WHEELS ON CAMPUS -- A GUIDE TO WHEELCHAIR-FRIENDLY HIGHER EDUCATION (part 2)

 UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

Gerry Altamirano, director of UF’s Disability Resource Cen­ter, is a proactive and outspoken champion for social equity who has built a team that delivers world-class support to about 3,000 students with disabilities. 

About 50-70 DRC clients each year are students who use wheelchairs.

“Our institution as a whole strives to be the best. 

If we want to be the best, we have to have the best, and that includes people with disabilities,” says Altamirano. 

“People with disabilities have ideas and create innovations — but to be successful, we have to shift how our system works, or they won’t get through the front door in reality and metaphorically.”

WHEELS ON CAMPUS

A GUIDE TO WHEELCHAIR-FRIENDLY HIGHER EDUCATION

I am proud to be a major contributor to Wheels on Campus, published by New Mobility Magazine.

I wrote three stories about the top 20 universities for: access, accommodations, housing, extracurricular activities and study abroad.

Supported by United Spinal, the groundbreaking guide ran my profiles of the University of Florida, Auburn University and Texas A&M University.

Read the essential stories at https://www.newmobility.com/wheels-on-campus/

WALKER TO WHEELER -- 6

By Heidi Johnson Wright

Now that I’m over 50 and have had more than two dozen orthopedic surgeries, I use my chair from dusk ‘til dawn. The only time I’m out of it is to walk short distances several times a day. If I don’t, I get too achy, stiff and fatigued. This means that my co-workers sometimes see me up on my feet.

People are especially puzzled by someone who mostly uses a wheelchair yet sometimes walks. They think it should be an all-or-nothing thing. When you’re not in the chair, you’re bound to get smiles and comments like: “How nice, you’re getting better!” My typical response is to smile and nod, while thinking: “Fuck off, asshole! There ain’t no ‘getting better’ for me. New, healthy joints don’t just magically appear like leprechaun gold.”

But I refrain from such comments. I’m comfortable now with who I am: a virtually full-time wheeler. When I can’t get into a restaurant or book an Uber ride, I don’t find fault with myself. I place the blame squarely where it belongs: on a society that continues to devalue disabled folks by designing only for the temporarily non-disabled.  

Temporarily, did you ask? Yes, because karma is a bitch.

Serialized from New Mobility Magazine Digital

http://newmobility.unitedspinal.org/NM_Mar_18/#?page=34

WALKER TO WHEELER -- 5

By Heidi Johnson Wright

Part of me still bought in to the idea that to use a wheelchair was a sign of failure. Perhaps I simply wasn’t trying hard enough, wasn’t soldiering through the pain like I should. I’m ashamed to admit it, but on days I did take the chair to class, I hid it.

I would arrive early, find an adjacent empty classroom, park it there, then walk over to my class. That way, I could stride into my classroom as if nothing was wrong. (Or, as if nothing was wrong with me.)

Outside of class, I struggled to meet guys who could look past the chair and see me. I had lots of male buddies, but rarely did things progress beyond friendship. Then I met my husband. We fell hard for each other.

Before I got too far in, I secretly gave him a test to pass. The first time we went out together, I held his hand, making it clear to passers-by that the chick in the chair was dating the guy who walked. He gladly took my hand, even kissed me, and never flinched. He passed with flying colors, and we got married two years later. 

Serialized from New Mobility Magazine Digital

http://newmobility.unitedspinal.org/NM_Mar_18/#?page=34

WALKER TO WHEELER -- 4

By Heidi Johnson Wright

I had to admit that the wheelchair’s very presence eased my mind. I was comfortable using it in my dorm. I lived in my university’s gimp ghetto: the only floor of the only dorm accessible to girls with disabilities. I was among friends.

Still, I had to mentally sort out for myself exactly what relationship I would have with the chair. But the rules I developed for when and where to use the wheelchair were crafted not strictly by common sense. I was fighting a very personal inner battle about how I saw myself and how I wanted others to see me. There was something about planting my butt in that chair that seemed to lower my status as a potential friend and more importantly, girlfriend. The bottom line was this: wheelchairs were boner Kryptonite.

If I had a major spinal cord injury, I’d have to use a chair for mobility – there’d be no room for debate. But I inhabited a realm betwixt those who walked all the time and those who never did. There was no “how-to” guide for someone like me, or at least I’d never seen a book titled Sometimes Your Ass Walks, Other Times it Rolls: a Guide to the Wheelchair Netherworld.

It was all pretty ridiculous, since even when I was up and walking, I would never be mistaken for an able-bodied person. Standing or seated, I was still a gimp. But to a lot of people, a wheelchair is a prison, a sign of tragedy, a symbol of defeat. The chair is as a mechanism of freedom and empowerment that can make the difference between getting an education or not, holding a job or sitting at home, exploring hillside towns in Spain or never traveling beyond one’s front stoop.          

Serialized from New Mobility Magazine Digital

http://newmobility.unitedspinal.org/NM_Mar_18/#?page=34

WALKER TO WHEELER -- 3

By Heidi Johnson Wright

My pain and limited mobility made getting up from chairs or desks really tough. I often had to rock back and forth to get enough momentum to stand. I strained hard, holding my breath in the process. For a few seconds, my brain was deprived of oxygen to the point where everything around me got fuzzy and faint, making me feel like a spray paint huffer.

The rest of my high school years included multiple surgeries, rehabs, temporary parent-approved wheelchair use and striving to get back on my feet. It was an ongoing cycle of pain, shame and struggle to become mobile enough to go to college.

I bought into my parents’ belief that using a wheelchair equated with tragedy and failure. It was all I knew.  And when they moved me into my college dorm room during freshman week, I was a teary-eyed, nervous wreck. I was uncertain how much walking I would have to do each day.

What if the walking was simply too much? What if I had a flare or sudden pain that kept me off my feet? What if I missed too many classes and flunked out? My anxiety ratcheted up so much that I was vomiting each morning and crying every day. Finally, my parents woke up to the reality of my situation.  

After freshman year winter break, I returned to school with a very basic Everest & Jennings sling-seat power wheelchair. My parents made it clear that I must walk whenever possible. They felt certain that if I used a chair even part of the time, I would grow lazy and stop walking altogether.

Serialized from New Mobility Magazine Digital

http://newmobility.unitedspinal.org/NM_Mar_18/#?page=34

WALKER TO WHEELER -- 2

By Heidi Johnson Wright

My dad took me to school my first day back. The school administration suggested we come in through the loading dock, then pass through the boiler room. I was cargo to be unloaded, like a case of industrial-strength rat poison.

Most of my classmates had no idea I was returning to school at all, and I’d told only a couple of close friends that I’d be using a wheelchair until I regained the ability to walk. I could see the shocked looks of students and teachers as my dad and I entered the corridor.

I’d attracted plenty of stares and snickers before the surgeries, with my leg brace and crutches. But in the chair, I had reached a whole new nadir of gimpdom. Funny how sticking your ass in a 25-pound metal, vinyl and rubber contraption can bring about a new world order.

By the start of sophomore year, I was no longer using the chair. But six years of severe arthritis had transformed my gait from one of long, speedy strides to the side-to-side, slow waddle of a penguin. Three minutes was barely enough time for me to change classes.

To accommodate me, all of my teachers agreed to let me leave class a few minutes early. But that solved only one of two problems. The first was my slowness in getting from here to there. The second problem how to get from a seated to a standing position.

Serialized from New Mobility Magazine Digital

http://newmobility.unitedspinal.org/NM_Mar_18/#?page=34

WALKER TO WHEELER -- 1

By Heidi Johnson Wright

My first nine years, I moved like a charged particle: buzzing with energy, always in motion. Then the pain came. Within six months, the wildfire of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis had spread to nearly every joint in my body. The pain was horrendous. Its unceasing severity meant, within five years, that many of my joints were catastrophically, permanently damaged.

By ninth grade, my school day was exhausting. Most of my energy was spent dragging myself from point A to point B on crutches. The effort I put into short bursts of locomotion ground me down to a nub.

The simplest, most sensible solution would have been for me to use a wheelchair for mobility. But at that point in my life, it was unimaginable. Wheelchairs were acceptable for the profoundly disabled and the elderly only. If you drooled, wore diapers and spent your day making potholders, enjoy your seat on wheels. But if you were capable of anything more, you better get your ass up and move.

That same year, my ankles became so painful I had no choice but to have both of them surgically fused. My rehab was a long, painful slog to regain the ability to walk. It left me no choice but to return to school in a wheelchair.

Serialized from New Mobility Magazine Digital

http://newmobility.unitedspinal.org/NM_Mar_18/#?page=34

NEW MOBILITY MAGAZINE

SHOWCASES MY GUIDE TO ACCESSING AMERICANA (BY WHEELCHAIR)

By Steve Wright

Americana still exists all over our great nation.

It can be experienced in the ethereal rock formations of Monument Valley, the twirling beats of Cajun-country zydeco and the cool glacier-cut gorges of the Ohio Heartland.

Here are the details that capture this trio of accessible, affordable examples of Americana where the final bill for a three-day, two-night trip including meals and attraction entrance fees is kept as close to $500 as possible.

http://www.newmobility.com/2016/07/3-accessible-american-travel-adventures/

http://newmobility.unitedspinal.org/NM_Jul_16/#?page=16

Accessible Public Spaces

Universal Design in Landscape Architecture: Public Spaces for All

Universal Design: “The design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design.”

— definition by the late architect Ronald L. Mace,  founder of the Center for Universal Design at North Carolina State University.

Thankfully, a growing number of architects, landscape architects, engineers, town planners and designers are creating warm, welcoming public spaces while embracing universal design as an essential element from Day One.

Read the entire story online at New Mobility Magazine:

http://www.newmobility.com/2015/03/accessible-public-spaces 

BELATED HAPPY NEW YEAR

WE HAVE NOW BEEN BLOGGING FOR FIVE YEARS!

Thank you loyal readers for following our stories on urbanism, travel, advocacy for people with disabilities and more.

There are more than 65,000 of you (readers) from more than 100 nations.

This blog has earned mentions in major publications and in electronic media.

It has featured more than 1,000 posts -- all original material, no simple pasting in of someone else's words and pawning that off as a meaningful blog post.

In late 2014, Heidi Johnson-Wright joined our stable of writers.

She crated some of the most poignant and humorous posts we've ever read.

Her pieces are lengthy and are some of our most highly-read articles.

We will feature more of her featured blog posts, including excerpts of her upcoming memoir, Earthbound Tomboy.

In the meantime, keep visiting for our future posts on Panama City -- with lots of photos.

Our new friend Roberto Duran will show up in a few posts about hanging out with the champion with Los Manos de Piedra.

POSTER CHILD HAS-BEEN

Earth Bound Tomboy

By Heidi Johnson-Wright

Check out the link below to the excerpt from my forthcoming memoir, The Earthbound Tomboy at New Mobility magazine online. It's about my stint as a poster child for the Arthritis Foundation. New Mobility is the premiere lifestyle magazine for wheelchair users.


http://www.newmobility.com/2015/01/poster-child/