Life on Wheels (100 page)

As with most travel arrangements, you deal with a centralized reservations operator. Always call the local station, in addition, to confirm that an accessible car is on the train for which you are scheduled and that services are available to meet your needs. Since there are a limited number of trains with accessible facilities, you should schedule your travel as early as possible to get what you need.

Access to buses is important for long-distance as well as local travel, especially for the many chair riders who live on small, fixed incomes such as Social Security disability payments. The Greyhound Corporation essentially has a monopoly on what is known as “fixed route” transportation by ground in the United States. Greyhound won a waiver allowing them more time to comply with the ADA and, in the meantime, has purchased new buses without lifts. Very few Greyhound buses have lifts, and you will find the same is true of tour buses in major cities.

There are many stories of people injured by drivers or other staff not trained to assist people onto the bus and of wheelchairs damaged by mishandling. The bus will not have an accessible restroom. Even the places they stop might not have a usable bathroom—even if drivers are willing to help you off the bus. The continuing inaccessibility of buses has a severe impact on availability of affordable transportation.

Wheelchair accessible rooms are universally available, from bargain-priced motels to the finer hotels. You can generally count on that meaning a bathroom with a wide door, room to turn around, grab bars, a handheld shower head, and lever controls. Most rooms will have a roll-in shower, so, if you have a preference for a bathtub, you’ll need to specifically request one. Some hotels do not have any accessible rooms with a tub. Know exactly what you need, and, if the hotel can’t clearly commit to providing those needs, don’t choose to stay there.

Beware of consolidators. These are businesses that offer rooms at reduced rates. Hotels sell reservations to a certain number of rooms to consolidators as a way of increasing occupancy rates. Consolidators might tell you the hotel has accessible rooms, but that doesn’t mean that the hotel will know you are coming or that such a room will be set aside for you:

It is generally best to make your reservation by calling the hotel directly to ensure that they know what you need and will guarantee or “block” the room. As hotels fill up, they start to give the accessible rooms to ablebodied guests. Call again a couple of times before you arrive, especially the day before. Ensure that the room will be available when you arrive.

Hotel rooms are often full of chairs you don’t need or furniture arranged in a way that limits your movement. Beds are often placed close together or too near a wall, sometimes blocking your ability to reach curtain controls or the thermostat. That is especially a problem when the bedspread hangs off the side and can get caught in your wheels. Don’t hesitate to ask hotel staff to move things around or take furniture out of the room for you.

Typical rooms have more than one phone, although the phone by the bed is sometimes on the side without enough space for wheelchair clearance to get to it. Of course, you need a phone by the bed more than anywhere else because you are less mobile once out of your chair. One traveler uses this solution:

A portable phone is particularly useful in the bathroom. Finer hotels often have a phone installed near the toilet—which still doesn’t help much if the phone rings while you’re in the bath or shower.

The organization Hostelling International-American Youth Hostels (HI-AYH) supplies beds for traveling students in the United States and abroad. They provide a bed, pillow, and blanket in a dormitory setting with a shared bathroom for a very low price, as little as $15 a night. There are now 380 hostels in 34 countries that provide wheelchair access, 38 of those in the US. Some provide family quarters or private rooms. The range of accessible features varies, since HI-AYH does not establish uniform standards. As with any hotel, call ahead and determine whether you can adapt to the facilities.

Campgrounds around the country increasingly provide accommodations for wheelchair users. They create level campsites with a firm earth surface that is easy to roll on. There is usually a paved surface for parking near the campsite. Sites are located near bathroom facilities that often include stall showers with fold-down seats. Sometimes the accessible restroom/ shower unit is restricted to qualified users who get a key from the park ranger.

Some parks reserve accessible sites until later in the day before giving them out to ablebodied campers. The most desirable parks take reservations in advance, and you are well advised to plan your itinerary and make your arrangements before arriving. There may be some accessible trails, but many of them are short “nature trails.” The most scenic hikes are on rough terrain with more slope. Strong manual chair users or those with power will have more options. Recreational vehicles (RVs), which you can take onto certain campgrounds, are available for rent with lifts and accessible bath facilities. Some parks are primarily outfitted for RVs, with electricity and water hookups at individual camp sites. Pristine locations are less likely to allow RVs because of a desire to limit pollution and noise.

If you rely on assisted breathing, travel need not be off limits to you, though it might involve a bit more planning and coordination, like this woman who uses a ventilator found:

Similarly, you can make arrangements with airlines and train carriers in some cases to provide electricity for a ventilator. Naturally, you should be prepared with backup approaches should there be an emergency.

While political advocacy is removing barriers, designers and engineers are expanding your potential. Technology is enhancing the lives of people with disabilities by:

Increasing employment opportunity

Providing tools for pursuits such as writing, software design, or graphic arts

Increasing independence for people with limited upper body strength through dramatic evolution of power wheelchairs and remotecontrol technology

Promoting participation in online communities of people with shared interests—disability-related or not

Accelerating participation in the political process

There are considerable resources available. Rehab centers and independent living centers increasingly offer training programs and support groups on computing. Exposition events are widely held, from small local fairs to large conferences put on by groups such as United Spinal or RESNA, Abilities Expo, and the World Congress and Expo on Disabilities.

Even if you can’t easily use your fingers or hands or can’t see or hear, you can still use the technology. There is enough demand for alternative methods of using computers to encourage designers and companies to develop new accessible methods of interaction with the computer. These input alternatives include software that reduces keystrokes, adaptive keyboards, voice dictation, voice synthesis, eye movement and head controllers, switches, and puff-and-sip controls.

Assistive technology reduces frustration. You might be able to press keys to type, but the process might be so slow, or you might make so many mistakes in the process, that you will want to give up. Your creativity and thought process are interrupted if you cannot easily interact with the computer. Many features of assistive technology are now commonly found in both Microsoft and Macintosh operating systems.

If you have limited use of your hands, two software approaches help reduce the number of actual keystrokes required for text entry: word abbreviation and word prediction.

Abbreviation software allows you to enter a small number of letters that are enough for the computer to know what the whole word should be— a sort of shorthand. Pressing the space bar typically initiates expansion of the word. Some programs have a defined a set of abbreviations and allow a number of customizable words. Other programs allow the user to define the shortcuts: