“Essentially the NYC subway system is useless if you use a wheelchair,” writes\u00a0<\/span>Bad Cripple<\/a>\u00a0about the map. He continues:<\/p>\n Access to mass transportation for a person such as myself that uses a wheelchair is routinely difficult in the extreme. …\u00a0Wheelchair lifts on buses are somehow broken or the drivers refuse to use the lift often claiming ignorance. Accessible taxis are as rare as diamonds in many cities. Subways in the vast majority of cities are grossly inaccessible. Rental car companies often do not have the car with hand controls rented weeks or days in advance. Shuttle buses at airports are not always accessible. Hotel shuttle buses are also typically not accessible.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n He adds that discount travel is “pure folly” and that newer options like AirBnB and Uber seem to have no interest in accommodating people with disabilities. Not to mention the many places he travels that have broken lifts,\u00a0elevators, and strangely non-accessible “accessible” accommodations.<\/p>\n As with much\u00a0civil rights legislation, passing the ADA\u00a0was just the first step in gaining equality.\u00a0People have often had to sue piecemeal to get accessibility.\u00a0A person identifies a restaurant without accessible bathrooms, for example, and begins legal proceedings to force the business to comply. \u00a0Slowly, little by little\u00a0—\u00a0thanks to lawsuits, building codes, and other means — the world is becoming more accessible, though not nearly as quickly as people with disabilities need it to.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Americans with Disabilities Act turned 25 years old last month. It was enacted by U.S. Congress with the goal of ensuring that people with disabilities had access to “reasonable\u00a0accommodations” so that they could participate wholly in public life. Did it work? Consider the\u00a0New York City subway. SupraStructure featured these two maps. The one on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":67632,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2056,345,2125,85,461,304,7554],"class_list":["post-67630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crimelaw","tag-disability","tag-immigrationcitizenship","tag-politics","tag-human-rights","tag-the-state","tag-transportation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/08\/15.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67630"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67709,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67630\/revisions\/67709"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"15\"](\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/08\/15.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n