When the world is designed for everyone else, even the smallest task becomes a mountain.
Accessibility isn’t just about wheelchairs and ramps. It’s about doorways that open when they’re supposed to. Sidewalks that aren’t cracked or blocked. Elevators that work, or even exist. It’s about designing a world that doesn’t just assume everyone walks, sees, hears, processes, or moves the same way.
Too often, it feels like that world doesn’t exist. Because… truthfully, it doesn’t.
Design Flaws That Disable Us
Let me tell you about the parking garage at my building. There’s a heavy, air-pressured door leading into the building, required by law to prevent fumes from entering the main area. In theory, there’s an accessible button that opens it. In reality? That button works maybe 10% of the time.
Complain, and it’ll get fixed… for a day. Maybe. Then it stops again. Try pulling or pushing that heavy door yourself in a wheelchair, it’s not just difficult, it’s dangerous.
Or take the grocery store: automatic doors with finicky buttons that give you three seconds before they slam shut. Try hitting the button, maneuvering into the doorway, and making it through with your chair or cart without being smacked by a heavy swinging door. It’s a dance we didn’t sign up to learn.
And it doesn’t stop at public buildings. When my partner and I signed our lease, we were promised the entrance to our apartment would be modified so I could safely get in and out in my chair. Seven years later? Still waiting. The front entrance remains a hazard. The only “safety net” is a second exit out the back, which you guessed it, isn’t accessible either. But it’s faster in an emergency.
Even inside our home, the system fails us. There’s a strobe light tied to the fire alarm — intended for Deaf or hard-of-hearing residents. In theory, great. In practice? It triggers seizures in my husband, who has epilepsy. It can also cause migraines, panic attacks, or a full fight-or-flight response (think PTSD). We’ve been fighting to have it replaced for seven years, even with a fire marshal’s approval. The building management still says no. Where’s the sense in that?
When “Accessible” Isn’t Actually Accessible
Some features technically meet the legal minimum, and still completely fail in practice. We’ve all seen:
- Ramps with impossible slopes
- Buttons out of reach
- “Accessible” bathrooms used for storage
- Elevator-only access in buildings where the elevator breaks regularly
- Transit that’s technically wheelchair accessible, but only on some lines, on some days, with some staff trained to assist
This is what I call “checkbox accessibility.” It looks good on a brochure. It doesn’t work in real life.
It’s Not Just Disabled People Struggling
Think this doesn’t affect you? Ask any parent pushing a stroller, senior using a cane, or delivery person lugging boxes up a flight of stairs. They’ve run into the same broken doors, badly sloped ramps, and design choices that create barriers.
Ever wrestled a grocery cart through a tight door? Had to carry luggage down stairs because the elevator was out? Felt overstimulated in a loud, bright, chaotic store? You’ve had a taste.
Now imagine that being your entire world. Every day. With no escape.
Design Is a Choice
These failures aren’t accidents. They’re choices, made when disabled people are excluded from design, policy, and planning conversations. When budgets get cut and access is the first thing to go. When decision-makers believe “good enough” is actually good enough.
And yet, true accessibility benefits everyone. Make a door easier to open, and it helps a mom with a stroller, a courier, a person with arthritis, a wheelchair user, and yes even someone with their hands full of coffee and keys.
It’s not charity. It’s not extra. It’s equity.
Final Thoughts: Listen, Learn, Include
Disabled people have been saying this for decades. We need access, not later, not if convenient, but now. The world wasn’t built for us. But it could be. If you listen.
If you’re a policymaker, landlord, designer, store manager, city planner, or even just someone who notices, speak up. Ask questions. Advocate. And if you’re unsure?
Ask us. We’ve been here all along.
We’re still here, fighting to be seen in a world that often forgets we exist.