No Souvlaki For Us

Yesterday I met my sons, Chip and Ronnie, at a Greek restaurant for lunch, the Greek Grill Cafe. Although the restaurant owners have had other establishments, this particular restaurant just opened in 2010. The food is authentic Greek food - spanakopita, souvlaki, moussaka and gyros - with some American food thrown in for pickier eaters (like Ronnie).

The food was indeed wonderful, but I can't say the same for the experience.

The first thing I noticed was that there were no handicapped parking spaces. I did see a concrete 'ramp' at the end of one parking space, but a car was parked there making the improvised ramp unusable.

Chip helped Ronnie get up the curb and onto the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. But then we noticed something else. Another curb-height structure, a small step actually, had to be navigated to get inside the restaurant. One of the servers came out and offered to help lift Ronnie in his wheelchair (with Chip's help) into the restaurant. But, wheelchair users often have difficulty both with someone touching their chairs and with creating a scene - and Ronnie would have considered it creating a scene.

So, Chip got him in - and out when we were finished with lunch - but I was really surprised that a newish restaurant didn't have to abide by ADA regs. I know there are lots of exemptions to the ADA, and I guess this establishment got at least one of those.

It's sad really. We love the food but can't accept the inaccessible facility, as well as the mindset of the owners who don't understand or accept the concept of accessibility.

(Interestingly, the photos on the restaurant's website show a person in a wheelchair inside the restaurant. I wonder why it was important to put the picture up but not make the facility accessible.)

Not Enough Seating

Here is a question for those of you who have a wheelchair user in your family. When you go to performances or plays or sports games, how is the handicapped seating handled?

My general impression from the venues we have visited is that a wheelchair user is allowed one companion seat. If our party includes more than just those two people, we have to get seats in some other section. For example, the last time we went to the circus at our city's coliseum, I got two handicapped seats for Ronnie and Ashley, two companion seats for me and Chip, and Corey had to go to another section.

I just really don't think groups of people should have to be separated like that just by virtue of some of the group being wheelchair users.

It's not like the handicapped seats are prime seats. From my family's visit to several different venues, the handicapped seating areas are about in the middle of all the seats. By using those seats, we are not taking special seats away from someone else, and usually we end up paying extra for the handicapped seating.

And just last week, I heard from a mom who was told that no one could sit with her child who was assigned a handicapped seat. No arrangements had been made for companion seating. This child was so excited to see the Lion King show from Broadway, but unfortunately couldn't stay due to the seating issues.

How have you handled this on your outings? Have you found that complaining to management makes a difference? Do you try to work things out in advance of the event, and still have problems when you arrive? If you have found a way around this type of rule, I would love to hear about it!

Tell Me What's Right While Doing What's Wrong

Ahh, high school. Those years when teachers and staff try to mold young minds for the challenges of the future. A time of showing the difference between right and wrong. A time to hopefully build some compassion, some sense of justice, and to learn to live together peacefully.

Yea right...

What high school should not be, in my opinion, is preaching with a "do what I say not what I do" attitude. Yet it happens in ways both small and large. We have high school coaches videotaping naked girls in the locker rooms. We have female teachers having sex with young male students. We have school personnel being arrested for embezzlement. And we have this - arguably not as significant as the other things I just listed, but still showing a careless regard for both the law and the rights of others:



Mr. school employee/door repairman, you took the last handicapped-accessible parking space. No, you did not have the handicapped placard that gives you the right to park there. But yes, it was right in front of the building where you had to fix a sticky door. And yes, it saved you from toting your bag of tools (no bigger than a student's backpack) across the parking lot. But it meant my child had to get out of my car and into his wheelchair in that busy parking lot.

Thanks for making his life more difficult and less safe. And thanks for the wonderful message you sent to the other students at school. I'm sure that those students won't feel much remorse when they park in a handicapped spot. You showed them today that it is alright...

Visualize This

Sometimes I like to visualize in my mind what it must be like to be in a wheelchair like Ronnie or Ashley. Doing so helps me figure out accommodations that can be made to help make their travels a little easier. Today I was attending a business-related conference at a local hotel and decided this would be a good time for a visualization.

Unfortunately, the first leg of my visualization trip was not so good. I had to park in the parking garage for the hotel. I tried to pull into a handicapped parking spot, but the access aisle was being used for storage. See the picture below.



This is not an usual sight though. In the past I've seen piles of dirt, piles of snow, snow moving equipment, and grocery carts piled into the handicapped parking spot and access aisle. The way these concrete things were positioned, it was impossible to open the car door. I pulled out and found another parking spot. A person with a wheelchair may not have been able to do that.

Then my visualization took me up the elevator to the hotel lobby so I could register for the meeting. All that went well. The registration counter was lowered and had I been in a chair, I would have had no problem signing in and picking up my materials.

The next problem came when I tried to move through the hallways of the conference area. There were vendors lining each side of the wide hallway, making it not so wide. Throw in approximately 800 people, and traveling in a chair would have been nearly impossible.

There would have been excuse me after excuse me, tap-tap-tap after tap-tap-tap trying to get people's attention so I could move past. I think I would have just given up at that point, and now I understand better why Ashley and Ronnie can both get so frustrated in crowds.

Finally I found the room I was supposed to be in. It was a large banquet hall filled to capacity with round tables, each seating 8 people. There was hardly room to walk between the tables, much less move in a wheelchair. Had I really been in a chair, I would have had to just wait by the door for the entire presentation.

After the keynote, we were to move to breakout rooms for the next session. Mine was in a room with two aisles of chairs, each having 10 chairs in each row. Again, there was no room to move a chair down the aisles. I would have to park my chair either in the front of the room or the very back of the room. Either would have marked me as 'different' to the crowd.

After that session, it was back to the banquet hall for lunch. I thought I had it figured out this time. I would go in early in my chair, before the room filled with people, and that way I could get to the far side of the room to sit with my co-workers. But I forgot something very important. Had I done that, I would have been trapped in the room until everyone else left at the end of lunch. A trip to the restroom would have been out of the question.

And so the day continued - too many people, not enough room, and doors to heavy to handle while trying to also move a chair. I found myself getting very frustrated and wanting to just yell at someone. Again, I now understand Ashley's and Ronnie's behavior a little better.

But there was one thing that really, really surprised me. How could there be almost 1000 people in one location and not one of them have a physcial disability? Does that seem a little odd to you?

What Do You Think?

Ronnie has a wheelchair basketball tournament coming up in a few weeks. It will be held at one of our local universities, and is sponsored by Sportable, an organization in our area that is committed to providing adaptive sports opportunities for people from age five to age 90.



Ronnie is the only Deaf player on the team. We've spent the last week or so trying to figure out how he will know if the referee blows his whistle, and how the coach can convey play strategy to Ronnie.

I think we have figured out the whistle thing with the help of the women's basketball coach from Gallaudet University. When Ronnie's teammates hear the whistle, they will put their arms in the air thus alerting Ronnie.

But the coaching instructions are a bit more difficult. We have experimented with the coach having a blue tooth headset and communicating via an IPhone dictation app to Ronnie. But, doing it that way is a little cumbersome. The ideal solution would be to have an interpreter.

But interpreters are really expensive.

In the past, we had a volunteer and that worked really well. Unfortunately our volunteer moved away, and I haven't had much luck finding another volunteer. So one of the options we had been exploring was to ask the university where the tournament is being held to provide interpreters for the day.

They declined, saying they felt it was Sportable's responsiblity to provide the interpreters.

Two conflicting opinions have been voiced. One, the interpreting company feels that the university is just as responsible for interpreters as they are for accessible bathrooms, wheelchair ramps, and such. In a very impassioned email on the subject, the head of the interpreting company wrote:

Does this mean that if your child was in a wheelchair they’d put a lock on the handicap-accessible bathroom door? Put gates in front of ramps? Would you have to find a volunteer to carry your child (and wheelchair) into the building? Put a diaper on him (since he wouldn’t be able to get into the bathroom)?

The other opinion says it is indeed Sportable's responsiblity to provide interpreters since they are the ones running the tournament. Unfortunately, Sportable, being a non-profit that has a shoestring budget, cannot afford to do that.

So I am just wondering - whose opinion do you think is correct?

A More Accessible America

My boys and I like to go to baseball games. We've been to Baltimore for the last two years for an Orioles game, and we have season tickets to the Richmond Squirrels baseball team. But, finding accessible seating seems to always be an issue. I wrote a blog last year about the Richmond ball park.

But all that should now change with the revised and expanded Americans With Disabilities Act. The regulations apply to the activities of more than 80,000 units of state and local government and more than 7 million places of public accommodation, including stores, restaurants, shopping malls, libraries, museums, sporting arenas, movie theaters, doctors’ and dentists’ offices, hotels, jails and prisons, polling places, and emergency preparedness shelters.

The 2010 standards also include, for the first time, standards on making swimming pools, parks, golf courses, boating facilities, exercise clubs, and other recreation facilities accessible for individuals with disabilities. Entities covered by the ADA have until March 15, 2012 to comply with the revised standards.

I suggest you visit the Department of Justice's ADA website for more details.

(Although this is a move in the right direction, I am really worried about where things are going with the Federal budget. I fear the next areas to receive cries for cuts will be the entitlement programs like Medicaid. Having accessible seating at the baseball park means little if my children can't receive the medical care they desperately need.)

Lawsuits Abound

Denise Payne, a Florida resident who has cerebral palsy, and her business partner, Robert Forlano, formed a 5013C charitable organization called the National Alliance for Accessibility. As in Virginia, all charitable organizations are required to register with the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Ms. Payne’s organization, however, is not registered as required by law.

Ms. Payne and her organization filed six lawsuits in the Roanoke, Virginia federal court alleging many area establishments are not accessible. Included in the list of establishments are several shopping malls, two hotels and Radford University. The six cases target Virginia, but Ms. Payne has recently filed over 200 similar cases, all alleging a lack of accessibility.

While I am in full support of pursuing issues through legal means IF ALL OTHER ATTEMPTS TO RESOLVE ISSUES FAIL, I do not support this shotgun approach to demand change. I have to wonder what the real motivation is in all these cases.

As you know, I recently started a new website titled www.ustooplease.com. I purposely added the word ‘please’ to that web address. And as I mention on that website, I truly want to raise awareness about accessibility and inclusion. I share all my observations on that website with the businesses I review. I offer a list of resources to help those businesses become more accessible and inclusive.

I believe communities will begin to welcome everyone when everyone works together to realize true inclusion.

Like a dog that is beaten every time it urinates in its owner’s house, it will eventually become housebroken. But the dog will never truly be a part of that owner’s family – it will remain an animal that is continually beaten to achieve the owner’s goals.

I don’t want businesses to make changes for accessibility and inclusion because they are beaten into doing so. I want their decisions to be based on the realization that an inclusive community is a true community.

My website is www.ustooplease.com. Ms. Payne’s should be www.ustoooriwillsueyou.com.

(I searched and searched for Ms. Payne's and her organization's website but could find nothing. Nor could I find a telephone number after almost an hour of searching the web.)

Snow Bound

I tried really hard not to complain this holiday season. I didn't say anything about the stores and all their aisle-way displays making it impossible for a wheelchair user to shop. I haven't written any blog posts about all the people who seem bothered when I ask them to move just a bit so I can get Ashley's wheelchair around them, or the people in their cars who seem impatient as I load her wheelchair into the car.

But now I have to say something. Yesterday, after being stuck in the house because of an historic East Coast snow storm, we finally dug out and decided to go to the mall. As you probably know, the malls always have their parking lots clear before any other business, and that was especially true this last weekend before Christmas.

So, our road had been scraped, my boys had cleared the driveway, and we headed out. This is what we found when we arrived at the shopping mall:



Apparently people with disabilities should stay home when it snows. And for the record, I saw NO regular parking spots that had been blocked by snow. 4000 clear parking spots, and 4 clear handicapped parking spots. It's really too bad because I had quite a lot of shopping to do....and quite a lot of money to spend.

Today I am thankful for those people who believe in community and inclusion.

Justice For All?

This was really hard for me to believe - Washington, D.C. - you know, the seat of our American government - the place where the Americans With Disabilities Act was passed - has NO wheelchair accessible taxi cabs.

But it's true. From the Washington Post on November 10th:

"Two taxi companies -- Yellow Cab and Royal Cab -- will put their first wheelchair-accessible vehicles into service in December, and the firms should have a total of 20 cabs that can handle wheelchairs in service by January.

The federally funded project, which the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board initiated last year, also will receive matching funds from the D.C. Taxicab Commission. None of the District's current 6,500 taxis are equipped with a wheelchair ramp or lift. Most of the neighboring jurisdictions have accessible taxi service, including Arlington, Montgomery and Prince George's counties and Alexandria. "

Thanks for the heads up, Lucy!

Today I am thankful for the antivirus software on my computer which caught yet another nasty piece of malware today.

My Country

To me, the fight for the rights of the disabled has always been a civil rights issue. Yesterday, my brother sent me a link to an ADA video that speaks to that. It's a little long, but broken into segments so you can start, stop and come back later. But it is definitely well worth your time....

My Country, an ADA video

Happy Anniversary!

Today, Mr. Obama will sign a proclamation celebrating the 19th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (the exact date is July 26th for the anniversary).

So while you are eating your anniversary cake, read the statistics below from the U.S. Census Bureau. What? You have no cake? Well, there is a great recipe at the end of this post that will make a relatively healthy, very easy, and very yummy cake. It’s perfect for enlisting the aid of your children, regardless of their level of ability.

41.2 million - Number of people who have some level of disability. They represent 15 percent of the civilian noninstitutionalized population 5 and older.

6 percent of children 5 to 15 have disabilities.

12 percent of people 16 to 64 have disabilities.

41 percent of adults 65 and older have disabilities.

15% - Percentage of females with a disability, compared with 14 percent of males.

11 million - Number of disabled people 6 and older who need personal assistance with everyday activities. This group amounts to 4 percent of people in this age category. These activities include such tasks as getting around inside the home, taking a bath or shower, preparing meals and performing light housework.

3.3 million - Number of people 15 and older who use a wheelchair. Another 10.2 million use an ambulatory aid such as a cane, crutches or walker.

1.8 million - Number of people 15 and older who report being unable to see printed words at all or were blind.

1 million - Number of people 15 and older who reported deafness or being unable to hear conversations at all.

2.5 million - Number of people 15 and older who have some difficulty having their speech understood by others. Of this number, 431,000 were unable to have their speech understood at all.

16.1 million - Number of people with limitations in cognitive functioning, or who have a mental or emotional illness that interferes with daily activities. This group comprises 7 percent of the population 15 and older. This included 8.4 million with one or more problems that interfere with daily activities, such as frequently being depressed or anxious, trouble getting along with others, trouble concentrating and trouble coping with stress.

13.3 million - Number of 16- to 64-year-olds who reported a medical condition that makes it difficult to find a job or remain employed. They comprise 7 percent of the population this age.

46% - Percentage of people 21 to 64 having some type of disability who were employed in the past year. The rate ranged from 75 percent of those with a nonsevere disability to 31 percent with a severe disability. For those without a disability, the employment rate is 84 percent for the same period.

59% - Percent of people 21 to 64 with difficulty hearing that were employed. The corresponding percentage for those with difficulty seeing was 41 percent.

48% - Percentage of people 21 to 64 with a nonsevere disability who work full time. This compares with 63 percent without a disability and 16 percent with a severe disability.

$2,250 - Median monthly earnings for people 21 to 64 with a nonsevere disability. This compares with $2,539 for those with no disability and $1,458 for those with a severe disability.

$2,252 - Median monthly earnings for people 21 to 64 with difficulty hearing. The corresponding figure for those with difficulty seeing was $1,932.

12% - The poverty rate for people 25 to 64 with a nonsevere disability. This compares with 27 percent for those with a severe disability and 9 percent of those without a disability.

$28.2 billion - Amount of compensation veterans received for service-connected disabilities in fiscal year 2007.

98.5% - Percent of transit buses that were ADA lift- or ramp-equipped, as of 2006. This represents an increase from 61.7 percent in 1995.

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Pineapple Angelfood Cake

1 package angel food cake mix
1 can crushed pineapple in water -- 20 Ounce Can

1. Combine both ingredients in large bowl.

2. Mix on medium speed with electric mixer.

3. Bake in accordance with cake mix box.


If you cut the cake in eighths the following nutritional information apply:

Calories: 204.7
Fat grams: 0.2
Fiber grams: 0.2

W/W Points: 4

YOU CAN ALSO MAKE IN CUPCAKES (MAKES 24 CUPCAKES) and THE FOLLOWING NUTRITIONAL INFORMATION APPLIES:

Calories: 68.2
Fat grams: 0.1
Fiber grams: 0.1

W/W Points: 1