A curious understanding of access

Sometimes you run across news that is so weird that you've just gotta say something about it -- even when it has nothing to do with Louisville access.

There's just such a story out of Syracuse, New York: On Nov. 19, the Syracuse Post-Standard reported that developers were planning to turn a long-closed state institution into a segregated resort -- "for the handicapped only."

I'm not sure which is worse: the idea, or the fact that the developers and the state seem to clueless as to why this might in fact be offensive.

"What we are trying to do is give handicapped people something they never have had," Jim Benjamin, one of the owners of the firm Syracuse Resort for the Disabled told the newspaper. The firm was created specifically to purchase the property from the state and develop it.

"They can go to any hotel. But in most hotels, there's one handicapped bathroom. Here, the whole thing will be for them."

This one quote brings up so many issues, none of them asked in the stories, that I've been spending awhile trying to figure out how to explain things succinctly:

1. Why should something that's accessible immediately brand it as for "the handicapped only"? That's really at the heart of the thinking behind this -- and it's the same kind of thinking that keeps nondisabled people out of accessible restroom stalls in restaurants, or reluctant to push the button to activate an automated door into a mall, even when their arms are overflowing with packages. "If it's accessible, it's 'special for the handicapped.'" That kind of thinking, which seems to be the basis of Benjamin's concept, is the enemy of universal design -- the concept behind designing buildings and products that are simply accessible for everyone. Access of a piecemeal nature -- the kind Benjamin has observed in hotels -- in fact encourages and perpetuates segregationist thinking, and that's at the heart of Benjamin's proposal.

2. Any new or renovated hotel that has only "one handicapped bathroom" is breaking a bunch of laws. Nonetheless, I don't doubt that many hotels are in just this category.

3. If Benjamin-and-partners are committed to the idea of disabled people having access at resorts, why don't they simply design a fully accessible resort -- and open it to everyone? Is that such a far-out idea? Evidently.

Benjamin, you see, is not focused on universal design but on "helping." He gets his inspiration not from the disability rights and access movement but from a relative newcomer to disability, who perhaps can be forgiven for not seeing the larger issue:

Benjamin said his brother was the inspiration for the resort concept. His brother became disabled about three years ago after he suffered a stroke, Benjamin said.

Syracuse Resort intends to convert the existing 585,000-square-foot compound into a luxury hotel, he said.

"We felt this building was perfect. And it was made and designed for handicapped. That's the reason we came to Syracuse," Benjamin said.

Benjamin's brother may not know about the larger issues, but someone who plans to develop a major resort has some responsibility to do a little research, it seems.

It also seems clear that Benjamin is clueless as well about the history of institutionalization, and its horrors. The Syracuse Developmental Center functioned for more than a century as an institution for people labeled mentally disabled. The last of its 430 residents were moved into group homes in 1998. Since then, the site has been largely vacant. "It costs the state about $1.5 million per year to maintain," the newspaper reported, raising yet more questions about the responsible use of public money.

Maybe most folks don't realize the hell-holes that these kinds of institutions were. Or how disability groups have fought for decades to get them closed nationwide. (Here in Kentucky we still have Oakwood, and parents of the disabled people put there fight bitterly to keep it open.) For more about why institutions are so disliked by disability activists, go here and here and here.

"How about a resort just for Jews on the former site of Dachau?" quipped the disability rights activist who alerted me to the story.

The site itself isn't the most problematic part of this story, though. The problem is the segregation which is being proposed -- without a clue as to why segregation isn't a good idea.

Syracuse disability activist Karen Gillette called Benjamin's plan "bizarre". Others have vowed to protest if the plan goes forward.

A bad taste at a good restaurant

There we were at Meridian Cafe again. I like the food; but I always get a bad taste in my mouth when I'm there, because there isn't any wheelchair access whatsoever -- and there could be.

This is a big old house on Meridian Avenue (112 Meridian Ave.) in St. Matthews. Admittedly, it would take a big ramp to provide access; the porch is up about 5 steps; then there's another step into the house itself.

But a ramp would certainly be possible. There's a yard big enough for a ramp; an enterprising and motivated owner could even do a clever thing with a deck/ramp and provide interesting outdoor seating possibilities, like the owners of Kashmir did after Metrosweep got on them about a ramp (see the photo here).

The thing folks don't seem to GET is this: access isn't simply a "feel-good option" -- it's THE LAW.

Businesses seem to think that's just not important.

When a business is pressed about installing a ramp, typically they yell about cost. A ramp doesn't have to cost a lot of money -- certainly no more than a deck. And restaurants are always adding decks, patios, patio tables and chairs, umbrellas, plantings...

Why not a ramp?

It is the law, after all.

Kaitlyn's steps

I'd like to offer a little variety but the stories seem to keep coming: this time it's Kaitlyn Lasitter whose recent days in the news eye have shown us another inaccessible home.

At the top of yesterday's C-J was a big picture (here online, over on the right, scroll down a bit) of Kaitlyn being carried into her house by her father. You can see the steps in the lower left of the photo.

Kaitlyn Lasitter was the teen whose feet were chopped off by a Kentucky Kingdom amusement park ride last summer. There's lots online about that -- here's a C-J story, and a google search brings up tons more.

Very little, though, about her home's inaccessibility. In yesterday's C-J story, reporter Charlie White tell us that

Before Kaitlyn received her prosthesis, just getting from one room of the family's Germantown home to another was difficult for her because the door openings of the family's near-century-old home are too narrow for her wheelchair.

Randy Lasitter said he often had to carry her, while at other times, Kaitlyn had to crawl.

I'm glad this got into the story. I'd still like to see more focus on the problems caused by inaccessible homes in this community. And I'd like to see some public discussion about what should be done about it. Lots of commununities are ensuring that new homes have at least basic access. That's a movement called visitability, but it hasn't made it to Louisville. You can learn more about it at www.visitability.org.

Kaitlyn Lasitter, like Audrey White, lives in a house in Germantown.

Audrey's ramp

Saturday's news reported that finally Audrey White was going to get a wheelchair ramp for her home.

Provided through "the kindness of strangers."

Audrey White is the 8-year-old girl much in the news last week due to her wheelchair having been stolen -- for scrap metal, as it turns out -- from in front of her home.

The reason her chair was outside, with no one around, allowing it to be stolen, is a story of the routine inaccessibility of most of Louisville's housing stock, including the house in Germantown where Audrey lives with her family.

Many -- probably thousands -- of wheelchair users in Louisville live in similarly inaccessible homes.

And this isn't the first time something bad has happened because of that.

And yet what was interesting to me about this news story as it unfolded last week was that, although clear that the reason the chair was unattended was because her mom was helping Audrey out of the house, with the chair sitting at the foot of the steps, no news story focused on the problem of the inaccessible home.

To be sure, the news story WAS the stolen chair. But the theft was to my way of thinking possible in the first place because of the inaccessible home.

As the week unfolded, the news turned, as it usually does with stories of this sort, to the "outpouring" of the community. The media surrounding the theft had prompted Teri and Steve Bass to donate a new $5,000 wheelchair for Audrey -- and that then became the story (here and here).

Which was fine -- donating a wheelchair is no small deed, and it's good to see folks help out.

But... -- and yes, for me there is always a "but" when I see stories like this -- but wouldn't it be swell if this community was so generous about access?

Finally, though, that too happened:

Audrey's story touched many in the community, including several who're working to build a deck and ramp onto the back of her home.

"I won't have to carry her and the wheelchair," White said. "It's going to make her life easier and my life, too."

Kelley Construction, along with several United Auto Workers members who work for Ford, plan to get started on the project next week. (Source: Girl's stolen, wrecked wheelchair recovered, CJ Dec. 1, 2007)

OK. That's great!

Now: what about those other thousand who have no ramps on their homes?

I'd like to see the CJ's Jessie Halladay do a story about that.

The right hook

The other day I was at Uncle Tubby's Pizza over in Jeffersonville (103 Quartermaster Ct., Jeffersonville). Tubby's is in the old Quartermaster facililty, which has been redone into a kind of mall. New stores in all of it. And all of it, it appears, accessible!

And there I saw an access feature I've longed to see -- but never have:

In the restroom, in the accessible stall, the coat hook inside the door was lowered. A woman in a wheelchair could actually hang her purse on it!

Sad that this has to be such an amazing sight.

Most of those stalls, even when they're roomy enough, even when the grab bars are installed correctly -- and even when the stall door actually locks, which is infrequent -- the stupid hook is way way too high to use if you're in a wheelchair.

And it's so very very simple to do correctly!

Kudos to whoever installed the restroom there.