An MS suicide, and the cost of accomodations

William Peace has two posts up that fit together eerily well.

An MS suicide.  MS can be a discouraging, depressing illness.  And depression & discouragement can lead to suicidal thoughts much more easily than many people realize.   But when someone steps up to the ledge of a building, what kind of monster stands beside and gives advice on the best way to jump?

And why are disabling illnesses so discouraging?  In part because we all know that our society just isn’t all that concerned about accessibility.

The noise about cost is, in my opinion, a pretty weak excuse.  You’ve got to put a door on the building, it really isn’t that much more expensive to have slightly more door and slightly less wall.   There’s nothing magical about stairs that makes them so dramatically cheaper to build than a ramp.  And most buildings that require an elevator for wheelchair access really won’t function efficiently unless you have an elevator for freight & furniture access.

Visited our local county historical museum with the homeschooling group the other day.  Was appalled by the complete lack of wheelchair access to any of the buildings.  (Well, except this one barn.)  Outdoors was okay, if you can do gently sloping grassy terrain.

Now there are often good reasons historic buildings are inaccessible.  For example, sometimes the only way to improve access to a building would be to make significant architectural alterations to a building that is being preserved precisely for its architecture.  But I assure you, though the buildings we visited were authentically old, a well-placed ramp or lift would not have marred the educational and aesthetic value of these particular buildings.  Nor were the curators especially concerned about that problem, seeing as they didn’t mind putting a honking big HVAC unit outside one of the buildings, in a visible-to-visitors location.

Which is the second point: Cost was not the concern.  No one had any worries about the cost (let alone authenticity) of putting modern HVAC, plumbing, and electrical wiring into these historic buildings.  Even though, being historic buildings that had been steadily used for over a century prior to the availability of those conveniences, they were actually designed to function quite well without modern amenities.

–> What it comes down to, is that people are perfectly willing to spend and accommodate for items that provide comfort and convenience for “ordinary” visitors and workers.  But somehow, taking the time and energy to plan an installation so that it is workable for those-other-people-not-like-us* just isn’t a priority.

Which of course makes the prospect of future disability so dreadful, because you know that wider society has been built in a way that excludes your disabled self.

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*This particular museum, which I will not name, apparently specializes in ‘those-people-not-like-us’.  Witness the way we were all assumed to be able to imagine ourselves as white 19th century southern farm-owners, but when a bit of Native American technology was mentioned, it was “those people”.  Not an intentional slight — I expect the volunteer-docent meant no harm, and was probably unaware of the shift in his point of view.  But it was cringe-worthy all the same.  [In double fairness, my guess is that our docent actually grew up on just the kind of farm, with just the kind of ethnic heritage, that he was presenting as the assumed “us”.  So for him, us-v.-them might have been more accurate than not.  But for the rest of us, not so.]