Another One Bites the Dust

I never cease to be surprised by curb cuts that line the side walks of American cities and towns. Two things in this regard mystify me. First, why do curb cuts exist at one end of the street but not the other. This creates a side walk to no where, a conclusion that is easy to reach. Second, in parking lots across the country curb cuts are routinely placed in distant if not bizarre locations. Handicap parking is located in one part of a parking lot and the curb cut in another area. People that use a wheelchair know all too well that the problem I am describing is not only aggravating but dangerous. Parking lots and roadways, the gutter in particular, are not places I want to traverse in my wheelchair. Yet I often must push my wheelchair along the gutter and across parking lots to get to where I want to be.

Readers unfamiliar with wheelchair access might think my comments are an exaggeration. I assure you they are not. In the last month two people that use a wheelchair have been killed. Their stories and death were not widely discussed or deemed all that news worthy. The two deaths I am referring to appeared in Newsday, a New York tabloid, shortly before Christmas and in a local Fayetteville paper this week. The people killed were Amelia Shean and Ranford Beckford. Both people used an electric wheelchair and died in the street gutter. What were they doing in the gutter? In Mr. Beckford's case that has not been disclosed, perhaps because he was allegedly killed by Laura Dean who was apparently drunk. Ms. Shean was killed because she was not eligible for paratransit and the bus stop nearest her home was relocated. Ms. Shean's daughter thinks her mother was killed on her way to the grocery store.

The above two deaths are far from unusual. They are as common as my use of road side gutters. Another all too common variable are dehumanizing headlines: "Wheelchair Crash", "Wheelchair Man Killed in Hit and Run", and "Wheelchair Struck and Killed". This is perfect filler and often relegated to newspaper page B 19. On a slow news day a photograph of a battered wheelchair will be published. What is rarely if ever reported is why the person, the human using a wheelchair, was using a roadside gutter. These deaths are unnecessary and bring to mind far too many close calls I have had navigating streets, parking lots, airports, and service stations. The danger is very real, the consequences deadly. Those unfamiliar with using a wheelchair simply do not care or do not appreciate the dangers involved. For example, to enter my son's elementary school a single curb cut exists. When my son was in elementary school this curb cut was regularly blocked by parked cars and buses even though it was well marked "No Parking". When a vehicle was in front of this curb cut it was impossible for a person using a wheelchair to get to the entrance. I was often stuck waiting in the parking lot and asked more than one stranger to enter the building for me and ask the principal to make an announcement that a car with the following license plate number was blocking the entrance. In the five years my son attended elementary school I would guess this happened twice a month. When I suggested to the principal that this was not acceptable and that a second curb be created I was stunned by her reply. She told me that "I do not mind making the announcement to have someone move their car". She went on to state that in her estimation the curb was well marked and that a secondary curb cut would be an "eyesore". The most disturbing aspect the principal's reply was that it was exactly what I expected her to say. The point I am trying to stress is twofold: first, people that use a wheelchair are grossly underrepresented when issues of access are discussed and decided. What may appear to be a "reasonable accommodation" to people that do not use a wheelchair is in fact quite unreasonable. People like the principal of my son's school, an educator no less, simply don't get it. Second, the lack of wheelchair access in particular and disability rights in general indicate the presence of people with disabilities remains out of the ordinary. This is a big problem because too few think about why people with disabilities are not present and active in the workplace, school system or use the mass transportation system on a regular basis. Disabled people are not present because they remain the most disenfranchised minority group in the country in spite of the fact they were granted equality when the Americans with Disability Act was passed almost twenty years ago. In short, those pesky curb cuts described by the principal of my son's school as an "eye sore" are the symbolic representation of a much larger civil rights issue--the equality denied people with a disability.