无人驾驶轮椅_我是坐在轮椅上的学者-为什么这么难？

无人驾驶轮椅

I must say this is a bit of a departure from the normal content of my blog, but I think this is something important to post, as part of Blogging Against Disablism Day 2016. (For those who are coming here from BADD16, this blog usually talks about my academic work, Python programming, computing tips and other random things.)

我必须说这与我博客的正常内容有些偏离，但是我认为这是重要的内容，它是2016年博客反对残疾人日的一部分。 （对于那些来自BADD16的人，此博客通常谈论我的学术工作 ， Python编程 ， 计算技巧和其他随机内容 。）

So, first things first: many of the regular readers of my blog may not know this, but I have recently started using a wheelchair:

因此，首先要考虑的是：我博客的许多普通读者可能不知道这一点，但是我最近开始使用轮椅：

(This was my first time out in my new electric wheelchair, hence the look of concentration on my face!)

（这是我第一次坐上新的电动轮椅，因此全神贯注在脸上！）

If you’re a regular reader of my blog and have just thought “Wow – surely he can’t be in a wheelchair, because he’s a good programmer, and a (moderately successful) academic!” then please read to the end of this blog, and ideally some of the rest of the BADD posts!

如果您是我博客的普通读者，并且刚刚想过“哇-肯定他不能坐轮椅，因为他是一个很好的程序员，而且是一个（中等程度成功的）学者！” 然后，请阅读本博客的结尾，最好阅读BADD其余的一些帖子 ！

I’m not going to go into all of the medical stuff here, but basically I can walk a bit (upto about 100-150m), but anything more than that will utterly exhaust me. This situation is not ideal, it has only happened in the last six months to a year or so, and it has taken me a while to adjust emotionally to “being disabled”, but – and this is the important thing – a wheelchair is, for me, a huge enabler. It gives me freedom, rather than restricting me.

我不会在这里介绍所有医疗内容，但是基本上我可以走一点（最多约100-150m），但是任何超出此范围的动作都将使我筋疲力尽。 这种情况并不理想，它只发生在过去六个月到一年左右的时间里，我花了一段时间调整自己的情绪才能适应“残疾”，但是-这很重要- 轮椅是，对我来说，是一个巨大的推动者。 它给了我自由，而不是限制我。

My wheelchair doesn’t restrict me doing many things by its very nature (and in fact I can do many things that non-wheelchair-users can’t do, like carry very heavy loads, hold a baby on my lap while walking, and travel 10 miles at 4mph consistently) – but the design of the environments that I need to use on a day-to-day basis do restrict what I can do, as do the structure of the systems that I have to work within, and the opinions of some people.

我的轮椅本身并没有限制我做很多事情（事实上，我可以做很多非轮椅使用者做不到的事情，例如背负很重的重物，在走路时将婴儿抱在腿上，始终以4英里/小时的速度行驶10英里）–但是我每天需要使用的环境设计确实限制了我的工作能力，我必须在其中工作的系统的结构以及有些人的意见。

I’m going to talk about things that are particularly related to my field of work: academia. I really don’t know how to organise this post, so I think I will just post a bulleted list of experiences, thoughts, observations etc. I’m trying not to ‘moan’ too much, but some of these experiences have really shocked me.

我将谈论与我的工作领域特别相关的事情：学术界。 我真的不知道如何组织这篇文章，所以我想我将发布一些经验，思想，观察等的项目符号列表。我试图不要“抱怨”太多，但是其中一些经历确实让我震惊我。

One other thing to bear in mind here is that many of these things are just because people “don’t think”, not necessarily because they are deliberately being “anti-disabled people” – but in the end, the practical issues that result affect me the same amount regardless of the reason behind them.

这里要记住的另一件事是，其中许多事情只是因为人们“不思考”，不一定是因为他们刻意是“反残疾人”，但最终，所导致的实际问题影响了人们。不管他们身后的原因如何，我都是一样的。

So, on with my random list:

因此，在我的随机列表上：

• I was told by a senior colleague to “keep my disability quiet from the potential funders”, as they probably wouldn’t give us any money if they knew I was disabled (ironically, this was when we were arranging to meet these potential funders and I was planning to turn up in a wheelchair!)
• I was informed by the university insurance office that when travelling to a conference the university insurance would cover my electric wheelchair, but I would be required to cover the excess of £1500 if there was a claim. This was because it was a “personal item” and therefore treated the same as any other expensive personal item, such as a diamond ring. I’ve now managed to sort this – and there should be a new university-wide policy coming out soon – but sorting it required pestering HR, the Equality & Diversity team, the Insurance Office and my Faculty. Surely someone had travelled with a wheelchair before?!
• I went to an Equality & Diversity event at the university with various panel discussions that didn’t touch on disability as an Equality/Diversity issue at all – the focus was entirely on gender, race and sexuality. I’m aware that there are probably more women in the university than disabled people (!), but actually if you take into account the statistics of the number of people who are disabled in some way then it must affect a large proportion of staff!
• I went to a conference in Edinburgh which was held in a venue that was described as “fully-accessible”. The conference organisers (who, I want to state, did everything as they should have: checking with the venue about accessibility before booking the conference) were told that everything would be fine for me to attend in a wheelchair, and I was told the same thing when I phoned in advance to check. Just two examples from my three day conference should give you an idea of what it was like for me:
  • It took me about ten minutes to get, in my wheelchair, from the main conference room to the disabled toilet, and this involved going through four sets of doors. One of these doors was locked (and required a code to open), and I was originally told that I’d need to find a security guard to ask to open this door every time I wanted to go to the toilet! Umm…as an adult I’d rather not have to ‘ask permission’ to go to the toilet…so luckily my wife memorised the code! There were multiple times when other doors along the route were locked too. I felt like a second-class citizen just for wanting to go to the toilet!
  • After the conference dinner one evening I was told that there was “no step-free way for me to leave the venue”. I was somewhat confused by this, as I had entered the venue without using any steps…but it turned out that the main entrance gates were locked and “they couldn’t find the key”. After disappearing for ten minutes to try and find a key, their suggested solution was to carry me down some stairs and out of another exit.
• The lifts in many university buildings are barely large enough to fit my (relatively small) wheelchair, meaning I have often got stuck half-in a lift…not a fun experience! There are other wonderful things about many university buildings and environments, including entrance ramps to buildings that are located at the bottom of a flight of stairs (why?!), disabled toilets that are only accessible through very heavy doors (almost impossible to push in a wheelchair), and the fact that the majority of the lecture theatres are not accessible for me as a lecturer!
• It is often assumed that, as someone in a wheelchair, you must be a) a student, and b) need help. I’ve been stopped by people many times on campus and asked if I need directions, or help getting somewhere – despite the fact that I’ve been working on that campus for nearly 10 years now, and I don’t look much like a student. I don’t mind people offering to help (far from it) – but it shows an in-built assumption that I can’t be a staff member, I can’t know what I’m doing, and I must be a ‘helpless person’.

• 一位资深同事告诉我，“让潜在的资助人保持我的残疾安静”，因为如果他们知道我有残障人士，他们可能不会给我们任何钱（具有讽刺意味的是，这是我们准备与这些潜在的资助人见面的时候，我正打算坐在轮椅上转身！）
• 大学保险办公室通知我，参加会议时，大学保险将为我的电动轮椅保险，但是如果有索赔，我将被要求支付1500英镑的额外费用。 这是因为它是“私人物品”，因此与其他任何昂贵的私人物品（如钻石戒指）一样对待。 我现在已经设法进行了排序-不久后应该有一项新的大学范围政策出台-但进行排序需要缠扰人力资源部，平等与多样性团队，保险办公室和我的学院。 肯定有人以前坐过轮椅吗？
• 我参加了大学的“平等与多样性”活动，并进行了各种小组讨论，这些讨论完全没有将残疾问题视为平等/多样性问题–重点完全放在性别，种族和性行为上。 我知道大学里的女性人数可能比残疾人多（！），但是实际上，如果您考虑到某种程度上的残疾人人数统计信息，那么它必定会影响很大比例的员工！
• 我参加了在爱丁堡的会议，该会议在一个被称为“完全可进入”的场所举行。 会议组织者（我想说的是，他们做了应有的一切：在预定会议之前向会场查询是否可访问性），我被告知一切适合坐轮椅的人，也被告知我事先打电话检查的事情。 在为期三天的会议中，只有两个示例可以让您大致了解我的情况：
  • 我花了大约十分钟的时间，从轮椅上从主要会议室坐到残疾人卫生间，这涉及到要经过四套门。 其中一扇门是锁着的（需要密码才能打开），最初我被告知，每次我想上厕所时，我都需要找一个保安来要求打开这扇门！ 嗯……成年后，我宁愿不必“征得许可”上厕所……所以幸运的是，我的妻子记住了密码！ 沿途其他门也多次被锁。 我只是想上厕所而感觉像是二等公民！
  • 会议晚宴结束后的一个晚上，我被告知“没有任何无障碍的方式让我离开会场”。 我对此感到有些困惑，因为我没有采取任何步骤就进入了会场……但是事实证明，正门大门被锁定了，“他们找不到钥匙”。 消失了十分钟试图找到钥匙后，他们建议的解决方案是将我带下楼梯，然后走出另一个出口。
• 许多大学建筑中的电梯几乎都无法容纳我的轮椅（相对较小），这意味着我经常被困在电梯中的一半……这不是一个有趣的经历！ 关于许多大学建筑和环境，还有其他奇妙的事情，包括位于阶梯楼梯底部的建筑物的入口坡道（为什么？！），只能通过很重的门才能进入的残疾人洗手间（几乎无法推入）轮椅），而且大多数讲堂都不适合我作为讲师！
• 通常认为，作为坐轮椅的人，您必须是a）学生，并且b）需要帮助。 尽管我已经在该校园工作了将近10年，而我看上去却并不像一个人，但我在校园里被很多人拦住了，问我是否需要指导或帮助去某个地方？学生。 我不介意提供帮助的人（远远没有提供）–但是它显示出一种内在的假设，即我不能成为工作人员，不知道自己在做什么，而我必须是“无助的人”。

That’s just a few things I can think of off the top of my head. A few more generic points that I’d like to make are:

这只是我想到的几件事。 我想提出的一些一般性观点是：

Why is it that at least 50% of the time, people who say that they will make some sort of “special arrangements” for you because of your disability do not actually do so?! I just can’t understand it! Examples include:

为什么在至少50％的时间里，有人说由于您的残疾而为您做出某种“特别安排”的人实际上却没有这样做？ 我就是听不懂！ 示例包括：

• The hotel that booked an “adapted room” for me, except that I didn’t actually get given an adapted room because “they were all in use” (surely they knew that when booking me?!). They did manage to provide a stool for the shower, and the room was large enough to get my wheelchair into – but why on earth did this happen?
• The special assistance person at Heathrow who just disappeared after giving me back my wheelchair, leaving me to try and wheel around all of the queues at passport control rather than going down the ‘medical lane’ (which I didn’t know existed)

• 这家酒店为我预订了“适应房”，但实际上我没有得到适应房，因为“它们都在使用中”（当然，他们在预订我时知道吗？！）。 他们确实为淋浴提供了凳子，而且房间足够大，足以让我的轮椅进入–但是到底为什么会发生这种情况？
• 希思罗机场的特别协助人员在把我还给我的轮椅后，消失了，让我去尝试在护照检查时在所有队列中转来转去，而不是沿着“医疗通道”走（我不知道有没有）

and why is it that the organisations that are meant to support you are so often unable or unwilling to do that?! For example:

为什么为什么要为您提供支持的组织却经常无法或不愿意这样做呢？ 例如：

• After spending four months going through the Access to Work scheme to try and get an electric wheelchair which I need for work (and which I was assessed as needing for work), I was rejected and told that I didn’t need it and wouldn’t be funded it. It’s called Access to Work and I needed my wheelchair to access work – it’s not that difficult (luckily my family offered to fund my wheelchair). I know the answer to this (it’s about government cuts), but I’m not going to go into a rant about the government here!
• The university has a lot of support for disabled students (with a whole disability service, Disabled Students Allowance, the Counselling Service and so on), but nothing like that to help staff.
• Everything just takes a huge amount longer, and none of the systems are designed to work well for people with disabilities. This ranges from travelling around the building (the lift in my building is hidden in the far corner and it takes a long time to wiggle around the corridors to get there), to booking events (most people just book a flight online: I have to have a half an hour phone call with the airline giving them pages of information on my wheelchair battery) to doing risk assessments (don’t get me started…). For someone who is working part-time anyway, this takes up a huge proportion of my time!

• 在花了四个月的时间通过“工作准入”计划尝试并获得了我需要工作（并且被评估为需要工作）的电动轮椅后，我被拒绝了，并被告知我不需要，并且不会不能得到资助。 这叫做通勤，我需要我的轮椅上班–并不是那么困难（幸运的是我的家人愿意为我的轮椅提供资金）。 我知道答案（关于政府裁员），但是我不会在这里对政府大肆抨击！
• 大学为残疾学生提供了很多支持（提供全面的残疾服务，残疾学生津贴，咨询服务等），但是没有什么可以帮助员工的。
• 一切都需要花费更长的时间，而且所有系统都不适合残疾人士使用。 范围从在建筑物周围旅行（我的建筑物的电梯隐藏在最远的角落，需要很长的时间在走廊上摆动到那里），到预订活动（大多数人只是在线预订航班：我必须与航空公司打了一个半小时的电话，告诉他们我轮椅电池上的信息页面，以进行风险评估（不要让我开始……）。 对于反正兼职的人来说，这占用了我很大一部分时间！

The combination of these examples – and many more that I can’t think of right now – is that I often feel like a second-class citizen, in academia, on campus, when travelling and so on. This isn’t right – but the silly thing is that it doesn’t take that much effort to change. Many of the examples given above could have been changed without much effort or much expenditure. Most of them are really simple: just don’t say anti-disability things, if you promise to do something then do it, add some chairs, prop the door open (or officially give me the code), don’t lie about the accessibility of your building, and so on. It’s not that hard!

这些例子的结合以及我现在想不出的许多例子，使我在学术界，校园，旅行等中经常感到自己是二流公民。 这是不对的-但可笑的是，无需花费太多精力即可进行更改。 上面给出的许多示例都可以在不花费很多精力或费用的情况下进行更改。 其中大多数真的很简单：只是不要说反残疾的事情，如果您答应做某事然后再做，添加一些椅子，撑开门（或正式给我代码），不要撒谎您建筑物的可访问性，等等。 没那么难！

翻译自: https://www.pybloggers.com/2016/05/im-an-academic-in-a-wheelchair-why-is-it-so-difficult/

无人驾驶轮椅