Ride, Don't Walk

This Friday, my friend Nicki and I rented a wheelchair for about an hour. Even in such a short period of time, we noticed many design flaws that make maneuvering a wheelchair very difficult. In order to fully experience using a wheelchair, Nicki and I helped each other as little as possible while in the wheelchair. We attempted to open doors ourselves and did not allow our partner to push us in the wheelchair.

One of the main problems we noticed was accessible bathrooms. Nicki entered the wheelchair accessible bathroom on the second floor of Carpenter Hall and noticed that it was difficult to enter the accessible stall because the door would not stay open as she entered. There was also very little room to turn around in the stall. The bathroom sink and paper towels could be reached from a wheelchair, but it was a bit of a stretch. 




Here are two photos and a sketch of Nicki at the Cougar Café in Carpenter. As you can see, the counter is extremely high, and ordering from the café would be difficult for someone using a wheelchair. The cart holding napkins and plasticware is impossible to reach from a wheelchair.

One of the most difficult parts of our experience was getting past this bicycle parked on the wheelchair ramp outside Carpenter! This is the only ramp between Carpenter Hall and Daggy Hall, and we had to get this bike in the exact right position so the wheelchair could get past it. Another observation we made was that it is pretty scary to go down steep ramps, and it's quite a work out trying to get up them. A good example is the ramp entering the ground floor of Daggy Hall from the parking garage.

The faculty/staff kitchen in Daggy Hall, however, is relatively wheelchair-friendly.

Nicki could easily reach the refrigerator and lower cabinets from a wheelchair. The top cabinets were not accessible, but there was plenty of reachable cabinet space.

While I was in the wheelchair, we went to the interior design resource room in Daggy. A few of the magazine shelf were easily reached from a wheelchair. Below is a photo of me reaching a magazine on the third shelf from the floor.

Supposedly the bathrooms on the second, third, and fourth floors of Daggy are wheelchair accessible, but I could not even enter the door to the bathroom. After a few minutes of trying to maneuver entering the bathroom, I realized that even if I had been able to enter the bathroom on the second floor, the location of the trash can made it impossible to even get to the accessible stall. The stall was very small, and it definitely would not be possible to turn a wheelchair around in the stall. The sink was also in a very narrow space which would be difficult to get to.

We went back to the Cougar Café so I could also experience the tall counter from the wheelchair. Here are photos from the perspective of the wheelchair.

During this experience, I learned that the design environment has many flaws that prohibit people using wheelchairs from easily getting around. I think that the built environment should be much more wheelchair accessible, even if it is a little more expensive. As a person in a wheelchair, it is very frustrating to feel like designers do not care if you are able to get around as well as everyone else. It is important for everyone to be able to function in a building. After just a short time in a wheelchair, I was offended to realize that the designers of these buildings (and people chaining their bicycles to wheelchair railings) did not care whether a person using a wheelchair could ever function in their building.