I work downtown, get off my bus on 103 A Avenue, I turn and go along 97 Street south.. I need to go to Jasper Avenue, I have to catch a bus at the Court house.. How on earth am I going to get the bus real fast...? A person walking can simply just walk off the corner... cross the street and voila...at the bus stop... but NOT me...!! I have to struggle to wheel my chair real fast to get to the bus... but I have to go a lot more distance to get to the stop. When I finally reach the stop... crap the bus past by....!!!
Now here I sit, another half an hour for the next bus... when I could have simply just went from corner to corner if there were some ramps at the start and made the first bus. Someone needs to fix that please!!
I had no idea that accessibilty was that bad of an issue before my new level of understanding and compassion.
ReplyDeleteI would normally go about my day not thinking about these types of issues probably much like the rest of us...who don't have mobility issues.
A couple weeks ago this.changed for me as I met and am becoming closer to a caring fellow who is a wheel chair driver himself.
I am now looking at the roads I travel on and the places I go with a new.understanding and compassion trying to see from his perspective.
For example, at a restroom in a restaurant I started thinking, man these paper.towel dispensers are so high..how can he reach? or even the roads to get.into the restaurant.there so bumpy I wonder how many wheels get suck in these potholes.
So I say thank you Tim for my new understanding.
I say we all new this sense of understanding and compassion.
Who knows, it may be you or I someday!!
I am really glad that the public side walk has been fixed out front of my place along 108 street, you see I was walking home one day and stepped on the raised crack in the center of the sidewalk and rolled my ankle. I had discovered that I had ended up with a stress fracture in my ankle and wearing running shoes to boot when that happened.
ReplyDeleteImagine someone using a walker doing the same thing or even someone in a wheelchair getting a wheel stuck in the center crack...disasterous. Thats why we need to have our roads, sidewalks and other surfaces free of damages!