I have traveled with a scooter on both business and personal trips for over a decade and never encountered any insurmountable accessibility problems with either transportation or lodging accommodations until recently:

 

The motel that we stayed at on a recent trip was by far the least accessible at that time. Specifically,



1)   The bathroom was too narrow to turn a chair or scooter around, and required a sharp right angle turn for entry and exit. Fortunately I had my manual wheelchair as the scooter could not have made the turn and the bathroom could not have been accessed. Rooms have been tight before for a scooter, but I had never encountered one that would have been inaccessible.

2)   The shower was in a tub. There was no way I could take a shower, as I couldn’t step over  the rim

3)   The sink bowl was too far back for wheelchair access

4)   The rack of clean towels at the sink was too high for wheelchair access

5)   The telephone should have been next to the bed, rather than only across the room on a desk

6)   There was too little clearance between the beds, and at the end of the beds. My wheelchair would often “pull” the covers off

7)   The room lighting was not very good. There should have been a switched ceiling light in the proximity of the closet. Basically the room was too dark.

 

I thought that a “handicapped” room couldn’t be less accessible, but I found one that was. Last summer we had reservations for a handicapped room. When we arrived, the room we were given was simply not acceptable. It was too small for a manual wheelchair, and would have been inaccessible for a scooter. Incredibly, it had an approximately 1” step at the front door and at the restroom entrance (I had to go in backwards). Entry to the commode required a sharp right angle turn and entry was through a door that was too narrow for a wheelchair. The restroom would have been too small for a transfer (but I couldn’t get in anyway), and I could see that there were no grab bars at either the tub or commode. It was a handicapped room in name only. We asked that the desk clerk make suitable arrangements for us at another facility (which he reluctantly did).

 

Both of these motels were retrofits of buildings probably built before ADA and probably in compliance therewith, but the management seemed to think that providing nearby parking (with curb cuts ~ a block away) and installing a low peep hole in the door are sufficient to make a “handicapped” room. They had obviously not tried to access their facilities with a wheeled vehicle.

 

The bottom line appears to be to avoid facilities built before ADA as there can be significant differences in “handicapped” room accommodations. Caveat emptor. (These comments were excerpted in the Inbox of the Summer 2010 issue of Momentum.)

All materials displayed in LivingMS™ are protected by copyright laws.