You can't get there from here

The sign tells the first part of this story: The "handicap" entrance to the Derby City Antique Mall is around back -- same area as the loading dock. The building was originally an old school -- used to be called Hikes Graded School in the old days. Now it's an antique mall. See all the steps at the front entrance?




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Around back, way high up next to the door we see this sign:




And here's the entrance:




Ignore if you will, the dangerous grate. Ignore the steep ramp.You can't see it, you can only see the ledge next to it. But there is a ramp -- steep, but usable.
Except when you roll down to the doors -- they're locked.

"Flat" isn't the only issue with access

What's wrong with this picture? Looks like nothing's wrong. But looks can be deceiving.




I took this photo coming out of my polling place. It's a flat entrance. Once you get in, it's all flat. It's flat all the way to where you vote.

The problem? The doors. They are so incredibly heavy I had a really hard time opening them. When I went in, I held the door open for an older lady using a walker. She was "frail": no way she'd've been able to pull the door open.

And forget it if you in a wheelchair.

Is this polling site accessible? No.

But the officials certainly think it is.

Where is this? It's at a church; but it's such a typical problem that this photo could serve for countless other polling sites. When we talk about 'access' we need to consider what we really mean.

Missing

The ideas of access, of "universal design" or "visitability" are all but missing from the national discussion about building things. Here's just one example.

The New York Times hosts a lot of blogs; one is the "by design" blog, with blogger Allison Arieff. Arieff is

Editor at Large for Sunset, and the former Editor in Chief of Dwell magazine. She is co-author of the books “Prefab” and "Trailer Travel," and the editor of many books on design and popular culture, including “Airstream: The History of the Land Yacht” and “Cheap Hotels.” Ms. Arieff lives in San Francisco.

People in San Francisco should know about access. Berkeley, CA, just next door, is considered the home of the "independent living" movement -- the place where the disability rights movement of the 1980s really got its start. California has had some of the strongest access laws in the nation, and the oldest. So.

I searched Arieff's blog for entries about access. Nothing. I searched for "universal design"; for "accessiblity"; for "visitability"; finally, for just plain "disabled". Nothing.

Arieff's always going on about "green design". That's good. Everybody nowadays seems to go on about "green." Which is good. It's become a "trend."

But when will access ever become a trend?

A look at the tags on her blog let us know that she's into blogging about every conceivable trendy and near-trendy design issue:

Levittown Aeron agriculture Airstream Bill Stumpf cities coffee holder communities democratization droog design earth day efficiency energy efficiency farmland footprint future design gadgets Gio Ponti global footprint green buildings green design green living green schools greenwashing hospitals housing developments imagination industrial design innovation karim rashid Kermit the Frog Legos Little Boxes modern architecture neighborhoods niche markets obsolescence parking signs Peoples Design Award philippe starck Schoolhouse Rock sustainability sustainable prefab toys typography wellness

Nothing, though, about... access. Yeah, yeah, there's "wellness." That's not about access either.

Fountain drinks from on high

I stopped in at a fish-sandwich place the other day for lunch and encountered a "fountain drinks" counter way too high to reach.

It's not the first time I've encountered one like this -- the other one I recall is also at a fish place, but they're everywhere.

The counter all the stuff sits on is simply too high. They've got that soft-drink dispenser unit, those big urns, the cups and the napkins, straws and stuff all up on a counter that's probably about 4 feet off the ground to start with.

What's the point? There are plenty of fountain drink stations in fast-food restaurants that are on counters much lower. So what could possibly be the thinking of those who install these high counters?

Well, there it is -- no thinking.

What it tells me is that, once again, nobody -- not contractors, not owners, certainly not building or restaurant inspectors -- pays the slightest bit of attention to the fact that these things are supposed to be at an ACCESSIBLE height.

"Oh, they'll always help you get your drink for you!"

That's the response to complaints, isn't it?

But it's not the right response. The right response would be to put the counter lower in the first place.

Bumpy access at Westport Village, and a lot of lip

The other day I went over to Westport Village, that Universal-Studio-back-lot looking "renovation" of what used to be the Camelot Shopping Center, at Westport Rd. and Herr Lane. Looks like somebody had a bad idea for Cute. Or a Ye Trendie Village Malle, or some such.

But I digress.

In their effort to be Trendy, developers decided on -- yes! cobble stones! -- at all the intersections. See photo.



This kind of stuff falls into the realm of things that are Legally Accessible But Uncool. Years ago some wags called these kinds of intersections Podiatry Squares, for obvious reasons. But there they are -- a whole bunch of them scattered at, uh, intersections in this Westport Village creation.

And you'll see in the photo above that there are ramps, too. Below is a photo of another ramp; one that ramps directly from the parking lot to the sidewalk. Below that is a detail of the lip.

All these ramps are, I suspect, considered very Legal. Red ramps, to boot. Must be something about vision impairment. But you'll see that the ramps -- and all of them appear to be alike in this -- they all end in a big lip.



This photo doesn't really do the lip justice. It's a huge lip -- well over an inch high -- probably 2 inches.

I already know what the developers will say if called on this. "Oh, we have to make them high because we'll eventually fill in with more blacktop."

It's something I've heard before when I've called folks on ramps like this. But it's a specious argument, becuase there's no reason why adding additional blacktop to an already-flush-with-the-street ramp will make it less accessible. It's inaccessible NOW. That's the problem.

Just for the record: the parking lot does appear to be getting the requisite striping. Most of the ramps that empty into the parking lot have the diagonal "no parking" stripes at their ends. This one didn't just because they hadn't finished painting on the strips. Since there are ramps every couple of hundred feet (I said it was all very Legally Accessible!) and the others were already striped, I am not too worried about this.

I am worried about the Lips.

'They could have all been accessible!'

In past months I have had occasion to be driving west on Muhammad Ali to the medical complex. Driving there, I pass the massive construction project going on just to the east of downtown Louisville. It's officially called the Clarksdale HOPE VI Revitalization. It's the old Clarksdale housing projects, torn down and being rebuilt.

The blocks and blocks of buildings going up seem to be townhouses. Lovely designs -- don't look like the old low-income "projects" of my youth -- and of course, that's part of the idea behind all this.

Except.

Except they all have steps. Just like brownstones in New York. Steps up to the front door. Steps as far as I could see, creating the streetscape. Steps.

Now I have no doubt that the grand poobahs in charge of this are complying with all "laws" -- I'm sure there's a percentage set aside for "the handicapped" by law.

That's not what I'm getting at. I'm getting why we continue -- continue!! -- to build housing stock so that if we get older we're going to be forced into a nursing home, out of our homes. Continue to build places like this so if you've got somebody in the family who's in an accident or has diabetes and loses their legs you're going to have to be on a waiting list for one of the very few of those "percentages" that are accessible.

Why does it have to be this way? Is there no vision?

Every morning when I drove past this array of homes with steps, I could hear my friend Eleanor Smith of Atlanta's voice: "And they could have all been accessible!"

Yes, they could have.

Eleanor is the mother of the concept known as visitability. You don't hear much about it in Louisville.

These units I've been passing on Muhammad Ali look to me as though they're inspired by what's called the New Urbanism -- one of the silliest examples of which is Norton Commons, way the heck out in what used to be called the boonies.

And to hear Eleanor tell it, the New Urbanists simply don't like access.