Reading Dean Roosevelt’s letter in the paper about automatic door openers on public washrooms prompted some frustrations of my own with views of entitlement that many with mobility challenges have.
I don’t know if Dean writes from personal experience, but I do want to credit him if he’s advocating for others less able than himself.
Yet, unlike him, I do not consider it a “hardship being suffered by people in wheelchairs who are unable to use the public washroom without someone holding the door open for them.”
Writing in general terms, we’ve become a society that demands much and offers less in return.
My wife is in a wheelchair. We’ve accepted the fact, since it’s our handicap, that we can’t do all of the things or travel everywhere others do. Such is reality.
Much progress has been made in acccesability for the handicapped in recent decades.
Let’s express gratitude for achievements to date and lower our expectations for equality in every quarter.
For example, shortly after reading Dean’s letter, I saw on another news feed, that a wheelchair bound person has engaged the media in a complaint about Air Canada not increasing the size of the plane on a particular flight to accommodate his needs.
The sky’s the limit it seems.
The added benefit in becoming more accommodating to the fact, as in Dean’s concern that some of us may have to do without, is that we help society in regaining an attitude of benevolence.
When someone with a smile offers to hold the door open for you, giving you the opportunity to smile back with a thank you, our world becomes the better place it was meant to be.
Ben Meerstra
Vernon
