What society lacks when it comes to accessibility and awareness

Accessibility is when designs and creations of environments, products, services, and experiences are useable, inclusive, and available to as many people as possible. This includes people with disabilities or limitations. It focuses on removing barriers that may prevent people from accessing spaces, technology, information, or other resources.

Unfortunately, even now that more attention is being brought to this topic, society still lacks a lot in this field. This article will discuss the lack of awareness, inclusion, ramps and elevators, captions and subtitles, braille or other tactile indicators, benches and general resting places, and trained interpreters.

 

Lack of general awareness and understanding

Let’s start with a hypothetical situation…

Let’s say that you’re walking in a mall and see someone with Tourette’s syndrome, for example, and you see that they’re making sounds and movements. It will help to know that they have no control over it, and they aren’t doing it on purpose. The same can be said for people with epilepsy, people who are blind or deaf, people who have invisible disabilities, and essentially every disability or illness you could think of. If you know more about these conditions, their effects, and necessities, you should be informed enough to realise that they are also people, just like you, just living harder, more uncomfortable lives.

I have a super distinct memory of being out with my family, doing something that I was really interested in, and my sister had a seizure in a very heavily foot-trafficked area. I think it was an open-air food court and we were right in the middle of it. Eventually, it felt like every single person there was gathered around my family - children screaming and crying because they were scared, moms getting panic attacks, and dads running to us to “save the day”. I always thought that if more people were more aware of these types of things, it would make everyone’s lives so much easier. At this point, it’s been engraved in me to immediately give people the type of look that says “Please just leave us alone, everything is okay, she’ll be fine in a few minutes, and there’s nothing you or anyone can do to help so please just don’t draw any more attention to us.” If more people knew, I wouldn’t have to.

 

Ignorance and lack of inclusion

People with disabilities, both mental and physical, are more often than not excluded from a lot of things. This could be exclusion from social circles and events; job opportunities; legal discrimination documents; and unfortunately, so much more.

For a while, the University of Toronto completely excluded any mention of disability in the faculty’s non-discrimination clause found in its governing documents. It included age, race, creed, colour, national origin, citizenship, religious or political affiliation or belief, sex, sexual orientation, marital status and/or family relationship, place of residence, and membership of activity, but no mention of disability. This was brought to the attention of faculty, the faculty association, and a vice president, but nothing was done. It is still a very uncomfortable topic of discussion and is often left out as a whole.

It also has a negative stigma behind it, and the people are often seen as “weird” or “gross”, and people often tend to avoid people with disabilities or special needs. This can be extremely tough because, as I mentioned earlier, they are often just like us; they may just need some additional help. It can also negatively affect their experiences and perceptions of different people and places.

 

Lack of ramps and elevators

This one is pretty self-explanatory. People with mobility issues typically can’t, or shouldn’t make use of stairs, and rely predominantly on the use of ramps and elevators. Say someone is in a wheelchair, and they want to go to the mall. If they arrive and are immediately greeted with stairs straight out of the parking lot, and not a ramp or another wheelchair-accessible option, it will be quite difficult for them to even make it to the mall. If there aren’t elevators or a conveyor walkway (like those in an airport) and instead are only stairs, it becomes increasingly harder for them to enjoy their experience the way that an able-bodied person would be able to.

Even though it seems like common sense, especially now that more light is being shone on these issues, this is still a surprisingly common problem. The bare minimum that people can do to fix this is to create wooden overlays to go over small sets of stairs, install those seats that can take you up and down the stairs (stairlift), or at the very least have a sign that says that the building isn’t wheelchair accessible.

 

Lack of accurate captions or captions as a whole

Captions are the words often used to describe all the audible sounds and ongoings that are happening within a movie, show, video, etc. for viewers who may not be able to hear.

For a long time, captions weren’t available on many social media platforms, like Instagram, for example, which only introduced captions in late 2020-2022. For such a heavily trafficked platform, this is really quite disappointing. Even now that the majority of platforms offer some sort of captions, most of the time they are very far from accurate. They can be so inaccurate that they almost defeat the entire purpose of having captions in the first place.

Another example is the need for captions, or accurate captions in the cinema. Going to the movies is such a fun and relaxing experience for most, but for millions of people worldwide, this can be a very discouraging and frustrating experience. A few cinemas have tried to accommodate those people by providing them with a device that shows captions independently of the movie that’s showing. However, these devices can often be extremely chunky, impractical, and uncomfortable, and have often shown the subtitles for the wrong movie, or just not worked at all. While we respect and appreciate the effort and the fact that they’ve taken initiative, there’s not really any point of it if they don’t work.

My last thing to say about this topic is that very often in many forms of TV, there is not even the option to have captions. There might be a person in the corner who signs in most live-streamed TV like the weather or the news, but there are many people who have some degree of hearing loss who don’t know how to sign, making it totally inaccessible to them.

 

Lack of braille and other tactile indicators

For blind people who wish to be more independent, braille and physical indicators like the bumps on the sidewalk, the beeps on the traffic lights, etc. might be the only things they rely on that are outside of their control. Without these things, and excluding other factors, they could be in extreme danger - walking into a busy road, going into the wrong places, etc.

Imagine a blind person who wasn’t walking with anyone (no guide dog, no one walking with them), and only relied on their mobility canes and their other senses was walking in an unknown public space and wanted to use the bathroom. How would they know where to go, or which bathroom to go into, without the use of braille? Additionally, without the use of the bumps on sidewalks indicating the end of the sidewalk, they most likely would struggle to know where the sidewalk ended. Even though they can use their other senses to figure it out, the bumps can reduce their stress about it.

 

Lack of benches or general resting places

Many people who struggle with mobility, or have conditions like POTS, epilepsy, etc. often need places, public or private, where they can rest or take a break. This could be anything from a private little room in a public space - like a shopping mall - where they can rest or have an episode separate from everyone else; or it could be the simple implementation of more benches in public spaces so they can have more accessibility to rest somewhere that isn’t the floor. It’s also just nice to have that option of having a bench nearby, just in case.

Imagine someone with one of the above-mentioned conditions starts to feel a bit dizzy or tired, or can feel an episode about to start, naturally they would go to the closest seating area, or just general area where they could take a break. Of course, some would take the floor either way because there is more room (to have a seizure, for example) than there would be on a small bench. Either way, having more benches or general resting places would benefit almost everyone.

 

Lack of properly trained interpreters

Interpreters are essentially the middleman for those who rely on sign language and have a hard time hearing, and it’s of utmost importance that they are properly trained and are proficient and comfortable in their jobs. Say a deaf person is going to the doctor and is expecting some life-altering news, but the doctor can’t sign. If the hired interpreter can’t sign to the necessary degree - can’t sign fast or well enough, can’t understand what the deaf person is signing, doesn’t know enough sign, etc., they will have a hard time understanding what they are trying to say. The same can be said for situations like school, court, or work and so much more.

If people took the time to properly understand the language, and realise that they are essentially people's life-or-death, maybe this problem wouldn’t be so common.

 

In short, many of these problems are based on a pure lack of compassion, awareness, and general understanding and are almost completely avoidable or fixable if people took the time and effort to do so.

 

Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to read this, and I hope the rest of your day is absolutely incredible!

xoxo, Indy <3