Step back, listen and learn
Why do drive-through ATMs have braille on them? This sort of question is often thrown around as witty banter and small talk. Hah! See the state of the world? How full it is of absurdity and nonsense and poor planning. No wonder things are such a mess.
Unfortunately in the quest to be clever, this sort of knee-jerk attitude can often throw people with disabilities under the bus.
Take the case of the grocery chain Whole Foods coming under fire in March 2016, after a picture of prepeeled oranges in plastic containers began circulating on social media. Accompanying it was the snarky comment of “If only nature would find a way to cover these oranges so we didn’t need to waste so much plastic on them.” The backlash caused the store to pull the product. To an able-bodied person, items like pre-peeled, presliced veggies, fruits and more are seen as laziness. A wasteful food fad. Absurd. But to the person whose hands shake too much to safely hold a knife to chop food? They’re a godsend.
An estimated one in four working Canadians have depression, so for them on the days where getting out of bed and having a shower are insurmountable as climbing Mount Everest, these sort of products are a blessing.
It means easier access to healthy and nutritious foods. The same can be said for grocery stores offering delivery and pick-up. The orange uproar shows that even good intentions can go wrong — just like the push to ban plastic straws in the U.K. to reduce plastic waste.
U.K. advocates have had to fight back as currently, straw alternatives don’t always measure up to what is functional for people with disabilities. If and when this movement to ban straws lands in Canada, these needs shouldn’t just be an afterthought.
How poorly many people understand disability is demonstrated with a photograph that often makes its rounds around social media — a woman standing up from her wheelchair to get a bottle of liquor from the store shelf. Reposted with the photo are often snarky comments calling it a miracle, and the woman a fake and a fraud.
Nevermind that many who use wheelchairs are capable of standing and walking short distances, and (gasp) are allowed to live their life and drink alcohol.
But such comments are no surprise to those with invisible disabilities who have had to endure lectures, glares and rudeness from strangers for using a handicapped parking spot. It doesn’t have to be this way though. Do you wear eye glasses? Congratulations. Technically, you have a visual disability. Yet it’s a good bet your need of glasses is not scrutinized or questioned or judged by strangers. It’s understood that some people are nearsighted, farsighted, or just wear glasses for reading. This sort of normalization and understanding of a disability should be a gold standard.
And it absolutely matters: The Canadian Survey on Disability released by Statistics Canada found that in 2012, 3.8 million working-age Canadians identified as being disabled. That’s 13.7 per cent. The aging boomer population means more Canadians with disabilities. Plus, no one knows what tomorrow holds, whether it’s a vehicle collision, sudden illness or more that would lead to a disability.
Whether its oranges or straws — it’s easy to make glib comments. It’s harder to step back, listen, learn about why there’s method to what you see as madness.
And for the record, drive-through ATMs have braille because panels are mass produced and used on all sorts of ATMs.