Accessibility

"Accessibility doesn't just mean I get easily into a building. Accessibility means anonymity. It reduces the need for compassion, understanding, special consideration, to Nil. It allows me to slip in unnoticed and set up quietly. This doesn't mean it masks my disability, it just makes it mean something very different." -Dave Hinsburger

"...Just the other day, Don and I went to the mall to take advantage of Boxing Day Sales. And, like every other time we go to the mall, it became apparent that the mall’s “accessibility plan” didn’t really include making the actual shops accessible. Lots of junk in aisles, aisles too narrow for a wheelchair, ect. (You’d think we’d stop going to the mall, but we only go about once every six months. The other mall we shop at is better, and I keep forgetting why we don’t trek out to this one very often.)

Don, kindly, pointed out that the shops I was going into didn’t have space for him. At first I thought about making complaints at each individual shop, but I wasn’t sure if the mall actually had a policy...Ultimately, I wrote a letter to the mall to bring this to their attention, but I have no idea if that will actually mean anything in the long run.

This anecdote isn’t unique by any stretch, and many people with disabilities I’ve talked to don’t even go so far as to write a letter (or an angry blog post) because this takes energy and time that could be spent doing countless other things."- Anna

"Since Sunday I've been carrying some sadness, frustration, and generally icky feelings about our church building. You see, we're not fully accessible. A wheelchair can get into the sanctuary, but not to the basement where the kitchen, church hall and washrooms are. I know. It's sad. Not to mention shameful.

Our mandate as a congregation is to be inclusive, and yet I had to apologize to FOUR people on Sunday morning who wanted to join us downstairs for lunch but could not because they cannot manage the stairs. I could mention that Pillar hasn't been in the building for years, but that sort of goes without saying. It's not about him. It's about everyone who finds walls instead of doors - at CHURCHES." - Sue

These quotations have been banging around my head the last couple of days. They've been drowning out other voices, voices that say that it's all about location...that we haven't had any complaints. Happily, I seem to be in a good company of people who agree with me that inclusiveness trumps location. And there may be ways of getting both inclusion and location.

So I'm being aggressive about finding out what options we may have and I'm keeping this as my motto:

"When given a choice, I would like us to always choose the more inclusive option."