Disabled people care about being responsible consumers too
I needed a new pair of shoes recently and I found a great pair from a great small business and just when I was about to order them I hesitated because I thought “what if these don’t work and I have to return them?” and so I ended up not buying them. Instead, I found a very similar pair on Amazon and bought those instead.
Now, you might be thinking, why would the thought of possibly having to return them stop me from buying them? Well because I’m visually impaired and a lot of online shops, especially small businesses, make you have to repackage the item and send it off through the post office…which is really difficult to do when you’re visually impaired like me. Whereas the big conglomerate (Amazon in this case) makes returns really easy; oftentimes you don’t even need to box it back up
But I don’t want to buy everything on Amazon. I want to be able to support the small and local businesses. I would love to be able to go out to my local mom&pop boutique for clothes but how can I get there when I don’t drive and don’t have access to adequate public transportation (of course I could take an Uber but isn’t Uber basically in the same category as Amazon?)
It’s just beyond unfair that disabled people are basically forced to support the big faceless conglomerate corporations just because small businesses are not accessible to us for one reason or another.
I say again that disabled people care about being responsible consumers too but we can’t be if the built environment doesn’t let us.
