Accessibility fail at my job; I fail to notice

[hilarytamar]

I work in a vet clinic. It's in a converted rowhouse, and for various reasons there's a little walkway leading from the sidewalk over the bottom window well to the front door. There's a step down from the sidewalk to the walkway, and another one from the walkway up to the front door. We have no ramps. This is a cascade of fail from beginning to end.

(1) It's a vet clinic. Let's forget about the people for a minute and look at it from a purely medical point of view: we have limping dogs walking across there all the time, as well as dogs still a little unsteady on their feet after surgery. These would be the dogs whose owners we tell to keep them away from stairs that day.

(2) The former clinic owner had MS. The office already owns a portable ramp that fits quite nicely at one of the steps.

(3) It took a complaint from a client before we put it out. The client came in the other day with a dog, a stroller and a mobility impairment of some sort. After she'd wrestled the dog and the stroller through the door, she looked at me in exasperation and said, "I wish you had a ramp there". I've worked there for nearly a year and I hadn't thought about it beyond the first week.

(4) So I asked the office manager about getting a ramp, he told me about the portable one that we already owned, and he was happy to put it out the same day. That's great – but we've got two steps.

(5) So I asked about a second ramp. They're going to look into it, but the initial response was – I kid you not – "but it's that step that's the biggest". Yes, but the other one's still a step and it still needs a ramp.

I don't know what's worse, the fact that we had a ramp and didn't use it, or that someone had to ask before I realized.

Ooh, look honey, a ramp! We can go shopping

[trouble]

This is almost directly across the street from the retirement home in Mahone Bay, NS.

[Description below photo]



[Photo shows a lovingly-made ramp up to an antique store... which starts with a significant step up, so most Chairs won't be able to get on it. A sign loving informs all that they "have things Wal-Mart doesn't have". Which I guess is true - Wal-Mart doesn't have Accessibility Fail, for the most part.]

Overall the trip was pretty good, although several other places that were "accessible" were only so if your Chair was very slender.

I find it rather pathetic that we were shocked when we went to the museum in Lunenburg and the person who explained the accessibility accomodations made in the museum spoke to Don, and not me, even though I was doing most of the Chair-pushing. (We left the electric one at home because it doesn't fit in a car.) It was like they thought Don was a real person, who could think and communicate for himself!