Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Mary Swift documents problems with the Seattle area ACCESS transportation program, which serves 27,000 people with disabilities. A spokesman for the service says its on-time performance is 92.2 percent, but Swift says that means many people wait a long time for rides that may come late or not at all.

These people, Swift says, don’t have the luxury of being able to make other arrangements for transportation to work or vital medical appointments.

That old adage about walking a mile in somebody’s shoes doesn’t apply here.

A new adage about spending a day in someone’s wheelchair just might.

Columns here and here.

From the Baltimore Sun:

A group of fourteen blind students and five adults complained yesterday that they were not allowed to skate freely at a North Baltimore ice rink because of their disabilities.

Police were called to mediate the dispute, and no arrests were made. The students were participating in a summer residential program sponsored by the National Federation of the Blind.

A spokeswoman for the Northwest Ice Rink denied that the group had been barred from the rink, but said she had proposed that they be separated from other skaters in a section that was cordoned off.

Rosy Carranza, one of the group’s leaders, said the students refused their own section of the rink and want to mingle with other skaters, using canes to alert others of their disability. “Our program is here to teach self-dependency,” Carranza said. “How would they feel if we were roped off in our own area — the blind area?”

From the San Francisco Chronicle, AP/KPIX-TV San Francisco, Reuters:

The California Court of Appeal ruled yesterday that the Mervyns department store chain must find ways to make all merchandise accessible to consumers with disabilities.

The impact of the ruling on Mervyns is not clear because the the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Tuesday.

In a 2002 lawsuit, advocates had claimed that Mervyns denied access to people with mobility impairments by placing merchandise displays too close together. A lower court had found that making changes to existing stores would be too costly, and said modifications should be made only at the company’s new stores.

Mervyns maintained that the cost of changing store layouts could cause financial hardships and store closures.

The question is posed in the Exploring Race blog, by Dawn Turner Trice, which was featured on the front page of the newspaper’s opinion section. A reader identified only as “Marcus C.” says he has seen many apparently non-disabled African-American people use the preferential parking while going into the bank.

“Is this racial or just about a group of people who just don’t understand they shouldn’t ever park in the handicapped spot?” he asks.

At last count, there were 82 comments posted.

From the Chicago Tribune and The Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

Cities around the country are retooling their playgrounds to accommodate children with special needs. In Evanston, Illinois, parents raised money to build a special public playground on the lakefront in which virtually every piece of equipment is wheelchair accessible. In Seattle, the nonprofit Children’s PlayGarden is working with the city and Seattle Parks Foundation to add adaptive playground swings that are easier for children with disabilities to use.

The efforts are part of a national trend that has seen the number of accessible playgrounds rise in recent years as conditions such as autism garner awareness. Communications director Dina Morris at Boundless Playgrounds, a Connecticut-based nonprofit that builds accessible playgrounds, says the ten-year-old organization initially built about 10 playgrounds a year, but the number has risen to 25 annually in the last two years.

Earlier post here.

(Photo from Boundless Playgrounds)

From Scripps News, Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

Dan K. Thomasson, former editor of the Scripps Howard News Service, questions whether people with disabilities will actually benefit from the cost required to upgrade the American with Disabilities Act. He notes that accommodations are costly and often remain unused by those whom they are supposed to benefit.

For the life of me, I can’t understand how those benefits can be measured monetarily. Yes, no one is really willing to risk the wrath of the ADA lobby to do much arguing against this or to say that economically the requirements sometimes don’t seem to make much sense when considering the lack of utilization of current improvements or most likely of future enhancements mandated under the new proposals.

Take one that would require witness stands in courtrooms to be outfitted with lifts or some other way of making them wheelchair-friendly. Most times courts have placed wheelchair-bound witnesses in a position where they can be heard by the jury, the lawyers, and the judge. There is no cost or loss of dignity in this. (more…)

Editors at the Hartford Courant call for reform of Connecticut’s system of managing disabled parking placards. The New York Times recently reported that the state is one of only three to issue lifetime passes for disabled parking. A reform bill died in the state legislature this year, amid concerns over cost and administrative delays.

How complicated can it be? If you have a parking permit, you bring either a note from the doctor or the permit itself when you come in to renew your license. When a license expires, someone can run the name through the roll of permit holders and get the permit back.

The handicapped parking system is there to help the thousands of people whose disabilities inhibit their ability to walk. Most able-bodied people respect the handicapped spaces. There’s little sympathy for those who don’t.