Car­la Rauseo

I re­mem­ber fool­ing around on wheel­chairs when I was in phys­i­cal ther­a­py school. We learnt to pop wheel­ies on­to curbs, spin in tight cir­cles, and used to race down the hall­ways of the Al­lied Health Build­ing. It was great fun, a wel­come change from the mo­not­o­ny of neu­ro­log­i­cal and or­thopaedic the­o­ry. But to me now, the wheel­chair is not a toy, no longer just a dis­trac­tion from the drone of lec­tures and hours of anatom­i­cal dis­sec­tion. Now, it rep­re­sents a ve­hi­cle of in­de­pen­dence for those who are not able to move as I do. But do we re­al­ly al­low the users of wheel­chairs to max­imise the mo­bil­i­ty and in­de­pen­dence of­fered by these de­vices? Walk­ing is a means of get­ting to a lo­ca­tion, but so is rolling a wheel­chair, or ne­go­ti­at­ing a scoot­er chair, or hop­ping along on crutch­es or with a walk­er. Yet it seems that in Trinidad, we on­ly en­able those who can move freely, with­out hand­i­cap, while dis­abling those who need help and mod­i­fi­ca­tions. The de­pen­dence of our dis­abled pop­u­la­tion on oth­ers is as­tound­ing. The oth­er day, while work­ing with a pa­tient who us­es a wheel­chair, I said, "Give me a sec. I'm just gonna run to the re­stroom quick­ly." Short­ly there­after, I thought of how that pa­tient must feel, and I re­alised how much for grant­ed I take that abil­i­ty to just quick­ly "run to the re­stroom." For her, the process is painstak­ing. Her hus­band must ac­com­pa­ny her and lift her on­to and off the av­er­age toi­let, and this process can take at least 15 min­utes.

An­oth­er pa­tient can­not sit un­sup­port­ed with­out risk­ing a fall. He can­not feed him­self with­out a back­rest, as the use of his arms caus­es enough per­tur­ba­tion to make him lose his bal­ance. Mean­while, I sim­ply plop my­self at the kitchen ta­ble and can take just 10 min­utes to de­vour a meal, a fall off my chair be­ing the fur­thest thing from my mind. In my job, every day is a wake-up call for me, and I am be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly thank­ful for my abil­i­ties and al­so in­creas­ing­ly in­spired by those with dif­fi­cul­ties who per­sis­tent­ly fight the bar­ri­ers to mo­bil­i­ty and in­de­pen­dence in our land where "every creed and race find an equal place." Ob­vi­ous­ly the Na­tion­al An­them is spe­cif­ic to those who have equal­i­ty in Trinidad. Be­cause some­one has lost the abil­i­ty to walk does not mean that they must be de­pen­dent up­on oth­ers. What of­ten makes them de­pen­dent is the lack of mod­i­fi­ca­tions that can al­low them to over­come their func­tion­al lim­i­ta­tions and per­mit ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty to cer­tain ac­tiv­i­ties. Many busi­ness own­ers feel that be­cause they have a "ramp" to their es­tab­lish­ment they are "hand­i­cap ac­ces­si­ble." How­ev­er, it on­ly re­sults in frus­tra­tion and in­ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty if the ramp is too steep for the per­son (as is of­ten the case) to wheel him­self up it, and too much of a safe­ty risk when de­scend­ing. Ac­cord­ing to the Amer­i­cans with Dis­abil­i­ties Act (we have none in Trinidad so I must re­ly on sta­tis­tics from else­where), the max­i­mum slope for an ac­cept­able ramp should be 12 inch­es hor­i­zon­tal length for every one-inch rise in height.

A pa­tient re­cent­ly in­formed me that he is un­able to use many hand­i­capped toi­let stalls be­cause their di­men­sions are in­cor­rect and he just can­not fit in with his chair. The de­sign of many stalls re­quires him to pull his chair to face the toi­let and do a 180-de­gree trans­fer to the toi­let, which is ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult for him. There is no space to align his chair with the side of the toi­let and just slide on­to the seat from his chair. As a re­sult, he needs some­one to lift him to and from the toi­let seat. Many of my pa­tients have com­plained bit­ter­ly to me about their prob­lem with hand­i­capped park­ing. Com­mer­cial es­tab­lish­ments seem to feel that they can paint a cou­ple stan­dard park­ing spots blue and deem them "hand­i­capped park­ing." How­ev­er, for a pa­tient who needs to trans­fer to a wheel­chair at the side of the car, or for some­one who has to have enough space to use crutch­es, these stan­dard spaces are too small. They must re­ly on the help of some­one else to ei­ther drop them in front the build­ing, or help them get out of the car af­ter it has been parked. The Amer­i­cans with Dis­abil­i­ties Act (ADA) states that park­ing spaces should be 96 inch­es wide, to al­low ex­tra room for mo­bil­i­ty in­to or with as­sis­tive de­vices. The oth­er prob­lem with hand­i­capped park­ing that is just so typ­i­cal­ly Trinida­di­an is the place­ment of large, heavy or­ange cones in the spots. I guess this is man­age­ment's way of get­ting the thought­less in­di­vid­u­als who "jes run­ning in quick to buy ah bread," from park­ing in these zones.

How­ev­er, there is nev­er any se­cu­ri­ty or man­age­ment to move those cones when a tru­ly hand­i­capped per­son needs to park there. This is of no con­se­quence to the thought­less bread-buy­ing in­di­vid­u­als, but it sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pacts the in­de­pen­dence and ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty of those who are dis­abled. This oxy­moron­ic be­hav­iour seems more a sign of stu­pid­i­ty than a failed at­tempt at so­cial progress. The hand­i­capped drop-off zone at Pi­ar­co has no drop in the curb height from the side­walk. It is ex­pect­ed that the in­di­vid­ual must trans­fer from the ve­hi­cle up to his wheel­chair, which sits on top the curb...a very dif­fi­cult trans­fer, even for a strong vet­er­an. Nev­er mind the fact that there is a break in the curb at the pedes­tri­an walk to al­low us "tra­di­tion­al­ly func­tion­ing" in­di­vid­u­als to hap­pi­ly and smooth­ly roll our suit­cas­es along with­out the dis­tur­bance of the curb. The re­al­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion is that whether we have an im­pair­ment or not, we all need as­sis­tance or mod­i­fi­ca­tions to do ac­tiv­i­ties that our body can­not do on its own. Just as I need a stool to get to a high cup­board, a per­son in a wheel­chair needs that shelf to be low­er and less deep. The ADA states, "the clear floor space on­ly al­lows for­ward ap­proach to an ob­ject, the max­i­mum high for­ward reach al­lowed shall be 48 inch­es.The min­i­mum low for­ward reach is 15 inch­es." But as a so­ci­ety we do not think of these sim­ple mod­i­fi­ca­tions. Many of us al­ready have a dif­fi­cult time open­ing large heavy doors. Now try open­ing that door in a rolling chair, or pre­car­i­ous­ly perched on crutch­es or in a walk­er, and then try to get through with­out be­ing squashed by the door. Don't you hate when the leg of the ta­ble at the restau­rant at which you are din­ing is stuck be­tween your legs? Try sit­ting at one of those ta­bles with a wheel­chair...and pray the ta­ble is high enough so you can slide your chair un­der in or­der to reach the ta­ble.

There are guide­lines for all these mod­i­fi­ca­tions to make life so much more in­de­pen­dent for those with im­pair­ments. We do not have to rein­vent the "wheel." Dis­abil­i­ty is not an in­di­vid­ual's prob­lem. It is not that the in­di­vid­ual can­not go up the stairs to a meet­ing be­cause of his/her wheel­chair. It is be­cause the build­ing has no hand­i­capped ac­ces­si­ble el­e­va­tor. Dis­abil­i­ty is so­ci­ety's prob­lem. We ig­nore the needs of the dis­abled, and in fact, it seems that Trinidad is dis­abled be­cause of the bar­ri­ers it per­pet­u­ates against them.