"Eileen Schoch traveled to her mother's funeral in Asheville, N.C. and found the hotel room the one she'd called about in advance wasn't accessible as promised. Schoch, who uses a wheelchair after two strokes, couldn't use the room's toilet without assistance from her husband or daughter. The grab bars were in the wrong place. She couldn't get into the shower because it had a door too narrow for her wheelchair. She got sponge baths for three days."
"Nor could she reach the tall bed from her wheelchair. The hotel gave her an uncomfortable cot, instead. "You feel that you're treated as a second-class citizen. And you don't count," says Schoch, a retired educator from Schenectady, N.Y.. "And it's not a nice feeling." Schoch said she considered switching hotels, but she wanted to be close to other family members."
"Despite 35 years of federal law requiring hotels to be made accessible for guests who use wheelchairs, those travelers tell NPR that hotels still fail to fully comply with basic and often easily achieved requirements for accessibility. NPR interviewed 50 wheelchair users. And more than 200 people who use wheelchairs, scooters and other mobility devices, or their family members and caregivers, responded to an NPR survey."
Hotels frequently fail to meet basic accessibility requirements despite decades of federal law, leaving wheelchair users unable to use toilets, showers, or beds independently. Common problems include incorrectly placed grab bars, shower doors too narrow for wheelchairs, inaccessible tall beds, and hotels providing unsuitable cots. Wheelchair users often require assistance from family or caregivers and report feelings of exclusion and humiliation. Surveys and firsthand accounts from wheelchair users and caregivers reveal widespread noncompliance with accessible design, producing anticipation and dread when arriving at rooms and discouraging travel for work, family visits, leisure, and health care.
Read at www.npr.org
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