Lose the Wheelchair!
At some point in the future, people will look back at the primitive accommodations for the disabled we prize today as social victories with our ADA laws and shake their heads, ‘boy, have we come a long way.’ Even though erasing the last distinctions between the able-bodied and the disabled may take longer, and longer still, the inherent prejudice.
We humans fear serious disabilities as being on a direct route to death. The more nervous we are, the more we attack the disabled. It’s such a primitive fear, and it spans species. Dogs, like their wolf ancestors, hide their disabilities from the ‘pack’ so as not to be left behind. How plaintive does that sound? How starkly true?
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K Dick’s novel about a dystopian future–later made into the film classic, Blade Runner–introduced androids who are nearly indistinguishable from humans, replicants as the movie calls them. Being mentally unstable himself, Dick’s dystopia was both vivid and convincing. Might a manufactured species become true? How about just well-designed replacement parts? Because, like the best of science fiction, its speculation has a tendency to introduce change. Science fiction writers are only reflecting the thoughts of society at large, immortality being a hot topic going back to the Greek gods and beyond.
The first step on that road is eliminating a need for wheelchairs. No single device is more synonymous with disabilities in the modern age.
We would not be human if we didn’t recognize the serious nature of being unable to stand, walk, run. Though it leads us into thickets of prejudice–Dickens’s Tiny Tim being a classic example. Tiny Tim, as Dickens amply demonstrates, is tragic because he is noticeably vulnerable. There are any number of scenes where the hero wakes in the hospital sans the ability to walk and the story revolves around what follows. The scene in Ben Hur when Charlton Heston is first chained to the slaver’s rowing bench conveys something akin to first confronting life in a wheelchair.
It’s true society has worked to bring the disabled more into the mainstream, but it’s been done with fits and starts and with mixed results. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” For better or worse.
It’s estimated that 2.7 million people in the U.S. were wheelchair dependent in 2015, out of a population of 320.2 million people. Just less than 1% of the total population at that time. In the aggregate, a large enough number, in its impact on the built environment an even greater one. The cost of outfitting awkward building solutions is growing as public buildings are renovated or built anew; this is not a one time investment, but ongoing. The U.S. building industry is projected by AP to be $1.4 trillion by 2024—in four years and a chunk of that will be to satisfy the ADA regs.
From the introductory paragraphs of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA):
“The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed into law on July 26, 1990, by President George H.W. Bush. The ADA is one of America's most comprehensive pieces of civil rights legislation that prohibits discrimination and guarantees that people with disabilities have the same opportunities as everyone else to participate in the mainstream of American life–to enjoy employment opportunities, to purchase goods and services, and to participate in State and local government programs and services. Modeled after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin–and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973–the ADA is an ‘equal opportunity’ law for people with disabilities.
“To be protected by the ADA, one must have a disability, which is defined by the ADA as a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities, a person who has a history or record of such an impairment, or a person who is perceived by others as having such an impairment. The ADA does not specifically name all of the impairments that are covered.”
from 2010 Information on Technical Assistance on The Americans with Disabilities Act
The last sentence bears consideration: “The ADA does not specifically name all of the impairments that are covered.” Innocuously vague–the way we should write all laws for maximum lawsuits.
2010 ADA regs are two hundred-eighty pages of dense reading, cross -referenced by a Byzantine organization of sections; no simple pages and chapters for these boys and girls at the Justice Department. Example pages can be found here:
from 2010 ADA
Why, you might ask, does the U.S. Department of Justice publish regulations on building construction?
Most people would logically assume enforcement of ADA regs would fall to the building officials and be defined by the national building codes. And they would be wrong. The courts are the only legal authority and the wisdom of lawyers prevails. The most local code officials and building inspectors can do is comment on what they perceive are violations, but they don’t get to decide. Nor do architects. The sentiment behind this is the phrase “Modeled after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination…” This might seem a distinction of little difference, but in fact has provided civil rights attorneys and consultants quite nice income streams and made a mess of the building codes.
The history of the disabled doesn’t make for pleasant reading, discrimination being akin to a national pastime, so it’s understandable that advocates pushing for reforms viewed discrimination as their primary issue. But it’s created a conundrum for architects left to figure out the regs so their owners don’t get sued.
The New York Times article, Beyond the Law’s Promise, focuses on the unseen side of the subject, what the disabled themselves experience in the physical challenges–along with the psychological–essentially giving the lay of the land for the disabled. Some manage the restrictions with seeming aplomb, grace even, though the challenges remain.
Washington University’s architecture program at one time had students spend time in a wheelchair to better appreciate the circumstances facing disabled persons. If you’ve ever watched a person navigating with a leg cast and crutches, it’s easy to see the concentration on the person’s face just to climb a six inch curb. Even if in six weeks, maybe eight, they’ll be free again.
My sister, Susan, endured ten years of an undiagnosed autoimmune disease that ultimately wasted her body. At Ryan’s death, our recently purchased house had no means for wheelchair access; we needed to carry her inside, wheelchair and all, through the back door since the front door was at the basement level. She tried laughing it off as we three strong men awkwardly wrestled her indoors. Along with the addition to the house, one of the first elements I designed was a bridge spanning from carport to the front door. My hope that she’d be able to use it wasn’t realized; it came too late.
I don’t criticize the sentiment of inclusion that underlies the ADA law–and yes, it would be more civil (as in civil manners) for us to avoid discriminating against another’s disabilities. My argument is simply that we need to be smarter about how we achieve equality, because what the country has wrought is a poor substitute, one that costs more than it provides.
Rather than focusing on the problem directly, ADA regulations accept as a given that a technology dating back to the sixteenth century should be the solution. The core of the ADA regulations focuses on navigating the world in a manually maneuvered wheelchair. Instead of envisioning a better method, “an accessible path of travel” became fundamental in a world chained to wheelchairs.
“The first known wheelchair purposefully designed for disability and mobility was called an ‘invalid’s chair.’ It was invented in 1595 specifically for King Phillip II of Spain. The chair had small wheels attached to the end of a chair’s legs and it included a platform for Phillip’s legs and an adjustable backrest. It could not be self-propelled but most likely the King always had servants transporting him around.”
Handicap ramps, even the ones designed for a new project, are at best awkward intrusions on a building’s aesthetics and worse, aggressive barriers to everybody involved, old, young, able-bodied or not. By civil rights law, these ramps can be no wider than three feet between rails, (so one can pull the contraption forward by using the handrails) making the ramps one way, or requiring intermediate railings for folks with limited visibility to run into–right about gut level. Try swinging crutches in less than the width of the ramp.
HC parking spaces (yes, that’s what the industry still calls them) take up 1.5 times as much area and must be near dead level because manual wheelchairs can’t hold themselves in place on a slope. 5% ramps run for one hundred feet to make up a five foot vertical difference replacing stairs that can do it graciously in ten feet. Automatic doors smack people on opening, and other doors can’t close against a high wind due to their low closer strength. Urinals are set too low for the average adult males, presumably expected to pee on their shoes instead. Toilet stalls take twice as much space meaning half as many people can use the facilities. Toilet room fixtures set low enough for access from a wheelchair, and objects projecting beyond 4 inches into the path of travel requiring guard rails to prevent the blind from walking into them.
When you have to explain to a builder the freshly poured concrete landing will need to be jackhammered and re-poured because it exceeds a ¼ inch per foot slope (as measured by a two-foot level), public kitchens whose cabinetry must be accessible from a wheelchair. That a toilet set off 18.5 inches from the side wall must be torn out and replaced with one that is exactly 18 inches.
You can’t slope restroom floors to floor drains greater than 1/8 inch per foot–a nice to have for sanitary conditions in public restrooms. 1/8 inch per foot is no better than a rounding error in poured concrete. So forget sanitary floors where people pee and poop; we need our wheelchairs!
All this, and since the physical and mental disabilities widely vary, with body differences in size, age and sex, few of the ADA requirements can be sure to fit the person they’re meant to accommodate. They are at best proximate and often not even that. Nice try, no banana.
Showing actual respect to persons confined in wheelchairs requires either sitting so you’re at their eye level to avoid looming over them, or designing the device that lets them be upright in spite of their disabilities. The difference in psychology would be enormous for both parties.
What would our world be like if, for the one percent of us who are in wheelchairs, and the ones who struggle making do, robotic assistance could be provided to, say, climb a stair, maneuver tight spaces or navigate across uneven surfaces? Substitute limbs, enhanced vision and hearing assistance? Proximity devices for the blind? Aspects are already being developed, from robotic hands and limbs, to sight and hearing enhancements for the blind and the deaf. There are already navigation systems to assist people with visual impairments through buildings.
Instead of enforcing antiquated accommodations for wheelchairs, fund the damn research!
I roomed next door to an admittedly eccentric computer geek in grad school whose goal was a brain-computer implant. When a young doctor explained that a single brain has an order of 86 billion neurons, and connecting them to a computer would be impossible, he smiled, convinced he’d invent one. He quite Yale for Stanford, and I suspect he’s done well for himself–despite his Asperger’s awkwardness–or because of it. I expect he had more than 86 billion neurons working, Some of us may have a few less.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now the holy grail of computer science. What fine motor skills do for the fortunate majority of people, AI might well offer those who are less able bodied. If macular degeneration limits my sight, I’m hoping AI will bring a device along in time. Ditto for my hearing loss–damn those Allman Brother concerts.
And when my driving skills have deteriorated the way they will in time, I’m betting on autonomous transportation. Elon, finish the job, boy!
Stephen Hawking lived fifty years crippled by ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and bound to a wheelchair. It is hard to view his life as tragic, though the tragedy he endured was surely a curse. I would not say his disability forced his mind into overdrive; his mind was what he was born with, a gift to humanity. Hawking’s use of voice software allowed him to communicate; his mind gave us the multiverse. Medical science may one day eliminate ALS, but certainly, biomechanical inventions would have made his every day work of living easier. When the next Hawking comes along, here’s hoping we’ll be better prepared for him.
[1] Mathew 25:40
[1] From article published in National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI)
Dog in Cart Photo by Anthony Ruffolo on Unsplash