able to eat pizza?!

Gluten free pizza does exist and is perfectly adequate to me. Certain styles of crust work great (gf ingredients are good for making something crispy, but not so much doughy and chewy). But yeah, specific pizza or other people’s pizza is out of bounds. It’s very inconvenient, but not total doom.

Ironically, the disabled student I went to Chicago with, was Celiac as well. We actually had such a fun time finding Celiac-friendly places to eat, and I enjoyed trying new forms of familiar foods. The one advantage to going to a huge city is that there WERE Celiac-friendly places, and the smaller city I lived in at the time had nothing dedicatedly GF. I'm sorry there are people who said that to you. It's disheartening how people can't think outside the box and realize if human beings are creative enough to build the Coliseum and the Great Wall, we can figure out a way to make a gluten-free version bread. Might not be exactly the same as wheat, but it's decent, and we're innovating all the time. I wish you a flourishing life!

Thanks, and that’s cool! Always good to hang out with other people with actual Celiac. I often meet people who say they have it, but then are “oh, not officially diagnosed, I don’t get real sick, so I just, you know, pick off the croutons…” which is not my situation.

I’ve picked where to live partially because of the amounts of restaurants that are dedicated… Portland was fantastic in that regard, and Denver is not bad, though generally I just don’t eat out much these days.

You’re right that it is easier to adapt to than some people would think. Overall, some people are very strange about food. One, I’ve talked to people who don’t understand that white flour is made from wheat… they thought I only had to avoid whole wheat bread (ha!). Some people think gluten is some basic food chemistry ingredient, like vegetable starch, or maybe a food additive. Other people have acted like no other food besides wheat exists, kind of like saying you’re a vegan (“what do you eat then??!”).

I really have no problem with various GF foods or substitutes. It helps that my favorite foods were already things like tamales and nachos. GF pasta and pizza are great, and even beer. I like to think of it as “alternative grain” rather than define it by what it does not have.

Yeah I used to do research on robotic wheelchairs, and as part of that I had to use them. Half of the “accessible” doors on campus where not powered, so I had to open them while sitting in the wheelchair. It was impossible to do without holding the door with my legs. And they were these big heavy doors.

Then there was the elevator, which could barely fit the wheelchair. You can go in at juuuuust the right angle to get on the lift, then you had to reverse out because there was no room to maneuver inside. I started actually getting claustrophobic.

I just couldn’t see how an actual wheelchair-bound person could get into these buildings on a daily basis.

Why do "accessible" doors always have to weigh so much more than regular doors? The powered ones are extremely difficult to open if the button decides to not work.

It's like trying to turn power steering in your car with the engine off. They're often not designed to "freewheel" so you're dragging the equipment with it.

Automatic sliding doors is the way to go, or if you have swing doors then they should be very large and well-hung.

The large also contributes to it - a normal door may be 3 feet wide, an accessible one can be 4 or even 5 feet wide.

> Automatic sliding doors is the way to go, or if you have swing doors then they should be very large and well-hung.

There’s a joke here. Someone run with it, I can’t suss it out.

I don't see an edit button for my comment anymore so I'm just going to add the following thought: remember that no one is immune to disability. One small slip-and-fall, one other careless driver on the road with you, one infection, etc is all it takes and suddenly you've got to struggle through life to make anything work. That is why this is important: it could be you or anyone you know, and happen at any time. Even if you feel invincible.

And it doesn't even have to be you; just someone you live with, or help, etc.

Having two kids in a stroller could put you almost there (if you have only two kids, get an inline stroller as it's much easier even though longer). Once you're at three and have to get a Zoe you're going to learn quite abit about ADA accessibility.

https://zoebaby.com/products/zoe-trio-triple-stroller?varian...

> One small slip-and-fall, one other careless driver on the road with you, one infection, etc is all it takes and suddenly you've got to struggle through life to make anything work.

Or just over time. Everyone gets there by their 80s or 90s, if they're lucky.

Yeah but people are sympathetic to old folks. People understand that sometimes old people can walk a short ways and need a wheelchair for a long distance. It's when they see young people in a wheelchair that they make the "faking it" comments because they see the young person walk a few feet outside the wheelchair, and don't apply the same principle. Or the objectification, who is going to catcall an 80 year old woman?

The UK has, in absolute terms, rather poor accessibility. Maybe better then many places, and the law is allegedly on the right side, but in practice you don't want to rely on anything in particular being accessible without scoping it out first.

I used a wheelchair for one day, and after nearly killing myself trying to get over kerb on a slope (from the hospital car park to the hospital), resolved to use under-armpit crutches instead. It's a rare thing that makes you feel privileged to be able to use those painful things!

Trains are a good recent example. Most trains are extremely inaccessible, with a foot or two of steps up into the carriage and a large, famously announced, gap. There are wheelchair ramps on platforms but you need to find staff to unlock and use them, or telephone ahead. They're about to remove thousands of ticket offices, so there may soon be no one there. Then when you get onto the station, if the lifts don't work, you'll be stuck on the platform. Assuming they have lifts. My local station doesn't have them at all. If I was in a wheelchair, I'd consider trains a complete no-go zone.

Most buses near me are able to "kneel" and have wheelchair ramps, thankfully.

Many commercial buildings in cities and suburbs are haphazardly shoved into old housing stock, so it's quite likely that at many places you will have several flights of stairs to deal with. If I'd been in a wheelchair, I'd have been unable to access the office at my first job, for example: four flights of stairs and a step at the door.

I sometimes wonder if we as a society will end up actually curing all disabilities before making public things universally accessible.

> The UK has, in absolute terms, rather poor accessibility.

It is certainly far better than here in Germany, as is the awareness. I was shocked visiting the UK just how many disabled people were on TV. Presenters of shows, in almost a half of adverts, etc. were in wheelchairs or had severe physical disability. Here in Germany disabled people are still considered to be undesirables and are hidden from public sight. For whatever reason, I do not even see disabled people in public here, whereas in the UK I see a lot of people moving around with mobility issues.

So while it is bad, do not get the impression that it is far better in the European countries that one might expect it to be better in. Certainly the awareness and tolerance is significantly better in the UK.

> I was shocked visiting the UK just how many disabled people were on TV. Presenters of shows, in almost a half of adverts, etc. were in wheelchairs or had severe physical disability.

In the US, I have NEVER seen such a thing. Except maybe in commercials for medicine. or retirement-related things.

That would be pretty cool to see.

Yeah I was pretty shocked. The first one I pointed out my wife was like "yeah? so what?" but on the fourth TV show we saw hosted by someone in a wheelchair it was undeniable

If you poke about on torrents, streaming, using a geo proxy etc. you can likely watch The Last Leg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Leg

    a British late-night television humorous talk/sketch show that originally ran alongside the 2012 Summer Paralympics every night following the main coverage on Channel 4.

    Anchored by Australian comedian Adam Hills and co-hosted by Josh Widdicombe and Alex Brooker, it gives a review of the week's events.

    Featuring a mix of comedy, guests and Paralympics highlights, the show received strong reviews and regularly pulled in more than a million viewers each night of the Paralympic Games.

    It has since become a weekly show giving a humorous alternative look back at the week's events. Outside of the UK, the show is broadcast in Hills' native Australia by the ABC

    ... described by main presenter Adam Hills as "Three guys with four legs talking about the week"

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-last-leg

Brutal. Referring back to this comment the next time folks here are indignant about ADA private right of action.

You can be indignant about the weaponization of the ADA by attorneys driven by a profit motive, and still respect the intent of the ADA.

You're hitting on some extremely key insights IMO. Insights grounded in abstract fundamental principles useful all the way from the "hardest" of sciences (physics and even maths, arguably, as a formal science) to the much "softer" (human psychology etc. - where it's far more difficult to be directly quantitative for a whole host of reasons).

First, when it comes to engineering, the absolute best test is running the actual system. The "acid test" of a rocket is the launch of that rocket. And, even for all of our "computer-aided engineering" progress over the decades, a wind tunnel is still often a key step and can provide "better" and more reliable info regarding some characteristics of, say, rocket body shape performance, than Pro/ENGINEER or etc. can*. So, the best test when it comes to ADA-related issues is to engineer yourself, to the degree possible, into the position of someone with a "disability". The best work in these areas has involved people tying their limbs down etc. - because, even if you consciously work to not use one arm, say, you'll still involuntarily use it in many ways. For example, it'll naturally come up slightly to help regain balance in some situations.

Second, and this is actually, I'd argue, simply a more complete perspective partly covered just above - understanding critically depends on the degree to which one can be in some "position". Often enough, our minds can be adequate. In particular, we can "understand" abstractions that can't necessarily even have obvious "instantiations" - e.g., mathematical abstractions come to mind. There may be "exemplars", but, you can't literally "show" me "the number 3"**. That written, there are many cases where we CAN 'experience' some form of direct 'instantiation' and, for reasons both experiential and even statistical / logical, such an instantiation is pretty well guaranteed to do a better job of producing understanding in our overgrown monkey minds than any amount of sitting around and daydreaming can.

So, really, when it comes to the "hard(er)" (e.g., engineering) and "soft(er)" (e.g., psychology - including empathy, say), there's no substitute for "the actual launch" (to circle back to the language of the rocket example, above).

* Though, there may be cases / "regimes" that are too difficult [at least practically] to test, even in a wind tunnel, and where, especially these days, CFD modeling can at least give some info and potentially be even entirely adequate)

** Can't wait to see the replies that just say "3", kek

Absence of empathy and other-experience - with some political orientations being actively hostile to it - may well be our single biggest cognitive handicap as a species.

Many humans seem to be locked inside their skulls in what is - ironically - a very handicapped and limited mobility way.

Theory of mind (empathy) is what makes humans human. It enabled our comparatively larger social groups to function at all. More important than opposable thumbs, vocal cords / language, walking upright, and fire.

(IMHO; believe but cannot prove; blah, blah, blah.)

> the UK and I don't know what their laws are with regards to accessibility

Europe does not give a fuuuuuck about accessibility. It’s something the US is genuinely miles ahead in. Not perfect of course. But Europe is an accessibility nightmare.

> The lovely, welcoming residents of Chicago catcalled her using wheelchair-related phrases, one guy on the train pointed at her and told her to kill herself, and someone kicked her cast in a crowd.

That's beyond bad, and makes me feel sick.

I live in a high-cost-of-living (HCOLA) metro area that wins national awards/rankings for walkability, but the narrow, obstructed, and often poorly-maintained sidewalks are very often impassable for people in wheelchairs.

Even new renovations and widenings, where they put in new, flat sidewalk that's sufficiently wide, the concrete figuratively isn't even dry before they install excessive signposts and random street furniture, again blocking the sidewalk.

Then there's the snow&ice, and the inadequate compliance with the rules about who has to shovel what, when, and how. And the property owners that eventually comply, are fighting the plowing from the streets onto the sidewalks.

There's even further problems with landscaping, and sometimes poison ivy/oak, growing out from a residential property, to effectively block the narrow square of sidewalk that remains. Not something you want brushing or scraping across your arm or face as you're trying to get through and can't dodge it.

Even in good weather I only rarely see people on the sidewalk in wheelchairs or on mobility scooters. That doesn't mean they don't live in town, but that the sidewalks don't let you get far. When I do see them (as a walker), they're usually operating their wheelchair or scooter in the street. A couple times, I've had to help one who was simply stuck in the street. I imagine they don't feel good about it, and feel abandoned.

I would've thought the bicyclists would have empathy and solidarity, at least against the cars, but there actually seems to be a higher rate of problematic behavior there, per rider/driver (e.g., ignoring traffic signals at crossings, barreling down narrow sidewalks). And now we're getting dedicated bike paths often at the cost of sidewalks.

One of the people in a wheelchair who got stuck in the street, after I helped push him out of it and to the nearby grocery store entrance, he held some device to his neck so that he could say thank you.

I imagine that it was implied that this situation sucks -- and I'm thinking: made worse, for no good reason, in an area that can afford to do better -- but he's soldiering through, and doing what he can.

> I would've thought the bicyclists would have empathy and solidarity, at least against the cars ... And now we're getting dedicated bike paths often at the cost of sidewalks.

I live in another HCOL area allegedly famed for its walking and biking facilities, and I hoped the same thing. Unfortunately, the process here seems to have turned into "each individual group vs car drivers", probably by design. For example, where I live has separate pedestrian, bicycle, and transit advisory boards to the city council. Never mind that projects should be built to benefit all three, not just one.

What's wound up happening is, because we "obviously cannot" take space from car drivers, the precious little room given over to modes that don't involve driving are forced to compete with each other. A new train station was built on the north end of town and the former sidewalk area on one side of the train station has been repurposed as a bicycle-only lane. The other side of the street is still a pedestrian sidewalk...but the street itself is a four-lane thoroughfare with very wide lanes and a median turn lane in spots. Of course, narrowing the car space on that road to make the corridor more comfortable for people on feet and on bikes was completely out of the question.

Also, the sidewalk didn't get fully rebuilt so I routinely see people in wheelchairs and pushing prams on the "bicycle-only" side because that's much smoother and even.

> Unfortunately, the process here seems to have turned into "each individual group vs car drivers ... where I live has separate pedestrian, bicycle, and transit advisory boards to the city council.

I suspect you're right; I've seen that, but didn't realize at the time that it could be a barrier.

I could imagine how it might be organized that way in good faith -- e.g., get the input from the people who really care about biking, the people who really care about walking, and the train/transportation buffs, and then have city officials process it all, holistically -- but that's a lot of heavy lifting, and also doesn't bring the advocates together to learn from each other and directly reconcile conflicts.

This kind of thing is why I never really bought into the "Complete streets" philosophy of city planning. So much of it seems like putting extra concrete in a little median for no reason so you can put shrubs in that will die during the next hard freeze, nevermind actually fostering usability. It's like even city planning just wants to do something that looks good for Instagram and leave everyone else to fend for themselves in terms of accessibility. Thanks for sharing this

> The lovely, welcoming residents of Chicago catcalled her using wheelchair-related phrases, one guy on the train pointed at her and told her to kill herself, and someone kicked her cast in a crowd.

This is so utterly farcical and disguisting that people will swear until they are black and blue that you are making this up.

Of course, some of the people making that argument would, with the shield of being a face in a crowd, without a shred of irony and self-awareness, behave in that exact same way.

It's really, really bloody sad.

The guy who told her to die was definitely on drugs and absolutely wired. Which there are bound to be some characters that way in a large city. The others I can't say, they were basically normal passers-by with no abnormal demeanor prior to being cruel.

I think this has nothing to do with being handicapped and everything to do with the fact that the cta allows citizens to be assaulted every day by allowing crazy people to squat in trains. Plenty of able-bodied people have horror stories.

It's incredibly ironic how you read the actual horror story, and respond by trying to turn this into blaming a pet issue. "It's the bad others, it's not 'normal'[1] people that are behaving poorly."

---

[1] Despite the OP explicitly stating that a significant part of the abuse did not come from 'Crazies squatting on trains.'

> catcalled her using wheelchair-related phrases

This happens to people without disabilities quite often too

> one guy on the train pointed at her and told her to kill herself

a homeless person? I don't think these anecdotes are really representative of anything specific to the disability, this has become commonplace in large cities.

The catcalling tied her disability into the phrasing of what the men said to her. That is why I mentioned it because it wasn't "normal" catcalling.

Even if the guy who yelled the KYS comment was a homeless person, clearly not every homeless person does that. I saw the guy walk past dozens of people on the train. When he saw my fellow student in the wheelchair, he stopped in his tracks and turned around to single her out and point when he said it. And these anecdotes do not outweigh the other issues with accessibility myself and others in this thread are noting, particularly how public transportation is lacking in accessibility. I think they serve to show broader negative attitudes toward the disabled that come to the surface.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com