Disability Awareness Consultants

Hi!

I just remembered something I wanted to tell you all. I received a call from a client who was going to hire someone with a disability from an agency. They didn’t know just whom they would be getting, but they wanted to be ready, so they asked me to design and source a washroom that would be accessible for someone using a wheelchair. I did, at a great rush, and they had it built at a cost of thousands.

The fellow arrived, and he was DEAF! His Hearing-Ear dog liked having a big, cool, tiled floor to roll around on, so it wasn’t a total loss. LOL

Most accommodations are not expensive, and lots of folks who are disabled do not use wheelchairs.

That’s it for today.

Hi everyone,

Sorry I’ve been MIA for the past week. This site-audit I worked on took all my time. Lots of research to find the right elevators for my client, but it was cool to learn about more stuff.

An interesting (and troubling) issue came from a previous audit, where a client asked me to change one of my recommendations, to give them
‘permission’ to do something illegal! In their defense, they didn’t know what they were asking for. Some idiot who said he was a professional, told them they could circumvent the accessibility law by calling their elevator a platform lift. The space requirements are different, and they don’t have room for the elevator. Still, calling it by another, incorrect name will not provide access for people who use large wheelchairs or scooters. That was supposed to be the objective. Funny what people will do.

Days ago I promised to talk about walls, floors, doors and door locks.

That’s probably enough to bore everyone to sleep before lunch!

The problems with walls – sometimes in an effort to make things ‘pretty’ I’ve seen clients decorate a hotel room room, a bathroom or a meeting room in all one monochromatic colour. Walls, floors, doors and window-coverings, all in white or beige, and one time a bathroom in bright red! This makes it not only terrifically dull, but also impossible for people with low vision, blindness, or other perceptual disabilities to see where the wall ends and the door starts. It feels claustrophobic and scary when you think you can’t find the door to get out. The all-red bathroom was so busy, with tiny red and white tiles on the walls and floors, plus red counters, stalls and doors, I felt dizzy when I went in there! When I tell my clients about these problems, they always assume that I am advocating expensive re-tiling, or new paint and wallpaper. It doesn’t have to be a big deal. The pretty coloured borders that you can buy at any hardware store, can be applied around the room, around a door frame, or anywhere that you want to show an edge.

I find that many clients get carried away with their expectations of what people who are disabled might need to provide access. The truth is, most accommodations cost less than $500, and lots of them are free. Sometimes all it takes is moving a piece of furniture out of the way, or changing a procedure that is difficult.

Floors – you know what’s wrong with many floors – CARPETING! People who use manual wheelchairs, walkers, canes, crutches, or just shuffle their feet, HATE carpeting. It’s hard to roll on, and it catches accommodation devices and dragging feet. I’m not suggesting the abolition of all rugs, just judicious placement, to allow bare floors for those of us who want them, and maybe carpet ‘runners’ for the rest of the world.

When a rug or mat is really critical, such as at a doorway of a building, where people need to wipe their wet feet, make sure the surface is tacked down firmly, so we don’t catch our feet or accommodation devices on the edges.

Also, on the hard floor, forget the shiny wax and glossy surfaces. There are products you can spread on with a mop that reduce shiny, slippery floors to a surface with some texture. It makes a big difference to people who use canes and crutches, if they can feel reasonably confident that their device won’t slip out from their hands on a shiny, tiled floor.

Doors: Broken doors are the biggest pain. When a stall-door breaks on a regular stall, the management gets it fixed, because they know it’s needed. When it’s the ‘accessible’ stall, they often don’t bother. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to do my ‘business’ in stalls without doors, or where the door is hanging off the hinge. Why don’t people see – we don’t have a lot of options here!

Also, doors are often too heavy and too narrow, with automatic operation either not there at all, or turned off by some ‘rocket scientist’ who doesn’t see the point!

To have an inaccessible environment is like putting up a sign saying “We don’t want your kind in here.” I grew up in a time and place where you would hear that a lot in restaurants and stores, directed to people of colour. I hope that no one would dream of saying anything like that anymore, but a barrier says it without words.

Finally, locks! They must be operable with a closed fist in order to be barrier-free. If it requires two hands to operate, or pinching twisting or hard pushing, dump it! It’s useless to people who don’t have the full use of their hands.

That’s enough ranting for today. Don’t forget to go to the Candidates’ debate at the Trinity, St. Paul’s church on Bloor west of Spadina. The date is Sept. 22, but unfortunately it’s from one to three in the afternoon. I guess somebody figures “the disabled” don’t work and can take a big chunk out of a day to attend. Well, somebody is right, at least as far as I’m concerned. I’m going to be there to ask these folks about their commitment to the AODA, accessible transit, and a barrier-free city.

Bye for today!

Hi,

It looks like I missed a whole week here.  I’ve been busy with a big site-audit, and it’s taking up my time.

I know I’ve been kvetching about bathrooms a lot, but only because they are so crucial to our dignity and self-respect.  If you’re not physically disabled, try to imagine sitting somewhere where you can’t go to the washroom when you need to, or you have to ask strangers for assistance.  It can be mortifying – especially if you can’t get the help you need!  The euphemism ‘toileting accident’ can’t begin to describe the humiliation of making a mess of yourself in a public place.  I’ve been lucky, in that it hasn’t happened to me, but I’ve seen it happen to others, and it’s hard to imagine how awful it can be.

In my workshops, I always tell participants not to make a big deal about it if someone in their workplace has an ‘accident’.  It’s not the Ebola Virus, after all, and there’s no one in the room who is not familiar with the properties of urine, feces and vomit.  You just put on rubber gloves, grab the Lysol, hold your breath, and get on with it!  If you act like it’s not a major incident, then it becomes (slightly) easier for everyone else to cope – including the poor unfortunate who has just had his/her entire day ruined.

It’s bad enough when the problem is the unavailability of an accessible washroom, but it’s a lot worse when the facilities are there, but are in use by someone who doesn’t need them!  I can’t count all the times I’ve encountered women using the wheelchair-accessible washrooms or stalls as dressing rooms, phone booths, meeting rooms, (yes, really), or simply a nice, big stall that’s less cramped than the others.  In the Pearson airport in Toronto, I yelled at a ground-staff employee of an airline, who used the wheelchair-accessible washroom because it was closer to her desk than the other one.

We don’t like having to share these facilities with large family groups, or with the women who must use the change-table that is frequently mounted in the larger stall.  We recognize they have no choice in the matter if ‘family washrooms’ aren’t available, or if there’s no change-table anywhere else, but that doesn’t mean we have to be happy about it!

I often needed bars on the sides of the toilet, even when I wasn’t using my chair.  This made me wish the washroom designers would mount horizontal bars in ‘skinny’ stalls, not just in the accessible ones.  The only places I see that are homes for older people and some movie theatres.  If there are bars in other non-accessible washrooms, I’d like to hear about it.

That’s enough ranting for this rainy Sunday.  I need to get back to my audit!

Did you ever notice how the toilet is often directly behind the door, in so-called ‘wheelchair accessible’ washrooms?  What do the designers think we’re going to do, back up to the toilet and jump over the seat-back of the wheelchair?  I have gotten fed up with trying to angle the chair through the doorway, past the toilet and back into the transfer space.  Of course, it’s lucky if the transfer space is actually available!  I’ve actually ripped things off the walls when they are mounted in the transfer space, blocking my access!

One washroom I went to had the toilet smack in the middle of the stall, with not enough room for a transfer on either side of the toilet.  There was about 18 inches on each side of the toilet, outside the big, L-shaped transfer bars that some genius had screwed to the floor on either side of the toilet.  This would work fine, if you could walk.  Of course, lots of us can’t just hop out of the chair, so that washroom was pretty useless!

In the interests of ‘full disclosure’ I should tell you – I used canes or a wheelchair for about 13 years, until my arthritis went into a fabulous remission.  My chair has been in the garage for the past two years, and my canes are in the closet.   I know that any remission could go away, so I still am thrilled every day when I get out of bed and the legs don’t hurt.  I still think of myself as disabled, but I don’t use the accessible stalls anymore, and I no longer have a parking permit.

In one restaurant, in the ‘accessible’ stall, someone had taken the incorrectly-placed bar off the wall and left it sitting on the floor.  I drew a picture on the wall, showing where the bar should go, and wrote a note – right on the wall – that said “When you put the bar back, this is where it goes.”  About a year later I went back to the same restaurant and the bar was still sitting on the floor, and my message was still on the wall!  I got the manager and took him into the washroom and showed him the bar and my note.  He had never seen it, and no one had ever mentioned it to him!  I guess the people who cleaned the washroom didn’t read English, and just assumed my stuff was some joke.  It’s sure no joke when you need that transfer bar and it’s not in the right place!

I guess I must sound like a real grouch – ranting about something every day.  Actually, I’m really a happy, cheerful individual.  I just get annoyed with people who do silly stuff.Tomorrow – door locks!

Today’s rant is about sinks.  There are so many problems with sinks – it’s obvious that the people who design them, don’t use them, at least not from wheelchairs or scooters!  Whoever was the genius who designed those ridiculous, high, curved faucets; I hope he gets soaked every time he washes his hands!  They splatter water all over any unsuspecting victim who is sitting down, of short stature, or who has limited reach.   The only thing they are good for is washing big pots or bathing the dog!

Then there are the tap-handles.  They’re usually too small, or they’re round balls or little egg-shaped knobs.  Even when they are long enough, they are often assembled so that the ends of the handles are turned away from the edge of the sink.  This means the handles are unreachable for people who can’t stretch across the sink or counter top.  If the water isn’t operated by an electric-eye, then those of us who can not reach the handles must wait like little children, for some ‘grown-up’ to come along and turn on the water for us!

The same thing happens with the soap.  Many times I have seen an otherwise-accessible sink, with the soap dispenser mounted on the mirror or the back wall.  This puts the soap as far from the edge of the sink as possible, and often very high up, too.  I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to wait in washrooms for another woman to come along who will squirt the soap into her own hand and give it to me.

Not everyone is willing to do that, and it can create humiliating situations.  I carry hand-sanitizer with me wherever I go.  I call it my ‘portable sink’, so I can clean my hands before I eat, and then I don’t have to touch the rims of my chair to get back to the table.  No matter how hard anyone tries, the rims can’t be really clean, since dirt flies up on them from the ground.

There are often ‘skirts’ around the fronts of sinks – I guess they are supposed to hide the ugly bottoms of the sinks from view.  They also stop us from getting close to the sink, and I have often smashed my kneecaps against one of those useless barriers, when I’ve misjudged the distance from the floor.  If the pipes aren’t wrapped with insulation and padding, they can be a source of serious burns or bruises if we smack our legs against them.

Finally, there are the ledges at the front of the sinks.  These are often several inches wide, and they are always, without exception, wet!  This means that those of us who must lean across the counter to reach the water, come away with our sleeves and shirt-fronts wet, soapy and stained.  This is really appealing if we’re nicely dressed, because we come away looking like little kids who have been playing in the sink!

That’s definitely enough ranting for one day!  Maybe tomorrow I’ll tell you about walls, floors and doors.  Doesn’t that sound exciting?

If I ever write a book, it will be called “We Can’t Walk With Wet Hands!”  I guess it might put me out of business if I tell everyone how to accommodate us, but it might be worth it to save the aggravation!  People who design public washrooms never seem to grasp the fact that, once our hands are wet and slippery from washing, we can’t safely hold a cane or wheel a chair.  We get our hands dirty again, or we drop the cane as we try to negotiate our way across the washroom, to wherever they decided to put the towels or hand-dryer!  Tomorrow I’ll talk about what’s wrong with most of the sinks in the world.

My second blog effort:  I don’t have a lot to say today, which is very unusual for me!  I have a great story I love to tell about people and their reactions to those of us with disabilities.  This happened a few years ago, when I was more disabled.

I was driving on the Danforth, and a taxi cab hit the back of my car.  I picked up my cane and got out of the car to look for damages.  The taxi driver got out too, but he was not looking at the cars – he was staring in horror at my cane.  He said “Oh my God, Lady please tell me you were already like that before I hit you!”  I laughed all the way home, and for a long time afterwards!  His reaction was funny, but it was also revealing about how many people see those of us with disabilities.  To many people, we’re fragile and scary.  They see a mobility aid and they are terrified of what it means.

Sometimes people guess at what’s going on with us, and that can be funny or frustrating, too.  I had a cane for a while that was a white background with red, yellow and blue ‘racing stripes’ going up and down the sides of the stick.  I used to tell people I hoped that the racing stripes would help me walk faster!   One day, a woman on an elevator with me, asked if the red, yellow and blue stripes were  some kind of secret code to tell other people what my disabilities were!

I know these people all mean well – I don’t think I know anyone who would actually want to hurt me or anyone else who is disabled.  (Well, I do know one, but I won’t talk about her because she’s a relative!)  I just know, and so do all the people who live with disabilities, that everyone needs to develop awareness and sensitivity about a wide variety of disability issues.  That’s enough for today!

Hello,

This is my first foray into the world of blogging.

I’m very grateful to Linda Morris of NicLyn Consulting for setting this up for me.  I want to start by introducing myself to anyone who doesn’t know me.

I have been working in the field of disability issues since 1993, and doing training and site-audits since Sept. of 1995.  For the first 11 years I worked for Handidactis, which was an arm of the wheelchair  sports of Montreal.  In 2006 they were getting so busy preparing for their athletes to compete in the 2008 Olympics, they decided they no longer had the time or energy to manage my part of the business.  I’ve been working for myself since April of ’06.

I have three significant disabilities, all of which are in remission or under control, most of the time.  My arthritis was very painful for many years, and I always used either a cane or a wheelchair for mobility assistance.  Since I’ve been on a diet and cut out carbohydrates from most of my food, I’ve lost 60 poiunds  and the pain from the arthritis is nearly gone.    I owe a lot of the credit to Irving the Dog, who is my ‘exercise coach’.

I have a very rare and strange form of seizure-disorder.  It does not make me faint or fall down – it makes me choke and cough.  It was devastating until my dr. figured it out and put me on an anti-convulsant that stops the ‘twitching’ in my throat.

We were very relieved when I stopped coughing, since it was happening every 90 minutes, 24/7, for about 4 years.  We thought I was dying, I was so weakened by these ‘partial-complex’ seizures.

Finally, there’s my anxiety disorder – it is certainly the hardest one to deal with now, although the meds do help.  I am still very anxious sometimes, and often for no discernible reason.  Avrom, my husband, is a terrific help in keeping me calm, and so is the dog!

I think that is enough for my first effort.  More later!

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