Access in Louisville

'HC fixtures not required at this time'

2008-09-13T14:30:00.012-04:00

On a recent walk past the newly-constructed building at 2836 Frankfort Ave., I saw this building permit in the window of what is going to become an upscale wine shop.

I stopped to read the thing.

The photo above shows the permit. The "Work Description" reads

Interior reno for "Taste Fine Wine & Spirits" Lodge 820 Live Work Design. All constr shall comply w/2007 KY Bldg Code.

It goes on to discuss various requirements:

1st Time Tenant Existing Sprinklers & 2 HR fire separation walls shall be maintained" and "New restrm off private office shall have HC floor space provided."

Well, well, well," I thought, "here it is right in the permit, where they are requiring new buildings to have an accessible restroom."

Or . . . not.

The sentence continues, "but HC fixtures" -- that's "handicap fixtures," in their lingo, aka accessible fixtures -- "are not required at this time."

Here's a photo that shows a closeup of this wording.

Oh well. So close, but no cigar. Or, in this case, no real access.

One wonders why the heck IPL is requiring a "HP restrm" but without "HP fixtures." It's how they interpret the KY Building Code, no doubt. It's a crabbed and venal interpretation, and from all I've heard in the past, they are remarkably unwilling to change their approach.

New report from AARP gives weight to visitability

2008-09-11T11:42:00.007-04:00

As I noted yesterday, the AARP has come out with a new report on visitability.

Increasing Home Access: Designing for Visitability was put together by Concrete Change founder Eleanor Smith and the folks at the University of Buffalo's IDEA Center -- the two national expert sources on visitability. The fact that AARP has embraced the concept should give this very important trend the push it needs. It is a trend that's far too slow in coming!

I'd like to see Louisville get behind the visitability movement. Even with the economic downturn, new houses go up all the time. It would be great if, like Pima County, Arizona, these homes could have at least one no-step entrance and a bathroom on the ground-level floor that visitors in wheelchairs can use. Those are 2 of the 3 simple requirements of "visitability." The other is also a no-brainer: Doorways and halls wide enough to get through in a wheelchair.

Visitability makes USAToday news

2008-09-10T13:57:00.003-04:00

After a 3-month summer hiatus, I'm baaacccckkk!

Today's blog isn't about Louisville access, though -- but about housing access nationwide.

USAToday reports on the trend toward 'visitability' in a news story published today.

Almost 60 state and local governments have passed initiatives — some mandatory but most voluntary — asking all builders to include at least three features in new houses to help seniors and the disabled: no steps at the entrance, a bathroom on the ground floor and wider doorways.

These, of course, are the 3 keystones of visitability.

USAToday's story was prompted by AARP's new study on visitability, which I'll link to when it becomes available on its site.

It's interesting to read the comments to the article as well. The first few are of the "bravo!" variety:

...[P]eople friendly housing makes sense, and not just for the elderly, but for the middle age forty ish who may not want to admit that some things are not as easy as they used to be. Extra wide doorways, no step entryways, lever door hand handles and reinforced bathroom walls benifit us all. Furniture can be moved from room to room with relative ease, appliances can be wheeled into the when delivered instead of being bounced up the entry stair.

and

Accessible homes are not only for the elderly. There are children and younger adults with disabilities and countless veterans included. All homes should be built to accommodate wheelchairs. People have relatives, friends and other visitors who should be accommodated.

But then comment trollers found the story, and started yelling about "government mandates".

You can't get there from here

2008-05-28T13:24:00.009-04:00

The sign tells the first part of this story: The "handicap" entrance to the Derby City Antique Mall is around back -- same area as the loading dock. The building was originally an old school -- used to be called Hikes Graded School in the old days. Now it's an antique mall. See all the steps at the front entrance?

* * *

Around back, way high up next to the door we see this sign:

And here's the entrance:

Ignore if you will, the dangerous grate. Ignore the steep ramp.You can't see it, you can only see the ledge next to it. But there is a ramp -- steep, but usable.
Except when you roll down to the doors -- they're locked.

"Flat" isn't the only issue with access

2008-05-20T12:22:00.004-04:00

What's wrong with this picture? Looks like nothing's wrong. But looks can be deceiving.

I took this photo coming out of my polling place. It's a flat entrance. Once you get in, it's all flat. It's flat all the way to where you vote.

The problem? The doors. They are so incredibly heavy I had a really hard time opening them. When I went in, I held the door open for an older lady using a walker. She was "frail": no way she'd've been able to pull the door open.

And forget it if you in a wheelchair.

Is this polling site accessible? No.

But the officials certainly think it is.

Where is this? It's at a church; but it's such a typical problem that this photo could serve for countless other polling sites. When we talk about 'access' we need to consider what we really mean.

Missing

2008-05-20T09:41:00.002-04:00

The ideas of access, of "universal design" or "visitability" are all but missing from the national discussion about building things. Here's just one example.

The New York Times hosts a lot of blogs; one is the "by design" blog, with blogger Allison Arieff. Arieff is

Editor at Large for Sunset, and the former Editor in Chief of Dwell magazine. She is co-author of the books “Prefab” and "Trailer Travel," and the editor of many books on design and popular culture, including “Airstream: The History of the Land Yacht” and “Cheap Hotels.” Ms. Arieff lives in San Francisco.

People in San Francisco should know about access. Berkeley, CA, just next door, is considered the home of the "independent living" movement -- the place where the disability rights movement of the 1980s really got its start. California has had some of the strongest access laws in the nation, and the oldest. So.

I searched Arieff's blog for entries about access. Nothing. I searched for "universal design"; for "accessiblity"; for "visitability"; finally, for just plain "disabled". Nothing.

Arieff's always going on about "green design". That's good. Everybody nowadays seems to go on about "green." Which is good. It's become a "trend."

But when will access ever become a trend?

A look at the tags on her blog let us know that she's into blogging about every conceivable trendy and near-trendy design issue:

Levittown Aeron agriculture Airstream Bill Stumpf cities coffee holder communities democratization droog design earth day efficiency energy efficiency farmland footprint future design gadgets Gio Ponti global footprint green buildings green design green living green schools greenwashing hospitals housing developments imagination industrial design innovation karim rashid Kermit the Frog Legos Little Boxes modern architecture neighborhoods niche markets obsolescence parking signs Peoples Design Award philippe starck Schoolhouse Rock sustainability sustainable prefab toys typography wellness

Nothing, though, about... access. Yeah, yeah, there's "wellness." That's not about access either.

Fountain drinks from on high

2008-05-15T09:10:00.006-04:00

I stopped in at a fish-sandwich place the other day for lunch and encountered a "fountain drinks" counter way too high to reach.

It's not the first time I've encountered one like this -- the other one I recall is also at a fish place, but they're everywhere.

The counter all the stuff sits on is simply too high. They've got that soft-drink dispenser unit, those big urns, the cups and the napkins, straws and stuff all up on a counter that's probably about 4 feet off the ground to start with.

What's the point? There are plenty of fountain drink stations in fast-food restaurants that are on counters much lower. So what could possibly be the thinking of those who install these high counters?

Well, there it is -- no thinking.

What it tells me is that, once again, nobody -- not contractors, not owners, certainly not building or restaurant inspectors -- pays the slightest bit of attention to the fact that these things are supposed to be at an ACCESSIBLE height.

"Oh, they'll always help you get your drink for you!"

That's the response to complaints, isn't it?

But it's not the right response. The right response would be to put the counter lower in the first place.

Bumpy access at Westport Village, and a lot of lip

2008-05-05T09:46:00.010-04:00

The other day I went over to Westport Village, that Universal-Studio-back-lot looking "renovation" of what used to be the Camelot Shopping Center, at Westport Rd. and Herr Lane. Looks like somebody had a bad idea for Cute. Or a Ye Trendie Village Malle, or some such.

But I digress.

In their effort to be Trendy, developers decided on -- yes! cobble stones! -- at all the intersections. See photo.

This kind of stuff falls into the realm of things that are Legally Accessible But Uncool. Years ago some wags called these kinds of intersections Podiatry Squares, for obvious reasons. But there they are -- a whole bunch of them scattered at, uh, intersections in this Westport Village creation.

And you'll see in the photo above that there are ramps, too. Below is a photo of another ramp; one that ramps directly from the parking lot to the sidewalk. Below that is a detail of the lip.

All these ramps are, I suspect, considered very Legal. Red ramps, to boot. Must be something about vision impairment. But you'll see that the ramps -- and all of them appear to be alike in this -- they all end in a big lip.

This photo doesn't really do the lip justice. It's a huge lip -- well over an inch high -- probably 2 inches.

I already know what the developers will say if called on this. "Oh, we have to make them high because we'll eventually fill in with more blacktop."

It's something I've heard before when I've called folks on ramps like this. But it's a specious argument, becuase there's no reason why adding additional blacktop to an already-flush-with-the-street ramp will make it less accessible. It's inaccessible NOW. That's the problem.

Just for the record: the parking lot does appear to be getting the requisite striping. Most of the ramps that empty into the parking lot have the diagonal "no parking" stripes at their ends. This one didn't just because they hadn't finished painting on the strips. Since there are ramps every couple of hundred feet (I said it was all very Legally Accessible!) and the others were already striped, I am not too worried about this.

I am worried about the Lips.

'They could have all been accessible!'

2008-05-01T08:02:00.001-04:00

In past months I have had occasion to be driving west on Muhammad Ali to the medical complex. Driving there, I pass the massive construction project going on just to the east of downtown Louisville. It's officially called the Clarksdale HOPE VI Revitalization. It's the old Clarksdale housing projects, torn down and being rebuilt.

The blocks and blocks of buildings going up seem to be townhouses. Lovely designs -- don't look like the old low-income "projects" of my youth -- and of course, that's part of the idea behind all this.

Except.

Except they all have steps. Just like brownstones in New York. Steps up to the front door. Steps as far as I could see, creating the streetscape. Steps.

Now I have no doubt that the grand poobahs in charge of this are complying with all "laws" -- I'm sure there's a percentage set aside for "the handicapped" by law.

That's not what I'm getting at. I'm getting why we continue -- continue!! -- to build housing stock so that if we get older we're going to be forced into a nursing home, out of our homes. Continue to build places like this so if you've got somebody in the family who's in an accident or has diabetes and loses their legs you're going to have to be on a waiting list for one of the very few of those "percentages" that are accessible.

Why does it have to be this way? Is there no vision?

Every morning when I drove past this array of homes with steps, I could hear my friend Eleanor Smith of Atlanta's voice: "And they could have all been accessible!"

Yes, they could have.

Eleanor is the mother of the concept known as visitability. You don't hear much about it in Louisville.

These units I've been passing on Muhammad Ali look to me as though they're inspired by what's called the New Urbanism -- one of the silliest examples of which is Norton Commons, way the heck out in what used to be called the boonies.

And to hear Eleanor tell it, the New Urbanists simply don't like access.

Dept. of Justice takes on Louisville housing

2008-03-10T14:09:00.003-04:00

"The Justice Department is suing more than two dozen local architects, engineers, developers and real estate investors, saying they built multifamily housing that doesn't provide adequate access for people with disabilities . . . "

says the lead story in Sunday's Courier-Journal business section (read entire story).

Good, I say.

But notice: the suit is part of an effort to enfore the Fair Housing Act. While the lawsuit does incorporate violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the reason the enforcement action is being taken is because of the Fair Housing Act.

National disability rights activists back in the 1980s were savvy enough to get access requirements built into the nondiscrimination provisions of the Fair Housing Act when it was amended back in 1988. The Fair Housing Act was a big civil rights deal back when it was passed in the 1960s. They figured disabled people would fare better by being guaranteed housing access as part of an already-important civil rights law, than with their own "special" access law.

They were right.

The Dept. of Justice, for example, ENFORCES the Fair Housing Act. But no federal agency is required to ENFORCE the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The 1988 amendments to the Fair Housing Act expanded the law to provide nondiscrimination to people with disabilities, and requiring access is part of that nondiscrimination deal. (You can learn more about the Fair Housing Act's requirements for access here.)

Things to pay attention to when you read the story:

The "disabled-people-don't-mind" defense:

Donald J. Cook, a developer linked to all 11 projects, said he has already spent more than $100,000 in fees for attorneys and consultants since he first became aware of the inquiry about a year ago. Cook said he's not aware of any complaints from residents at the developments. ..

The "it's the fault of conflicting laws!" defense:

Bill Schreck, who oversees building permits for Louisville metro government, said [state building] codes . . . haven't always matched up with the Fair Housing Act, and it was only in July 2005 that the state rules were updated to cover the issues targeted by the lawsuit.

The "lawsuits-are-evil" defense:

"It amazed me how we have people in the government, and this is how they spend their time," [Michelle] Hawkes said of the government's testing program. "They go out and solicit the lawsuits."

and

Bill Fischer, another executive with Renaissance, said the government money would be much better spent on education campaigns and efforts to update local building codes to conform with federal laws.

'Separate-but-equal' sinks

2008-02-20T08:29:00.005-05:00

Couldn't resist getting a photo of this "handicap access solution" I found recently. The venue isn't important. The concept is important.

The concept is "separate but equal." You have a restroom in your building. It's supposed to have levers for the sink faucets. So far, so good. You're OK with that. . . But, note, only for one of the sinks. The "special" one.

"Special" has done more to harm the cause of access than about anything I can think of.

Why aren't all restroom stalls larger, for example? Why does the stall door open outward only on the "accessible" one?

Aside from accessible parking, which really does mean spots need to be set aside, close in, I can think of very very few instances when it doesn't make more sense to just make EVERY COMPONENT accessible:

Flat entrance, rather than ramps-and-steps
Automatic doors, rather than manual doors and one "special" door with a "button"
Light switches lowered throughout
Wider hallways throughout. . .

The list can go on and on.

One benefit of the avoidance of "special" -- that is to say, integration -- is that if you can't segregate out those items that are "special," it's much harder to point to this or that as being "too costly" -- as in, "That ramp cost us xxx" or "That special automatic door cost xxx" -- if the building is simply "barrier-free" then it's just "barrier-free." (You don't hear the term "barrier-free" as much nowadays. Wonder why?)

The other benefit of integration is, of course, the avoidance of stigma. If it's all the same, no one need feel embarrassed by needing the "special" entrance, toilet stall, menu, seating...

Enuf said.

I'd love to get some comments about ths idea.

"This door to remain unlocked..."

2008-02-05T15:42:00.001-05:00

The sign on the door leading out to a side patio read, " This door to remain unlocked when building is occupied." Big white letters on a dark gray background. Can't miss it.

I'm sure it was put up by the fire marshall. Restaurants by law have to have more than one exit.

But it made me think about how often the "handicapped" door remains locked.

That was my experience at the Butterfly Garden. The place I was at where I saw the sign is a new place, just finished being built. Accessible, yes -- so that's not the issue.

The issue is about enforcement.

It has been my experience that almost every business open to the public -- restaurants certainly -- know very clearly what all the fire code requirements are. And don't dare disobey them. What happens if they do? Do they get a big fine? Do they get shut down?

The fire marshal almost certainly required that sign to be posted -- it's a fire code requirement, I'm pretty sure, that a restaurant have 2 exits. The door boasting the sign was the second exit, after the main front door.

Wouldn't it be great, I thought, if such a sign were required on any non-main door that provides the sole "handicap access?" How many of those doors remain locked! That too, is illegal...

But it seems far fewer business owners are concerned about breaking access laws.

Hmmm....

Lending a helping hand in Lent

2008-01-30T10:38:00.003-05:00

Lent, as anyone who knows anything about Catholics knows, is the season before Easter when folks eat fish on Fridays. Not hard to do in Louisville! And so many good fish-sandwich places! Lent starts next week and I was thinking about that, and the word itself -- lent -- and that got me to thinking about the word "lend" -- as in "lend a helping hand." It's a phrase one hears often when one comes up against a lack of access -- as though "lending a helping hand" is as good a solution as providing real access -- and certainly less economically painful for a business. Somewhere unspoken in all this is the message that if someone will "lend a helping hand" then the crip should be happy for that and not grouse about wanting some kind of physical, costly change.

I was by the Fish House (2993 Winter Ave.) the other day, and I got to thinking about all this. What brought me there, other than the fish sandwich, was the report I'd heard that they'd "winter-proofed" that big tent-like extension they have on the building. I wanted to see what that now looked like in terms of wheelchair access

The original building itself maybe was a filling station? Sort of looks like that -- an old one, pretty tiny. And the door you go through to place your order at the counter is up a big concrete step or slab.

Now that would be pretty easy to ramp, especially since they have all that room in that big tent-like extension. But they've never ramped it. (What's funny is that, once inside, they have ramped the floor where you go down to sit in the small, original dining area. Go figure! Maybe it was just ramped originally.)

But the deal is, I suppose, that you can sit in the tent area and someone will come and take your order. That is so typically the response of restaurants....

Anyhow, to get to the point: The new winterizing of this larger area included putting a big fat metal threshold at the door into the place. So you can't even get in THERE in a wheelchair.

Did anybody even think about it?

Doubtful.

Probably the response to any questioning of this renovation would be, "we can help you get in." Just like restaurants can "help" patrons in wheelchairs get up steps and over curbs.

The "helping" solution seems so practical, so correct that it's really hard to argue that it's not really appropriate.

But it isn't.

Old bar bars entrance -- again

2008-01-25T10:01:00.000-05:00

When Café Lou Lou moved out of its startup location on Frankfort Ave. at Pope Street, I heard a rumor that the move was at least in part occasioned by the fact that the buiding -- at 1800 Frankfort Ave., which I believe used to be a bar -- was violently inaccessible, and that folks had complained.

It's an awful old building: A step up to get through the door, which fronts right onto the corner, and then the World's Tiniest Vestibute with one or two more steps and yet another door to get -- finally! -- into the place. Once inside, there are still more levels. But that seems a fairly moot point, since who can get in??

So I was thrilled when Café Lou Lou left -- but I worried about the next tenant, which I suspected would almost certainly be a restaurant as well.

And sure enough...

Guess who's settled into the old bar? Why, none other than the Kentucky BBQ Company, recently known as Bourbon Bros BBQ back when it was down on Brownsboro Road. It was in an accessible location there. It had started out across the street, in that little building that used to be a bakery right on the corner of Frankfort and Crescent Ave., and that, too, had an accessible entrance, I believe.

Ah, but the BBQ guys seem to have not given access a single thought. And now, once again, the old bar building houses a restaurant that is inaccessible.

It would really really be nice if Metro's Dept. of Inspections, Permits and Licenses didn't allow new restaurants to move into inaccessible quarters. Some legal beavers locally have off and on suggested that a "place of public accommodation" (in this case, a restaurant) taking up digs in an inaccessible place probably violates the state Civil Rights Act, not to mention the Americans with Disabilities Act.

But IPL says "hey! That's not our problem!"

Website provides access guide -- to Chicago

2008-01-19T17:36:00.000-05:00

Illinois state government has just released an "access guide" to Chicago -- Easy Access Chicago. It's both a website and a book, and it currently "provides information for disabled visitors about more than 300 sites in the Chicago area," according to the press material provided at the news conference when it was unveiled.

Access guides can be really useful -- or really frustrating. Of course it all depends on how comprehensive it is and how accurate it is. I've found far too many guides of this sort either list very few places or, more often, list places that in fact aren't as they are described in the guide.

How can this happen? It can happen when those who gather the information are either lazy or sloppy -- or worse, when they rely on the venue to rate themselves as to whether they're accessible or not. One of the tactics some less-than-competent access guide groups use is the telephone survey.

"Hi, I'm working for the Access Our City guide -- can you tell me if you're accessible to disabled people?"

"Why certainly, ma'am, we are accessible."

"Thank you!"

Of course, the proprietor didn't mention the 2 steps at the entrance ("nobody's ever had any problem -- but we rarely have anyone in here in wheelchairs anyway") -- or the restroom that's down a hall too narrow to allow a wheelchair to get through.

So, of course, the only real way to prepare such a guide is to send out surveyers with a checklist and a tape measure.

I don't know how Chicago's Open Door organization did it -- they're the ones who created the guide.

The website is promising, although I find the navigation overly arcane. Why not just list all the kinds of places they've rated -- restaurants, hotels, etc. -- on the home page and let you click on them? You have to click on the navigation tab called Access Information to get to a page that lists the criteria they used; you still have to click on more navigation bar links (on the right this time) to get to any info about restaurants, lodgings or whatever. And even then, you have to get all the way to the bottom and find another little link that gives the true access specifics of any individual place.

Still, despite my nitpicking of this site, it's a great idea for a resource that could be far more useful than this one-person powered blog we're doing here.

Louisville should have an Easy Access Louisville guide, right?

When you google "Access Louisville" you don't find anything about disability access. It seems the name Access Louisville was long ago appropriated by Metro Government for PR purposes.

Oh well.

An embarrassing entrance -- but no bigotry? I don't think so...

2008-01-17T09:54:00.000-05:00

Butterfly Garden Cafe (1327 Bardstown Road) moved several years ago into its present location, a fully inaccessible building. MetroSweep eventually sued them about it.

Time passed, though -- a lot of time, to my way of thinking -- and nothing got done -- took forever -- then I learned the matter had been resolved; that the place had in fact installed a ramp.

But it was the kind of solution that still manages to stick it to the crips, so to speak, and I can't help but wonder why it was accepted by the folks who use wheelchairs.

I had not actually been there until yesterday. I suppose in a sense I was boycotting it, although that's really too strong a word. I simply didn't want to patronize any place that had been so unwilling to provide access, and then been so nasty, to my way of thinking, in its final solution.

So it wasn't as though I didn't know I'd find something that irritated me.

Still I was surprised when I actually parked in the back parking lot and my friend and I made our way to the cafe, only to learn that the only real way to get to the entrance was to go along the side of the building between the cafe building and the building to its south. And that pathway consisted of the ramp, rising up nicely.

Well this could've been great! I was, for a few moments, pleasantly surprised.

That pleasant feeling would not last, though.

When you get to the top of the ramp, you've come about two-thirds of the way to the front of the building, and you're at a side door.

It's there that things fall completely apart.

Because the door you come to opens directly into ... a diner's table!

Yes, the door, although it was in fact unlocked and had a lever handle, was a door no one would ever go through. You'd bump right into diners! Can you imagine any wheelchair user with the chutzpah to do that??

I'm sure that's just how Butterfly Garden intended it -- and, I guess, MetroSweep accepted this "solution."

To "really" get into the cafe -- that is, for all the normal ladies the Cafe is really intended for -- you move forward from that landing to a set of steps, which you walk back down, then walk around the front to the front porch, walk back up those steps, and up yet another step, to finally get into the building housing the cafe.

How do I begin to explain what's wrong with this picture?

Yes, the door at the top of the ramp was unlocked. I opened it just to see. Sure enough, when I did, the diners at the table in front of the door looked horrified, as well they might. Was somebody actually trying to come in this way? they seemed to be thinking.

Can you just imagine how it would feel to be someone in a wheelchair coming up and -- well, they'd see that the door opened dab smack into a cafe table, and I suspect would be too embarrassed to go in. Or, if they did persist, what a scene there'd be, with folks jumping up, moving tables, water spilling, hostess wringing her hands.... a really wonderful welcome, designed to make the crip feel as though they are the wrongdoer, not Butterfly Garden.

But, as you know, nobody is bigoted against disabled people. Nobody wishes them any harm. This was just the best the poor Butterfly Garden could do.

You might believe that, unless you notice the expanse of yard at the front of the building, which could have easily been ramped.

You might believe that, unless you think about how easily the cafe could have made that side entrance into its main entrance, simply by rearranging furniture and the hostess station, entailing virtually no cost other than a couple of hours' work moving things around.

But they didn't mean any harm? If you believe that, try reading this.

Louisville's heaviest restaurant doors

2008-01-13T11:28:00.001-05:00

Well, maybe not the heaviest, but certainly right up there. They're the doors at the entrance to Red Pepper Chinese Restaurant (2901 Brownsboro Road). Great food, but heavy, heavy doors!

And here's the kicker: They've got a massive set of setps up to the entrance, but a great ramp right next to them. The place was initially built as an Indian restaurant (in the late 1980s or early 1990s) and it's clear the owner believed in that "if it sits up high, it's more impressive" fallacy so beloved of architects. But code officials, I guess, made them do a ramp along with the steps. So no complaints there.

But those doors! First off, they're massive. Probably 10 feet high, wood, carved -- probably supposed to invoke the doors into old Indian palaces, I suspect. And they have these big iron rings on them like old fashioned door pulls. No levers here, no siree!

I can just barely pull them open, and I've got a LOT of upper body strength.

I can never figure out why code officials can be so good on some aspects of access and so ignorant -- or maybe it's just lackadaisical -- on others.

The weight of doors seems to be one that they pretty much ignore. They certainly have ignored it here.

Access, interrupted

2008-01-09T11:17:00.000-05:00

Have you been to Dean Corbett's new restaurant, "An American Place"? It's out in the 'burbs, in front of Costco, at 5050 Norton Healthcare Blvd. The building is a 150-year-old farmhouse, completely renovated -- I had wondered what the access would be like with this kind of a renovation.

But the access inside looked very good to me the night we were there with friends.

You enter the restaurant from the big front porch, and of course big farmhouse steps lead up to that porch. But, indeed, there is a ramp off to the side. A fine ramp; a regulation ramp. It takes you up to the porch over on the side, where you then travel across the porch -- about 30 feet, maybe -- to the front door.

But...

(And yeah, isn't there always a but??)

When we visited, it was cold, cold, cold -- naturally; it's winter! Yet on that front porch, despite outside temperatures that assured there'd be no outdoor dining for months yet, were all the tables and chairs that will grace it for eating out on the porch come warm weather.

And there's no way in the world someone in a wheelchair could navigate through that gantlet of tables and chairs. They're way too close together.

It's bad now, but can you imagine it when there are folks sitting at all those tables?

"Excuse me, can I get past?"

"Pardon me, can you pull your chair up?"

"I'm sorry, can you move for a moment?"

I can't imagine any wheelchair user coming to Corbett's and feeling OK about even trying to run that gantlet.

As with so much when it comes to access, I assume it's oversight. So... what's going to be done about it?

If something isn't done, the fully accessible restaurant is going to still pretty much be offlimits to the wheelchair crowd -- that is, those who can even afford this very pricey but wonderful venue.

A curious understanding of access

2007-12-15T11:27:00.001-05:00

Sometimes you run across news that is so weird that you've just gotta say something about it -- even when it has nothing to do with Louisville access.

There's just such a story out of Syracuse, New York: On Nov. 19, the Syracuse Post-Standard reported that developers were planning to turn a long-closed state institution into a segregated resort -- "for the handicapped only."

I'm not sure which is worse: the idea, or the fact that the developers and the state seem to clueless as to why this might in fact be offensive.

"What we are trying to do is give handicapped people something they never have had," Jim Benjamin, one of the owners of the firm Syracuse Resort for the Disabled told the newspaper. The firm was created specifically to purchase the property from the state and develop it.

"They can go to any hotel. But in most hotels, there's one handicapped bathroom. Here, the whole thing will be for them."

This one quote brings up so many issues, none of them asked in the stories, that I've been spending awhile trying to figure out how to explain things succinctly:

1. Why should something that's accessible immediately brand it as for "the handicapped only"? That's really at the heart of the thinking behind this -- and it's the same kind of thinking that keeps nondisabled people out of accessible restroom stalls in restaurants, or reluctant to push the button to activate an automated door into a mall, even when their arms are overflowing with packages. "If it's accessible, it's 'special for the handicapped.'" That kind of thinking, which seems to be the basis of Benjamin's concept, is the enemy of universal design -- the concept behind designing buildings and products that are simply accessible for everyone. Access of a piecemeal nature -- the kind Benjamin has observed in hotels -- in fact encourages and perpetuates segregationist thinking, and that's at the heart of Benjamin's proposal.

2. Any new or renovated hotel that has only "one handicapped bathroom" is breaking a bunch of laws. Nonetheless, I don't doubt that many hotels are in just this category.

3. If Benjamin-and-partners are committed to the idea of disabled people having access at resorts, why don't they simply design a fully accessible resort -- and open it to everyone? Is that such a far-out idea? Evidently.

Benjamin, you see, is not focused on universal design but on "helping." He gets his inspiration not from the disability rights and access movement but from a relative newcomer to disability, who perhaps can be forgiven for not seeing the larger issue:

Benjamin said his brother was the inspiration for the resort concept. His brother became disabled about three years ago after he suffered a stroke, Benjamin said.

Syracuse Resort intends to convert the existing 585,000-square-foot compound into a luxury hotel, he said.

"We felt this building was perfect. And it was made and designed for handicapped. That's the reason we came to Syracuse," Benjamin said.

Benjamin's brother may not know about the larger issues, but someone who plans to develop a major resort has some responsibility to do a little research, it seems.

It also seems clear that Benjamin is clueless as well about the history of institutionalization, and its horrors. The Syracuse Developmental Center functioned for more than a century as an institution for people labeled mentally disabled. The last of its 430 residents were moved into group homes in 1998. Since then, the site has been largely vacant. "It costs the state about $1.5 million per year to maintain," the newspaper reported, raising yet more questions about the responsible use of public money.

Maybe most folks don't realize the hell-holes that these kinds of institutions were. Or how disability groups have fought for decades to get them closed nationwide. (Here in Kentucky we still have Oakwood, and parents of the disabled people put there fight bitterly to keep it open.) For more about why institutions are so disliked by disability activists, go here and here and here.

"How about a resort just for Jews on the former site of Dachau?" quipped the disability rights activist who alerted me to the story.

The site itself isn't the most problematic part of this story, though. The problem is the segregation which is being proposed -- without a clue as to why segregation isn't a good idea.

Syracuse disability activist Karen Gillette called Benjamin's plan "bizarre". Others have vowed to protest if the plan goes forward.

A bad taste at a good restaurant

2007-12-08T16:16:00.001-05:00

There we were at Meridian Cafe again. I like the food; but I always get a bad taste in my mouth when I'm there, because there isn't any wheelchair access whatsoever -- and there could be.

This is a big old house on Meridian Avenue (112 Meridian Ave.) in St. Matthews. Admittedly, it would take a big ramp to provide access; the porch is up about 5 steps; then there's another step into the house itself.

But a ramp would certainly be possible. There's a yard big enough for a ramp; an enterprising and motivated owner could even do a clever thing with a deck/ramp and provide interesting outdoor seating possibilities, like the owners of Kashmir did after Metrosweep got on them about a ramp (see the photo here).

The thing folks don't seem to GET is this: access isn't simply a "feel-good option" -- it's THE LAW.

Businesses seem to think that's just not important.

When a business is pressed about installing a ramp, typically they yell about cost. A ramp doesn't have to cost a lot of money -- certainly no more than a deck. And restaurants are always adding decks, patios, patio tables and chairs, umbrellas, plantings...

Why not a ramp?

It is the law, after all.

Kaitlyn's steps

2007-12-06T10:39:00.000-05:00

I'd like to offer a little variety but the stories seem to keep coming: this time it's Kaitlyn Lasitter whose recent days in the news eye have shown us another inaccessible home.

At the top of yesterday's C-J was a big picture (here online, over on the right, scroll down a bit) of Kaitlyn being carried into her house by her father. You can see the steps in the lower left of the photo.

Kaitlyn Lasitter was the teen whose feet were chopped off by a Kentucky Kingdom amusement park ride last summer. There's lots online about that -- here's a C-J story, and a google search brings up tons more.

Very little, though, about her home's inaccessibility. In yesterday's C-J story, reporter Charlie White tell us that

Before Kaitlyn received her prosthesis, just getting from one room of the family's Germantown home to another was difficult for her because the door openings of the family's near-century-old home are too narrow for her wheelchair.

Randy Lasitter said he often had to carry her, while at other times, Kaitlyn had to crawl.

I'm glad this got into the story. I'd still like to see more focus on the problems caused by inaccessible homes in this community. And I'd like to see some public discussion about what should be done about it. Lots of commununities are ensuring that new homes have at least basic access. That's a movement called visitability, but it hasn't made it to Louisville. You can learn more about it at www.visitability.org.

Kaitlyn Lasitter, like Audrey White, lives in a house in Germantown.

Audrey's ramp

2007-12-03T10:31:00.000-05:00

Saturday's news reported that finally Audrey White was going to get a wheelchair ramp for her home.

Provided through "the kindness of strangers."

Audrey White is the 8-year-old girl much in the news last week due to her wheelchair having been stolen -- for scrap metal, as it turns out -- from in front of her home.

The reason her chair was outside, with no one around, allowing it to be stolen, is a story of the routine inaccessibility of most of Louisville's housing stock, including the house in Germantown where Audrey lives with her family.

Many -- probably thousands -- of wheelchair users in Louisville live in similarly inaccessible homes.

And this isn't the first time something bad has happened because of that.

And yet what was interesting to me about this news story as it unfolded last week was that, although clear that the reason the chair was unattended was because her mom was helping Audrey out of the house, with the chair sitting at the foot of the steps, no news story focused on the problem of the inaccessible home.

To be sure, the news story WAS the stolen chair. But the theft was to my way of thinking possible in the first place because of the inaccessible home.

As the week unfolded, the news turned, as it usually does with stories of this sort, to the "outpouring" of the community. The media surrounding the theft had prompted Teri and Steve Bass to donate a new $5,000 wheelchair for Audrey -- and that then became the story (here and here).

Which was fine -- donating a wheelchair is no small deed, and it's good to see folks help out.

But... -- and yes, for me there is always a "but" when I see stories like this -- but wouldn't it be swell if this community was so generous about access?

Finally, though, that too happened:

Audrey's story touched many in the community, including several who're working to build a deck and ramp onto the back of her home.

"I won't have to carry her and the wheelchair," White said. "It's going to make her life easier and my life, too."

Kelley Construction, along with several United Auto Workers members who work for Ford, plan to get started on the project next week. (Source: Girl's stolen, wrecked wheelchair recovered, CJ Dec. 1, 2007)

OK. That's great!

Now: what about those other thousand who have no ramps on their homes?

I'd like to see the CJ's Jessie Halladay do a story about that.

The right hook

2007-12-03T10:17:00.000-05:00

The other day I was at Uncle Tubby's Pizza over in Jeffersonville (103 Quartermaster Ct., Jeffersonville). Tubby's is in the old Quartermaster facililty, which has been redone into a kind of mall. New stores in all of it. And all of it, it appears, accessible!

And there I saw an access feature I've longed to see -- but never have:

In the restroom, in the accessible stall, the coat hook inside the door was lowered. A woman in a wheelchair could actually hang her purse on it!

Sad that this has to be such an amazing sight.

Most of those stalls, even when they're roomy enough, even when the grab bars are installed correctly -- and even when the stall door actually locks, which is infrequent -- the stupid hook is way way too high to use if you're in a wheelchair.

And it's so very very simple to do correctly!

Kudos to whoever installed the restroom there.

Students learn renovation but not access

2007-11-20T13:40:00.000-05:00

The Courier-Journal's Sara Cunningham had a story in the Metro Section on Friday about the house that Iroquois High students are renovating as part of the school's technical education program.

Great pictures -- but not a word about access.

This would be a great chance for a home to be made wheelchair accessible. It could have been a "visitable" home.

But... evidently not.

Or else it wasn't reported.

Another missed opportunity to make Louisville's housing stock more welcoming.

What happened with coverage of the "house that love built" ?

2007-11-16T10:37:00.000-05:00

You'd have to be living under a Metro-area rock -- with no access to any local media at all -- to miss the fact that ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition just completed a new home for U. of L. freshman Patrick Henry Hughes, who uses a wheelchair and is blind, and who lives with his family in the Buechel area.

The home appears to be totally accessible -- although it's hard to find out much about the access details through the fog of inspiration. Despite the almost non-stop media coverage in the C-J and on the local TV stations -- and all their websites -- the story has been played throughout as inspiration, not cutting-edge design. The phrase "the house that love built" has been the headline of at least two (here and here ) and maybe more stories in the C-J. Of course it's the Extreme Makeover folks promoting this.

But they have a willing co-conspirator in Father Hughes. The "inspiration" slant is something Hughes' father, Patrick John Hughes, seems to have been encouraging if not orchestrating for a long time. A Google search of "Patrick Henry Hughes" brings up many stories about the "selfless dad" who marches with his son in the U. of L. band, pushing his wheelchair. Most of these stories end up being more about the father's selflessness than about a college freshman's interests and lifestyle. Makes you wonder a bit. But that's not the topic of this blog posting. (If you want more on what I've learned over the years about such inspirational treatments, you might want to read this and this.)

In all of the media overkill of the last week, we finally get this:

Patrick Henry Hughes eagerly summed up his favorite feature of the new home:

"It's wonderful the fact that the house is more accessible," he said, smiling. "I can do everything by myself when I want to. It's gonna be great!"

Ah yes: that is the point. Too bad it was so thoroughly buried in the story 'Hometown heroes' honored.

I've yet to find any real coverage of what the actual access consists of. I've still got no real idea of precisely why and how Hughes is going to be able to be independent (despite his dad) in his new digs. Those are the pictures I'd like to see. Another story that didn't get reported, along the lines of actual access, comes via yesterday's press release from the University of Louisville -- about how Hughes

will be able to feel the shape and layout inside and out through a plastic model of the home, thanks to efforts at the Rapid Prototyping Center at UofL’s J.B. Speed School of Engineering.

Didn't see this anywhere in all the mass media hoopla, either.

Perhaps the most troubling thing about the way the story has been covered is that access is presented as something "special" being given out of "love" to Hughes by all the selfless volunteers.

Wouldn't it be better -- and more accurate -- to report that home access should be every person's right -- not just a lucky special recipient who gets a "gift"??

What the media coverage has done for me is a little different, maybe, than what it has done for the thousands who have watched and read and "felt good": All the coverage just makes me think of all the other wheelchair users in the community who could use access in their homes -- and could get it, if attention were paid to the issue, rather than focusing on the "inspiration" of one college-age fellow whose dad is ever-present. If Elite Homes, for example, decided to start incorporating the principles of visitability in all their new homes.

It makes me think about how little home access gets discussed at all in the Metro area. I'll try to blog a bit more on that in the future.

If this new home allows Patrick Hughes to quit having to be carried everywhere, that's a winner in my book.

I do have to wonder why the college guy seems to get lifted everywhere by his dad. Hughes the father, were he of a different mindset, perhaps, could use his son not so much as a public inspiration but as a way to draw attention to the things that should be accessible, but aren't.

Now that would be a real act of love -- with presents for a lot more folks than just one family.