Aargh Ableds* *headdesk*

[davidgillon]

Twice in five minutes twitter has had me not just *facepalm*ing, but full-on head-in-hands over abled attitudes to disability access.

First up were a bunch of pedestrianisation/sustainable transportation advocates arguing public transport meant no one needed cars. Someone had already made a point about public transport not meeting their needs that was probably disability related, so I pointed out mass transport fails as an access solution for disabled people because it doesn't address the mobility barriers between stop and destination. Not the built environment, but the physical environment of how far is it and how steep is the slope that determine accessibility if you have very limited ambulant mobility or are a wheelchair user. Not only did I get a general denial that it's an issue, but I had someone arguing that the solution to disability access was e-scooters (I really, really, really wish I was kidding).

And I just read the twitter profile of the main guy (not e-scooter guy), and he's not some random green, he's a senior transportation specialist at the World Bank. FFS!

Then I noticed a thread about the latest edition of the 'D&D Combat Wheelchair' rules. Yes, it's a thing, there are even figures available, and it's a thing that an ungodly number of ableds seem to find threatening in some way. So threatening that someone has actually spent several hours drawing an annoyingly well illustrated cartoon with character 1, in wooden wheelchair saying "Thank god, an accessible dungeon", and character 2 promptly magicking them them into an abled. So the first post in the thread was "Hey, new version is now out," and the second was the cartoon. After which it degenerated into D&D nerds who don't get the point saying but what about Spell X, and people who don't just get the point but know rather more about disability and why the D&D spells are a very limited solution. But seriously, what kind of a abled arsehole posts that cartoon as an immediate response?

Aargh, Ableds*

* Obviously not all ableds, but far too many of them.

Comments

[davidgillon]

Good rant ;)

It's pretty clear that some of the people talking about accessible cities, including some of the sustainable transport/cities think tanks, don't actually mean accessible to disabled people, they've just appropriated the term to mean easy for the ableds to get around (cf the one that measures city accessibility by how easy it is for a toddler to get around - those non-disabled mini humans who come with an attached adult to lift them up steps or read the labels on the lift buttons - yeah, that's really relevant to accessibility issues).

Autonomous vehicles are almost a completely separate issue, you could stick the technology on a WAV, you could probably even design a better WAV because no need for a driver's position in the first place, but they're no more relevant to disabled access than non-autonomous vehicles.

And wheelchair fencing is awesome, and far higher energy than people who haven't seen it would imagine = when they're lunging so hard they start bouncing the track across the stage...