Another thing that struck me about proposed straw bans is that even if there are good alternatives to plastic straws for every disability or combination of disabilities (there aren’t), and even if it’s no financial burden to carry your own plastic or reusable straw everywhere (it’s not), it still carries an expectation that disabled people not only have better memories and planning skills than abled people, but also predict the freaking future.
For most people, disability isn’t static. Even if a condition is lifelong, a disability might get progressively worse throughout a person’s life. Or it might improve due to better meds or an assistive device that they didn’t have access to before. There’s also good days and bad days with a lot of conditions. A person who can easily lift a cup to their mouth Monday might find it painful on Tuesday and downright impossible on Wednesday, for any number of reasons.
Even if disabled people are expected to plan perfectly for their worst days (which we don’t expect of abled people), there’s always going to be a first time that someone can’t do something (in this case, drink without a straw). Depending on their exact medical diagnosis and their abilities up to that point, this might not be predictable for them.
And those people are going to be among the ones screwed over by all the gatekeeping suggestions to make sure “only those who really need it” can get a straw. I mean, I can just picture that conversation.
“Excuse me, I’m having trouble lifting this glass. Can I get a straw?”
“Sorry, ma’am, we can’t give out straws without a note from your doctor stating that you need one.”
“Oh, okay, let me just hop in my Delorean, go back in time to my last doctor’s appointment, and get a note for something that hadn’t happened yet.”
This is just one of the many reasons that gatekeeping is bullshit, and accommodations should be freely available whenever it’s feasible. Restaurants, you know people exist who need straws to drink the beverages that you would like to sell them. Make sure you have some available. Doctor’s offices, you know that fat people exist. Proactively invest in chairs and tables and blood pressure cuffs that work for them. Employers, if your office building has an elevator that’s locked, consider whether that’s necessary. Unless there’s a security concern and that key is part of your access control, how about just letting people decide for themselves whether they can take the stairs that day.
We should not be in a situation where we care so much about not even actually fixing the issue of plastic in the oceans, but about performatively “doing something” and “starting a conversation” that we’re throwing out “solutions” willy-nilly without including accessibility in them from the start, and then getting pissy when people point out that it doesn’t work for them.
via Kelly Thinks Too Much https://ift.tt/34A5h6E
