Archive: December 2007
I am a customer
We had a three hour layover at LAX. The weather was bad at O’Hare, flights were being grounded. We listened to what sounded like an increasingly crazed gate agent: “Do not stand in line to ask about your flight. I will let you know when I have more information.”
At first I felt sympathetic towards her, [...]
Kauai - Salt Pond Beach Park
Beach number two with wheelchair accessibility - Salt Pond Beach Park is near Hanapepe, and also has a Landeeze beach wheelchair. The lifeguards here are less familiar with the chair and had to dig it out from under a bunch of stuff, so I guess it’s not used very often. It’s kind of busted up [...]
Kauai - Waimea Canyon
The drive up Waimea Canyon is fantastic, and there are numerous wheelchair accessible lookouts. The first lookout, Waimea Canyon Lookout, has a ramped path to a lower lookout. There’s a higher spot that is accessible via a very steep path - if you take that one, you should plan to have help coming down to [...]
Kauai - Koloa
Koloa, just north of Poipu, is pretty much just a couple of blocks of shops. There’s a grocery store, a bank, a post office, and a good pharmacy (not drug store) in addition to more boutique-y/tourist places. Wheelchair access is very iffy. Ramps lead up and around buildings to stairs. Short stretches of sidewalk lead [...]
Kauai - Poipu Beach Park
Beach number one with wheelchair accessibility: Poipu Beach Park has a Landeeze all-terrain wheelchair.
Park across the street - there are two permit spots. There’s a paved walk up to the beach (but not to the lifeguard station). There are accessible restrooms. Get your buddy to go to the lifeguard station and ask for the beach [...]
Kauai - the condo
Mele Kalikimaka from Kauai! We are spending two weeks on Garden Island.
We’re staying in a condo at Kuhio Shores, overlooking the beach. I conducted a fairly extensive email communication with the owner over several months prior to our trip. My regular chair is 24 inches wide without any camber, so I told him I needed [...]
Accessible subway stations
So you’re in a world-class cosmopolitan city with a fantastic subway transit system. You get your handy-dandy subway map, and you start trying to decipher the tiny little symbols that mean that a particular station is wheelchair-accessible, if the elevator isn’t broken.
Wouldn’t it be easier if someone just erased the inaccessible stations, so you could [...]
Wanting Too Much?
Occasionally I will get into a funk and wonder if I want too much - too much access, too much fairness, too much equality.
Luckily there are people to come to my rescue. Stephen Kuusisto points out that
providing special education to kids in our public schools, or putting in accessible curb cuts are no longer [...]
Film trains screeners on assisting disabled
For the past two weeks, a film crew has been making a training video at DIA to teach TSA employees nationwide the proper techniques for screening disabled travelers and their medical equipment.
The video crew filmed about 40 “scenarios” covering all categories of disabilities — mobility, hearing, visual and “hidden,” which includes travelers’ heart disease and [...]
Air travel easier ‘except for disabled’
From Australia’s The Age:
Personal accounts from disabled travellers contained in the report include a quadriplegic man who was incorrectly told an airline was “breaking the law” by having him onboard.
It’s not really a scooter
I’ve now seen three stories about Senator Tim Johnson’s re-election bid. They’re all very similar. They all have a picture of Senator Johnson in what is clearly a power chair, and they all say that it is a scooter. I guess “scooter” telegraphs less disability than “power chair” or “wheelchair”.
The stories:
USA Today, A year after [...]
Airlines warned not to bar disabled
LOW-COST carriers have been warned not to attempt to cut costs by discriminating against the disabled after two airlines recently sought exemptions from laws designed to grant handicapped travellers equal access to transport.
Full story: The Australian
HPR comments
Responded to Arapahoe County Planning:
Sheet 2 of 5
Parking Requirements note indicates that there will be
between 200 and 500 parkings spaces. No details are provided, but per
the ADAAG Section 4.1.2(5)(a), the following numbers of accessible
spaces must be provided:
201 to 300 7
301 to 400 8
401 to 500 [...]
20 Things to do with the Retrieve Command
I’ve got to teach my dog to retrieve. Check out this list of potential service dog tasks!
RETRIEVE BASED TASKS
* Bring portable phone to any room in house
* Bring in groceries - up to ten canvas bags
* Unload suitable grocery items from canvas sacks
[...]
Bread
Come home soon, children! Eat the bread:
Disabled woman’s home feels like jail
I’m going to have to add a category just for condo associations (see this, and this, and this).
And now there’s this:
For more than a year, Fontanez has been trying to break free. But each time she has gotten close, officials of the Casa Del Rio Condominium Association have stood in her way.
This week she filed [...]
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