The Beginning

First off, a disclaimer; to anyone reading this thank you and I hope that no one is offended by what I plan to do here or the things that I might say. Please feel free to correct me if I say something that is not "politically correct" or which might be offensive. I am conducting this research in order to better understand something which I really do not understand now—at the beginning—and I hope the experiments I might do in the next month are understood as a mechanism to gain knowledge; not a joke or something I take lightly or without regard for other people's feelings.

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In order to fully empathize with a paraplegic person, I will conduct an experiment on myself by actually spending a week in a wheelchair. I will try to capture my perspective by hiding a video camera on my chair and I would also like to demonstrate some basic actions like using a public restroom, which fully-able-bodied people probably take for granted. I would also like to supplement my first hand experience by interviewing people who live with wheelchairs.

In my initial thoughts about this experiment I realized that my apartment is completely inaccessible. I live on a second floor, with a split bathroom wherein the toilet is inside a tiny room with no space on either side. If I were to suddenly lose the use of my legs, I would also have to move to a new apartment.

I would like to take my chair on a bus ride on MUNI from my apartment to San Francisco’s downtown shopping district and see what it’s like to go shopping in Macy’s and use the public restroom there. I think the experience of using MUNI will be quite humbling because you have to make the bus driver stop, lower the bus and clear the way for you to sit in a disabled space and it pisses off the other people on the bus who have to wait. There is no one to teach you how to navigate this situation, and every bus and bus driver is quite a different problem to work around.

I anticipate that being disabled will require me to expect to spend a much longer time traveling from place to place, and what I can physically accomplish in a day will be quite limited. My arms are strong, but not nearly as strong as my legs and I may find that I am completely out of energy from just going to class. Having to do laundry, cook for myself, shop for groceries and take out the garbage might all become hugely different burdens than they are now.