#disability access

[animentality]

[fascistsarefreefood]

If you live in the UK please make sure you sign/share this petition against the planned cuts to benefits

Petition: Protect Disabled people who cannot work from planned cuts to benefits

We want the Government to halt all planned benefit cuts for disabled people unable to work. Instead of reducing benefits, we want them to ri

[sprinkleofquirk]

“I don’t think people with disabilities should be in [insert occupational field]”

Okay. Have you taken time to consider how many disabled people you have already worked with in that field that you didn’t realize are disabled?

I know able-bodied people like to think that disability is obvious and visible all the time, but it’s not. The fact is, you don’t know what someone else is capable of in their own body, even if you know everything there is to know (not possible) about their disability/s.

I’ve helped with medical emergencies with my own equipment, I’ve had to administer medication or do extra checks at work, I’ve had to explain that I’m not being rude when I’m eating fruit snacks during a meeting, I’m just trying not to die, and every time someone (not everyone, but always someone) finds it incredibly difficult to comprehend that I am disabled.

I’m young. I’m skinny. I’m active. I do a very physically demanding job. They can’t understand how I’m disabled and all of those other things, nor how they didn’t know about it until that moment.

I had this discussion very recently with a coworker at a new job. She said disabled people shouldn’t be in archaeology; it’s too physically demanding and when they inevitably can’t live up to the standards, the people around them have to “pick up their slack”.

I explained my view as above and she said “I’ve been doing this longer than you, I don’t think you understand.” I said “I understand perfectly; you think I can’t or shouldn’t be doing this job.”

She stared at me. Dumbfounded.

People never stop to consider who they are having that conversation with. When able-bodied people think “disability” they think they are the all-knowing authority on who that applies to, but most have a very limited grasp on the sheer coverage of that word.

And even if they understand, they should not be the authority over our lives.

[vinterfeminism]

Oh boy, lovely interaction in the restroom a moment ago. Cane in hand, on my way to the disabled toilet stall since I live in a public dorm building at uni with public toilets, and as I was almost there another girl rushes past me and practically slams the door in my face and I am left there blinking as I process that this just happened. And so I had to go to another stall and struggle much more to lower myself to sit on the toilet than I otherwise would've needed to would I have had the handrail beside the toilet that is in the disabled stall. I am rather angry right now over this.

[chronicallycouchbound]

I’m working on a workshop I’m centering around disability access in nature!

Please send me any and all ideas you have around this— especially accessible ways I can make the workshop interactive! It will likely also be primarily abled attendees also, but some folks are disabled. I’d love to highlight the joys of accessible spaces & ways in which disability and nature are connected.

Please share for reach!

[space-homosexual-the-third]

rant post but here goes

teachers of neurodivergent students, what the fuck? Ok im going to be up front: NOT ALL OF YOU DO A BAD JOB! Some are amazing (posted about this in the past but tyyyy profe libby). It’s just some of you, weirdly in my experience usually health teachers, who REALLY seem to need more training.

Recently I had a panic attack, my first in a while. Wha happened was a children’s game that we were playing in class (which had caused many openly neurodivergent students to cry before) was played and made one of my friends have a meltdown. The teaches dealt with this in a harsh manner by grabbing their arm and pulling them outside. I have trauma around my meltdowns and had a flashback/panic attack. The teacher left us in the hallway with only the care of a third friend, who is not trained. We are all under 18. This has happened to me before, with different teachers.

teachers NEED more training on how to help neurodivergent students in a truly helpful manner. So often it’s just insults or rude comments.

[jinglyjangly-theclowm]

ALL PLAYGROUNDS SHOULD BE ACCESSIBLE TO DISABLED KIDS !!!

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

California zoo accessibility data dump

I just recently got back from a short (and fully covid-cautious) zoo road trip in Oregon and California, and wanted to share my notes re: accessibility at the facilities I visited. I'll get this all integrated into the spreadsheet, too.

Wildlife Safari - Winston, Oregon

This is a large drive-thru safari park with a free walk-about area attached that contains some small exhibits. Guests stay inside their cars the entire drive-thru, although there's at least one place to stop and sit in a gazebo to rest and use the bathroom (porta-potty only). You can pull over to watch animals for longer, and go through multiple times if you missed anything. It's a long drive-thru and there isn't really a good way to truncate the experience if you've got some kind of emergency. The roads are not flat, but they're well maintained and not bumpy.

The walkabout area is very small and contains bathrooms, food options, and other guest services. The paths are mostly concrete and well tended, although you do have to cross the steam train tracks to get to lion/some of the lemur viewing. I believe the Australia walkabout area was also unpaved. There's lots of parking in a big, flat, paved lot.

Sacramento Zoo - Sacramento, CA

This is a very cute, small inner-city facility - a good option if you don't want to try to walk a huge zoo in one day. There's lots of shade from all the plants and a good amount of benches throughout, including picnic tables with shade canopies. The paths are almost entirely flat and paved, with the exception of a boardwalk ramp up to the giraffe feeding and okapi viewing platforms. The cafe has gluten-free and vegetarian listings (maybe vegan?) on their menu. No straws are provided for animal safety, but if you need one, they can give you a reusable curly-straw from the slushies (kinda long and awkward for a normal cup) as an accommodation. They've got both water fountains and water bottle filling stations. Being build in a larger city park and recreation complex, there isn't a dedicated parking lot just for the zoo: the closest is across the street, shared with another attraction, and is kinda small. I've never had issues finding parking when I've gone, but sometimes it does involve a bunch of walking to get to the zoo entrance - if you have mobility or stamina limitations, probably best to get dropped off at the entrance and wait (there are benches).

San Francisco Zoo - San Francisco, CA

The SF Zoo is huge. There's lots of green / garden / swamp space that doesn't have habitats in it, but it means exhibits can be pretty far away, so plan your route accordingly. (Going out to the grizzly bears is the longest loop). Depending on the time of day, there's not always a ton of shade for guests either. There's a decent amount of benches, and quite a few are in decent proximity to animal viewing. After a somewhat long but not steep hill right at the entrance, the paths are all paved and fairly flat. There's a hill going down into/up from the Australia area / kids playground, but it's the only one I really noticed. There's a long elevated boardwalk through the lemur habitats that connects to the top of the new Madagascar construction - if you can't do stairs, as of Spring 2024, that's the only way to get up there to look down on the mandrills or see the top of the fossa habitat. (It's still under construction, so there might be an elevator in the building in the future). Back by the grizzlies, there's an old indoor rainforest building - while there's buttons to automatically open the door going in, I didn't find any on the first inside door going out. It makes sense they don't want both doors to open at once since it's a bird airlock, but not having independent ones on each door meant the day I used an ECV I got stuck in there until a nice staff member noticed.

All three times I've ever been to SF most of the little food kiosks haven't been open, and the vending machines for drinks have been hit and miss - so bring your own, or stock up at the cafe if you need to have supplies with you - but there are water fountains and water bottle filling stations around the zoo. There are interpretive audio boxes through the zoo in English and Spanish, used with a key you get at the entrance(?), but I heard a lot of complaints in passing about some of them not working. There's lots of parking at the zoo in a flat paved lot, and there's a specific dropoff area on one side for rideshares/mobility needs.

Oakland Zoo - Oakland, CA

To be clear up front - Oakland was the hardest facility to visit on this whole trip, with regards to mobility. We went twice, and I used an ECV (electric scooter) one and walked the other. Neither option was easy and both were exhausting. Oakland is a super hilly facility - you basically have to drive up a major hill to get to the zoo. The bottom half of the lower zoo can only be reached by going down pretty steep paths. The hills are also not graded to be "flat", so if you're in a wheelchair or ECV, you're going to have to lean to compensate for the tilt and balance the chair... while controlling it going down a steep hill. It's exhausting and kinda scary. (I don't even let other people carry my camera because $$, but I had to ask for help so I could focus on driving the ECV on those hills). There's also a lot of areas of the pathways that are not in the best repair, or patterned with pressed-in images, and multiple places actually have brass bugs embedded in the pavement so that they stick out above the surface. Lots of tripping hazards and/or things to rattle your teeth out rolling over. A couple places in the upper zoo (the California wilds area) the paths switch from paved to sand and back again, for drainage, maybe? On the upside, there's a lot of benches everywhere, including directly across from prime viewing areas.

Getting up to the upper zoo requires using a gondola - there's no walking option. You can actually take wheelchairs and ECVs on these, but you have to be ready to advocate for yourself. Normally, they don't stop the carriages completely, and expect people to walk on while they're still moving slowly. You can ask them to slow them down for you (I did, because knee issues plus torque is bad), or stop it completely if you need the time/help. When I took an ECV on, they had me disembark and get in one carriage, and they loaded it into the subsequent ones. This is fine because I can walk and stand on concrete for a while without it, but I'm not sure how that practice would work for people who need their mobility aids the whole time. They were very nice about managing the stopping and the loading and didn't make it feel like an imposition, too. If they stop the carriages completely at any point, there will be a loud buzzer/alarm when the ride starts back up. If you're close, it's pretty loud and startling. As they leave the track at the bottom the gondolas tip and dip a little, which can be scary if you're not expecting it - I think it's just the transition of the car from the loading bay onto the track itself. The rest of the ride is very smooth. The track is pretty high up and gives a great view of the bay and the surrounding cities, but face uphill if you don't do well with heights. Once at the upper zoo, the path from bald eagles through jaguar is mostly a boardwalk, but it's not too bumpy.

Oakland's parking is hard if you're not there early in the day, IMO. The overflow parking gets pretty far from the entrance, and starts to go up the hill towards the upper zoo. If the lot looks busy, drop anyone with mobility/stamina issues off at the entrance before parking. Unlike many other zoos I've visited, Oakland's ECVS have added sunshades, which is really nice (and which I should have used).

Monterey Zoo - Salinas, CA

This is a fairly small facility with most habitats on one level, but some big cats and bears are up a pretty big hill. The walkways are paved and flat, and there's an ADA-graded boardwalk ramp that takes you to the top of the hill. The pipes used for the handrails on both the stairs and the ramp get very hot in the sun, however. There's a boardwalk up to the rhino overlook. They indicate that their bathrooms are accessible, but the ones in the main building didn't have bars for transferring - I didn't check the ones up on the hill. At one point in the day speakers along the path started playing really loud pop music (drowned out the birds) and it was very overwhelming. There's lots of handicapped parking spots across from the front entrance, but if you don't have a tag, the rest of the spots are up a bit of a hill and a small walk from the entrance. They do have a note, though, that they can help if you need accessible parking and don't see any, so you could probably call/have someone to go in and ask for an accommodation.

Sequoia Park Zoo - Eureka, CA

This is another nice small facility, very doable for a half-day trip. The paths are paved and flat, and there's benches available. There's a lot of shade, although it can depend on the time of day, and places to fill a water-bottle. The sky-walk through the redwoods is accessible, but might be a little difficult depending on mobility limitations - its' a very sturdy boardwalk through the canopy of the tall trees. (I had more thoughts on this from my last visit, I'll dig out those notes). If you can do even part of it, it's worth it, and there's places to turn around. Because it's in a residential area of the town there's not a huge dedicated parking lot, but lots of street parking and a decent lot directly across the street. I've never had difficulty finding parking, and you can drop people off at the entrance easily.