Viewing the world from a standing position, it can be hard to imagine what life in a wheelchair must be like. When you walk home from work, go shopping for food or clothes, or even just have a chat with friends, your environment is probably the last thing on your mind. For people who use wheeled mobility aids like wheelchairs, scooters and powerchairs, their experience is vastly different, in ways that are non-obvious even to a trained eye. We spoke to a variety of mobility aid users to learn what you only find out when you’re in a wheelchair…

Let’s go shopping!

Imagine you’re getting ready to go clothes shopping. For a wheelchair user, this action has to be planned like a military campaign.

1.       Dropped kerbs

You start off by crossing the road to get to the bus stop. When a walker crosses the road, they will probably only be thinking how best to avoid getting knocked over (or possibly what they’re having for dinner). But for a wheelchair user, cars present a potential extra hassle, which can be infuriating. Dropped kerbs are essential for getting on and off the pavement, especially when travelling alone. These can be few and far between, but often drivers see these areas as ideal parking spots. Many lowered kerbs are too high to be functional. This issue seems to be a universal bugbear.

But in spite of their irritation, some feel blame can’t be fully placed on the drivers: there is a lack of information protecting these key access points. A contributor suggested it would be more obvious to drivers if all dropped kerbs were painted, and these painted areas designated as no parking zones similarly to double yellow lines, in the Highway Code.

2.       Getting around

You’ve crossed the road, and are waiting at the bus stop. Hopefully it’s not raining: if you’re able to put a brolly up, it will be at about eye height for the person pushing you, or passers-by if you’re unaccompanied. “People get very irritated when you appear with a chair, far less with a brolly!” While public transport is gradually improving, especially in urban areas, some bus drivers can have a bad attitude about lowering the ramp, and buses usually only have room for one wheelchair user at a time. Once on the bus, manoeuvring into the wheelchair space around the pole needs a fair amount of agility. And be alert for when you need to get off: the driver will need plenty of notice to stop and get the ramp out for you again.

It’s not just buses that present wheelchair users with problems Taxi drivers can also be variable in their willingness to take disabled passengers

Handlers in airports can be careless in transporting chairs, throwing them about and loading them upside down, and insisting that patrons travel in static airport chairs which leave them stuck, unable to even go to the toilet without help, let alone check out the duty free.

3.       And when you’re finally at your destination…

Shopping, “especially during the lead up to Christmas”, can be like an obstacle course. The central aisles might be wide enough to get down in a wheelchair, but getting off the main path to navigate around the clothes racks might be a different story. And it doesn’t help that the hangers are all precisely the right height to whack you in the face, or catch on the wheels or handles. “People are so focussed on what they’re doing that they don’t expect to see a chair, you get this look as if ‘What are you doing there?’ as if you ought not to be there.” And watch out for handbags to the face as well.

Out of all the high street shops, however, Primark gets it right: each store has a special lowered till, placed at the end so that patrons don’t need to queue, where they will be served by the first available attendant.

4.       “Does she take sugar?”

The sight of assistive equipment often exposes ignorance. “People see the wheelchair, they don’t always see the person.” When going shopping with her daughter, one of our respondents paid for her purchases: and the change was returned to her mortified daughter. More generally, people often speak to an able bodied companion and ignore the person in the chair, assuming if the legs don’t work, neither does the brain. “When Donny was first in the wheelchair even friends would say ‘how is he?’ There was one day I was a bit harassed [with] all the kids. I said ‘He has a tongue and ears, ask him!’”

Wheelchair users can also find offers of unneeded help, as the chair represents “poor soul” in some people’s perception.

A subset of this behaviour is the assumption that a wheelchair user is not a sexual being. Some people have experienced a shocked reaction when they reveal that they have a spouse or children: a contributor said “I remember when I had my first girl, people actually said ‘Oh, you’ve had a baby!’… they think because you have a disability you can’t be intimate with anyone.”

5.       Accessible? Think again.

Nowadays, electric doors, ramps, disabled toilets and lifts seem ubiquitous: unless you’ve used these as a disabled person, it can be hard to see what they’re complaining about. But often, token efforts towards accessibility haven’t been done in consultation with wheelchair users, or even taking an employee around in a chair to see if the route is accessible all the way through without any obstructions along the way, such as a narrow door to an otherwise well designed toilet. Ramps are often too steep for a wheelchair user to get up unassisted. Generally, concessions for wheeled transport seem to be mostly made with buggies and prams in mind, as opposed to wheelchair and scooter users (which nowadays, are a larger demographic).

Generally, attitudes and accessibility seem to be slowly improving, but there is a long road ahead. Just make sure you don’t park on the dropped kerb.

----------------------

Sign up to receive our weekly bulletin and comment on discussions!

----------------------

Like what you just read? Check out some more topics on bespoken...

Indian engineers modify Microsoft's Kinect to help the blind walk w...

S'up Spoon - a spoon for cerebral palsy, essential tremors and pote...

A glance at driving with a disability

Sign up to receive our weekly bulletin and comment on discussions!