As much as anyone else, I only care when someone does something “wrong” when it affects me, and the same act is almost always justified when I do it. Sadly, I encounter this more than a normal person would. When I go to the bathroom and the only big/accessible stall is taken but I only have to pee, I can just go next to a urinal or try to fit into a smaller stall. I just pee into a bag, so basically anywhere with some privacy will work. However, when I have to poop, now it becomes an issue. The question is, should no one use the big stall (even if all the others are taken) just in case I come in and need to poop? At my office, this might make sense because it’s the bathroom in a building where we all know I am and the probability of me using the bathroom to poop is much higher. If we could track every person who absolutely needs the bigger stall, then we know when we should or shouldn’t use the bigger stall. Another perspective is that maybe I shouldn’t be treated so different – I’m still a person and no more important than anyone else, and as such, I can wait just like everyone else might have to. I generally agree with this except that I am limited to just one bathroom stall, and if that one is taken but the other normal (small) sized stalls are available, they aren’t available for me. This reminds me of when I got my license to use hand controls on my car, it was a normal driver’s license except that it would say I can use hand controls. Well, that’s what I thought it would say. Instead, it said I’m restricted to only using hand controls.
One more example comes to mind – parking. There are many reasons (legitimate or not) that someone will park in a handicap spot. The parking spots are nice because you can just go right to the front and usually not have to worry about finding a spot, often times there are a few available. My reason for using a handicap parking spot is not really because I need to be close to the front, it’s because I need to open my car door all the way so I can get my wheelchair in and out. If I parked in a normal parking spot, I wouldn’t even be able to get to my door because of how close the cars are. If I can’t get a handicap parking spot, I leave. Sometimes these handicap spots aren’t even safe. Multiple times I’ve gone to my car (parked in a handicap spot) only to see that some other car has parked in the area marked off for no-parking because it provides the space I need (and then I can’t get to my car door because the cars are so close together).
There is no easy solution, but the general idea is that instead of me being restricted to the accessible options, we could make all the options accessible or remove the need for an accessible option completely. Make all bathroom stalls accessible. Have an infrastructure with (accessible) public transit so that I don’t need to have a car to park.
The world has no obligation to me or accessibility. It’s a fairly recent nicety, but it’s hard to make a good objective argument for it unless you are very much into helping everyone with everything – but that’s a very slippery slope. Some parts of the world are better than others by default, but no place is perfect.
PS, here’s an example or what I mean when I say some parts are better by “default.” In the USA, with all the ADA laws and such, my university was still not accessible to many standards. A lot of doors were without a button to open it and some buildings had parts that were fully inaccessible. Yet, at another university in Australia where I studied, the doors didn’t even need buttons because they were all automatic sliding doors. This is convenient for everyone, especially those who can’t even use their hands to press an accessible door button.
Wheelchair DNA 