On the social indignity of riding the bus in a wheelchair
September 21st, 2007From the (Toronto, Canada) National Post comes a keenly observed piece by columnist David Kay. He captures the clash of infrastructure, culture, personality and emotion that occurs when a person with a wheelchair attempts to ride a city bus. Everybody gets where they’re going, but nobody gets there happy — least of all the person with the wheelchair.
Among the factors Kay notices:
- A bus design that can only accommodate wheelchair users by forcing other passengers out of their seats;
- A lengthy boarding process that aggravates passengers on their way to work;
- Passengers who feel inconvenienced about having to move;
- A wheelchair user who feels embarrassed and defensive about being the center of unwanted attention;
- A bus full of people who pretend not to look, but nonetheless feel annoyance and pity for “this poor disabled person.”
Cities like Toronto spend a great deal of money to accommodate the special needs of the disabled — and rightly so. But the idea that all of these expenditures will restore the disabled to the dignity and convenience the rest of us take for granted is false.
Like it or not, we live in a society whose physical infrastructure — not to mention the habits and expectations of its inhabitants — are based on the assumption of full mobility. The billions we spend on accessibility do help handicapped people get around. But they cannot erase the feeling, which must be one of the worst and most unfair aspects of being disabled, that you are inconveniencing others and being judged by them in the process.
His solution: people with disabilities ought to be able to ride in specially-equipped vans instead of buses full of judgmental onlookers.
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on Friday, September 21st, 2007 at 11:12 am and is filed under accessibility, mobility, transportation, wheelchair.
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September 27th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
I also find that a lot of the disabled people using transit to move around, having the bus driver strap them in, etc., seem to have a sense of self entitlement while riding the bus and end up, it seems, taking their sense of embarrassment and humiliation out on the driver. I have witnessed over the last 2 weeks people in wheelchairs not even bothering to thank the driver for their assistance.</p><br /><br />
<p>Unfortunately this does nothing for the wheelchair user’s self esteem or giving the rest of the bus a positive feeling about having them on public transit. I can’t imagine how it must make a good, kind bus driver feel. I wonder if any of the wheelchair users have thought of how unfair that is to the driver. Yes, the rest of us are probably selfish pigs but not the driver. Don’t take your issues out on them.</p></p></p>