Comment on Hostile architecture
Dasus@lemmy.world 1 week ago
And how exactly would one even back a wheelchair into that? Wheelchairs have backrests already, so you’d just hit the backrest of this bench before being on the same line as the other people sitting on it.
wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I mean, as an actual disabled person… By just like, backing up to it?
There are a few comments about this and I’m like, yeah it’s stupid as fuck, but that’s not even what they are pointing out, it’s like they can’t grasp the concept of a wheelchair backing up. I don’t want to be around when they pull into a parking spot and then can’t drive forward out of it…
And while I agree that this seems more nefarious than anything, you (everyone in this thread) GREATLY overestimates the brainpower that goes into actual accessibility ‘features’. Put escalators from and center, but I have to take the service elevator? Put 1,000 hotel rooms, but only 5 are made for accessibility? Your store has a wheelchair ramp, all the fuck at the end of the building near the loading docks? Your store has electric carts, but not enough for all your disabled customers. You don’t have enough employees to help me load my purchase, so I have to hurt myself. Shit, even paving walkways, in fucking modular concrete squares, suck ass: when (not if) the front wheels get stuck, especially if I’m being pushed, my ass gets launched.
It sucks ass being disabled, but god damn it’s like the dumbest people get assigned to accessibility planning.
Dasus@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Well, as an actual disabled person, how many different chairs do you have on a daily basis? Because as a taxi driver driving around disabled people, there’s a lot of different chairs.
I’ve never seen one without a backrest. Do you have one?
Could you back into that with a chair? Ofc.
But if yours has a backrest like all the other chairs, you’ll hit the backrest before with the back of your chair before you’d be in the same line as a person leaning back on other parts of the bench.
Not to even mention that a ton of the people that I know who use chairs have often have a bag or a backpack hanging back there.
As a professional driver, I can tell you that if you have to choose a parking place between a space that’s only just and just free (three cars around it, all parked tightly so as to not leave any extra room even close to the line), and one that is completely free, not a single car around it, you choose the latter one.
Can I reverse into the former? Ofc. Even just a few years after I started, when I was still very young, around 20, I made grown (and somewhat drunk) men give a little shriek as they thought I would crash the car when driving in places where they thought a car wouldn’t fit (because people were picked up usually from in front of a bar, and bars can exist in the weirdest places.)
So with that logic in mind, my question is why would you, as a chair user, ever want to back in to this bench, when you could just park next to it, effectively lengthening the bench?
Not a problem in the EU/Finland (idk which the regulations comes from) We got building regulations.
I would’ve been proud if this wasn’t a problem either, but as someone who regularly pushed chairs, I’m so goddamn disappointed in my own city. They remodelled the market square for a parking garage they wanted to build below it. Corruption and capitalism wins and after years and years of talks, more years of building and millions of euros, we got an utterly shit market square made of roughly 40cm x 40cm tiles which won’t stay the fuck down because of the soil. I haven’t had to push a chair through that yet but I dread it for any one who does, be they pushing their own chairs or getting pushed. Hell, I’ve almost fallen down several times and I like to think I have good awareness in general.
It would be bad enough when a completely abled person falls off their feet, seems it would be much more devastating to someone in a chair, let alone if they’re traveling solo. Thankfully it’s literally the busiest place in the city, so at least anyone who gets hurt will get help quickly, but still.
It used to be centuries old paved stone, as stable as, well idk, something really stable. Perhaps a bit bumpy for a chair user, but honestly only a tiny bit, dad used to take lots of his customers in chairs there for coffee. He had his own taxi-van with a chair-lift in the back, that’s how I started as a taxi driver, working for him. And he started because his dad (my grandpa) had the first taxi the town I was born in. My father chose to prominently tape “Gentleman of the Road” in the back of the van. For aura farming when he wouldn’t start accelerating to speeding just because some dick was hurrying him up. He really impresses upon me the need to keep the car stable. But whenever he didn’t have customers in there, just me, it wasn’t as smooth, as he raced on the slippery backroads like the pro he was.
I do empathise and honestly while I criticise a ton of things about Finland, infrastructure for disabled access is really one thing I can’t help but be somewhat proud of. Let me see if I have a photo I took perhaps last year. It might be my previous phone and then it’s lost. (Actually binned my old phone by accident, a top of the line flagship phone that only had the sim-reader faulty gooooooooodammit I still blame myself so much for that fuckup.)
Oh I do have the photos, yeah.
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This is an outhouse for disabled people, along a nature path of which roughly 60-70% is available with a chair. The route goes around a small lake and while it is regrettable the whole path isn’t available, I think even a majority of it being available is a win. Half of it is this well maintained gravel footpath that you can sort of see the material there, but around a third or so is really craggy forest on the beach on the other side and I’d argue the amount of nature you’d have to completely get rid off to pave that part as well, the places designation as a “nature trail” would really lose something. Mainly the view from the main side of the lake, which would affect disabled people as well.