Accessability fail, university medical centre edition

[sami]

So, I went to the doctor's today. Same office as I went to last week, where there was a sign saying the lift (elevator) was broken and to use the stairs.

Well, first bit of fail is right there: that lift is used to get to Disability Services AND the medical centre - and, I found out today, the problem with the lift is that the rear doors aren't working... which means you need to use a different set of stairs, anyway, and you don't need to remove access to Disability Services and the Medical Centre.

Anyway, this very lift always has this:



Apparently, if you have visual or speaking/hearing difficulties, sucks to be you.

Anyway, while I was in the waiting room at the medical centre itself, I saw a woman in a wheelchair come out from the doctor's offices. I had to jump up, because the doors she was approaching look like this:



The door has no automatic opening capacity. The one on the right (in this picture) opens with the handle, and opens inwards; I'm not sure how one would handle this from a wheelchair. In any case, this wouldn't help very much, because that door on its own is too narrow for a wheelchair to go through. (Which the woman in the wheelchair pointed out as I was opening the first door, in a semi-apologetic tone; I assured her I was on it.)

So I went to open the other door, but it was sticking, because the locks had re-engaged slightly. I worked it free, opened the other door, and the woman left. (Thanking me for my assistance, and encouraging me to keep taking nice pictures - I'd been passing the time taking photos of the fish in the aquarium.)

Then, when I'd closed the doors and sat down again, one of the receptionists got up from behind the desk to make a point of putting the locking bars back in completely.



I took that after she did it. For the record, I'm 5'9" and that lock is a full upwards reach for me. It is not physically possible for a person in a wheelchair to exit the medical centre without assistance, nor to enter without banging on the door to get someone to come and let them in.

Comments

[amadi]

Can you put this in an e-mail, with the pictures, to the head of the medical centre and the facilities manager/owner? This is some serious fail.

[sami]

Might as well. I'm not sure who's in charge of facilities for that building, but if I contact the wrong person, they'll be able to tell me who the right person is - this place is on campus at my university.

[amadi]

Oh, wow, yeah. Do you have an office of disability services? They should see this too. (I'd personally also send it to my university president, but I think our systems over here are slightly different than in the UK, so you may not go that high up the chain in your first contact.)

[sami]

I'm in Australia, not the UK. :) The ultimate Dude In Charge of the university is the Vice-Chancellor, but no, this is seriously not something with which one would involve the VC as a first step. The VC's job is to deal with Serious Things that aren't Someone Else's Job, and there's quite a large number of people whose job this would be to deal with before him.

Disability Services is StudentAccess, and yeah, I'll be copying them. They're nice people.

[amadi]

Sorry for the assumption. I forget other countries say "centre" too.

I went to a very small school (1,500 students) so taking things right to the president when they were very egregious (and I think that this is) was actually common. But that is hardly a universal.

[sami]

FYI: E-mail, with photographs, sent to several relevant-looking-job-titled people at Facilities Management. :)

[onceamy]

This is nasty fail; in that ``I'm sure it's illegal failing way''.

[sami]

I don't think it's actually illegal, since technically, there is disabled access, however inconvenient.

But it's seriously comprehensive fail.

[watersword]

Oh, my God. *horrified* That is some serious fucking fail.

[sami]

I know, right? Especially when she *got up to relock the door* after not getting up to *let the patient leave*.

[sasha_feather]

Wow. The bit about the receptionist getting up to relock the door... D:

[sami]

Seriously.

[druidspell]

That's... there's nothing I can really say, except that that is almost dedicated fail. They're booking first class on the HMS Failboat right there, especially with the "getting up and relocking the door" bit.

[sami]

Seriously. I've sent an e-mail to the Facilities Management office people, with pictures and a full description, including noting that the staff make a point of keeping the door locked and thereby blocking access to anyone with a mobility aid.

The horrifying part is, the *rest* of the university is actually pretty damn good - almost everywhere has automatic sliding doors, and the one building with heavy non-sliding door still has push-button automation for opening them. But the MEDICAL CENTRE is a giant chunk of fail.

[willow]

I have long lanky arms (I call them monkey arms) but it'd pain me to stretch up because of joint pain. Though I'd still do it if I saw someone in a wheelchair quietly trying not to be frustrated.

My aggravation though is more for the receptionist. I would not have been able to stop myself from saying "Oh. Now you see the doors. But you weren't seeing them three minutes ago? Did your foot stop hurting?"

[sami]

It helps that I can reach up (with my left arm only) without trouble, but my approach to being around people using wheelchairs is try and avoid the "trying not to be frustrated" stage. If it's something where it's patently impossible for them to deal with it unassisted, like the doors, I try to get it sorted before they have to ask. If it's something where I'm not sure if they'll be able to deal with it or not, I wait for a cue of some kind and then offer assistance as offhandedly as I can, like, "Want me to grab that for you?" kind of thing.

I've been in the position of having to ask for help with everydamnthing, and I hated it utterly. I got so sick of needing help, and so sick of asking. At the same time, I know that some people with disabilities hate being treated as incapable. So I try very hard to make any assistance I give radiate *no big deal*, and to offer only such assistance as is needed.

With you on the receptionist. Oddly, same receptionist who apparently was responsible in some fashion for the screwup that made my doctor's day so miserable - my doctor who was supposed to be working a half-day, as it's her first day back from being off sick with swine flu.

I got an e-mail response from the Facilities manager today, saying he was going to investigate and get back to me. So that's pretty cool.

[synecdochic]

Like everyone else, I comment to say: FAIL!

I wanted to mention, though, that when I'm in the 'chair, inward-opening doors are actually significantly less of a problem than outward-opening doors. With outward doors, I have to shove them out and hope that they don't close on me before I can get through them. Inward-opening, I can wheel myself slightly to the side of the door I'm going to be opening, turn the knob, pull the door towards me, transfer my hand to the door itself to hold it away from me, and then put the other hand around the doorframe/the other door and pull myself through using the doorframe for leverage. Takes much less effort than trying to navigate an outward-opening door.

(Of course, if the door is less than, oh, about 22" wide, then yeah, not gonna happen.)