Demolition Shopping

by Dean Kramer 
November, 2001


I know that we crippled folks are supposed to be cringingly grateful for whatever crumbs of accommodation the temporarily able-bodied public offers us. Nevertheless I am continually stunned by the ignorance and obliviousness I find in the designs of stores and public buildings. Some businesses have notions of "accessible" that make me shake my head in wonder.

How about automated storefront doors that have those handy metal buttons you can slap? Easy, right? After you slap the button mounted on the wall of the building beside the door you have to race over to the door itself because it doesn't open wide enough for you to wait where you are. It often has a threshold lip that will hang up your chair. Some of the cheapest models have a timed open/shut cycle (like elevators do) and there you sit trying to rock your chair over the lip only to be pinioned between the closing doors. There are some malls near here that have doors that open in or out! Got a manual chair? You hit the button and BOOM! You fly backward with fractured knees. (I'm surprised more of us aren't millionaires given the lawsuits we might initiate.)


There's a financial institution not far from Cripple Creek that decided to install a ramp so that customers in wheelchairs or scooters could get to its door which is four feet, a short stone staircase, above street level. The ramp is cement with railings and three (count 'em) three switchbacks. The space allowed for turns in those switchbacks is too narrow and small for many scooters. Additionally the switchbacks are left on a slant rather than being level. So, if you are in a manual chair and need rest on what feels like a three-mile ramp to the bank? Well, for you mythology buffs let's just say that I refer to the place as The First National Bank of Sisyphus and I deposit my money elsewhere. "Ah, stop complaining and go to the drive-through window!" you might advise, "Save your legs and arms some energy." I do use the drive-through window whenever I'm in the mood for ab crunches because the bank's deposit drawer is so far below the window of my wheelchair-accessible van that I have to lean waayyy over to get anything in or out.

There are curb cuts that have a half-inch drop-off at the bottom. It's quite a jolt going down one of these in a manual chair. It's next to impossible to come up one. I had a friend trying to push me from street to sidewalk on such a cut and, unaware of the bump, she almost dumped me on my face.

When shopping in larger stores I have often used a scooter so considerately provided by the business. Controls for scooters are not standardized as they are for other forms of transportation. Some scooters have thumb-operated toggles below the handlebars. Others have handlebars that you twist one way for "forward," the other way for "reverse." Some have push-levers mounted on the handlebars. So when you go to a store, until you are familiar with their machines, you never know what sort of controls you'll be using. Thus, just as one gets physical exercise negotiating the obstacles created by ignorant barrier-free design, one gets intellectual exercise learning all the different ways of driving a scooter.

I have had many zany adventures shopping in major discount department stores on a scooter. I don't want to single any one of them out, especially not Wal-Mart. I commend these stores for nice, wide aisles, but they have a propensity for stacking displays down the centers of those nice, wide aisles creating two narrow aisles on either side of the display with no regard for accessibility. At the end of each of these now non-negotiable aisles they put "end-cap" displays making it impossible to see anyone entering or leaving an aisle. The products themselves are stacked so high (as mentioned in a previous column of mine) that your choices are usually limited to a few shelves below able-bodied eye-level. This is not where the more popular brands are kept. So I cruise carefully through the store selecting things that aren't quite what I want but are what I can reach, trying to avoid running anyone over as I enter or leave an aisle and keeping in mind which driving configuration my scooter has. Sometimes, however, things go awry.

I was in Wal-Mart one day looking for socks. Women's socks are in the Women's Lingerie Department. The Women's Lingerie Department has teensy crowded aisles with lots of flimsy elastic-laden things flapping loosely about (I am referring here to garments, not to other shoppers.) Well, I got stuck. One handle of my scooter became entangled and, as I moved helplessly forward I pulled an entire display of brassieres down. They draped themselves over me and the scooter. It was very embarrassing. Thus festooned, grinning with shame and muttering apologies to the salespeople who came over to glare at me ("What do cripples want with socks, anyway!?They don’t use their feet" my paranoid mind interpreted the looks) I tried to untangle myself and back up. The Women's Lingerie Department is next to the Jewelry and Accessory Department and, reversing in the too-small space available to the scooter, I ran into a display of sunglasses. Though nothing broke, it made quite a sound as it went over. I'd now attracted quite a number of annoyed salespeople with displays to restock so I decided to forget about socks and get out of there as quickly as I could.

I headed for the closest exit which was in the Lawn and Garden Department. But the doors in this department opened outward rather than sliding apart. I could have gone back into the main store area and found a sliding door. But that would have meant passing the scene of destruction I'd created. So, instead, I politely asked a salesperson to hold the door for me. This she grudgingly agreed to do. The threshold had a lip and I knew I'd have to gun the scooter to get it over on the first try. I sure didn't want the experience of an already sullen salesperson becoming even more sullen as I sat there trying to ram the scooter over the threshold. So I gave it all it had. My scooter responded with energy and flew right over that threshold. As it did, the back fender brushed against a display of glass-topped patio tables stacked on end in huge cardboard boxes way too close to the door for a scooter to pass safely by. Each box took its own sweet time sliding away from the others and crashing with a thump to the floor. Each box pushed the one before it a little further until the first box reached a display of barbecue utensils and knocked it over. Talk about noise!

The sounds of mayhem faded behind me as I scooted to my van. I was ashamed and sorry, but I was also annoyed at the store for making my shopping experience so difficult. Maybe someday, businesses will come to terms with the true meanings of "barrier-free" and "accessible." Meanwhile, with the holiday season soon upon us, let's all head out and do our best to hasten the day.