Dan Roberts (?) got polio as an adolescent. It left him mostly paralyzed, needing an iron lung to breathe. Though he did learn to “frog breathe” so he could escape his wheelchair for a bit at a time. (Maybe he wasn’t as paralyzed as I remember them saying?)
When he wanted to go to UC Berkeley, at first they said no, he was too disabled, his wheelchair wouldn’t even fit through a dorm room door. Then someone suggested he live in what used to be a hospital wing, and the college agreed. They hired an attendant to wheel him to and from classes and he’d give carbon paper to a classmate to get a copy of her notes.
Over time more disabled students came and they formed a group, possibly called the Quad Wheelers? And at some point someone invented the power wheelchair, originally for the benefit of disabled veterans but other wheelchair riders started to get them too. It gave them a lot more freedom. Dan got one and learned to use it partly because he was dating someone and it sucked to have his attendant accompany them.
(The show has a narrative around “things designed for one group of people turned out to help others”, but I’m not convinced the power wheelchair was specifically designed for vets and it just so happened that others could use it. I would guess it was more like, there were enough disabled vets, or they were prominent and sympathetic enough, to attract attention?)
But with or without a power wheelchair, curbs are impassable. So, curb cuts. There were stories of the Quad Wheelers going out at night with sledgehammers and making their own cuts, but someone says that only happened a few times. What they did do was attend a city council meeting, there was a motion to make a bunch of curb cuts, it passed unanimously.
Then later there was the ADA. Wheelchair riders couldn’t get up the steps of the capitol, so several of them got out and crawled, when they wanted to be there en masse. And the ADA passed, and it’s good but doesn’t do everything advocates want.
At some point Dan Roberts died, and his attendant took his wheelchair to the Smithsonian. It’s now on display on their website.
At some point there’s a mention of earlier curb cuts in a specific town, to help a disabled vet there. I don’t remember many specifics. The curbs were unusually high for flood reasons, no mention of whether the curb cuts caused problems there.
The “curb cut effect” is that curb cuts helped others too, e.g. bicyclists and people with strollers, and this sort of thing is generalizable. Like the button you can press to open a door with your hip if you’re carrying something, that was originally for disabled people.
99% Invisible #308 (Rerun 28 Apr 2021): Curb Cuts
Rerun of a 2018 episode.
Dan Roberts (?) got polio as an adolescent. It left him mostly paralyzed, needing an iron lung to breathe. Though he did learn to “frog breathe” so he could escape his wheelchair for a bit at a time. (Maybe he wasn’t as paralyzed as I remember them saying?)
When he wanted to go to UC Berkeley, at first they said no, he was too disabled, his wheelchair wouldn’t even fit through a dorm room door. Then someone suggested he live in what used to be a hospital wing, and the college agreed. They hired an attendant to wheel him to and from classes and he’d give carbon paper to a classmate to get a copy of her notes.
Over time more disabled students came and they formed a group, possibly called the Quad Wheelers? And at some point someone invented the power wheelchair, originally for the benefit of disabled veterans but other wheelchair riders started to get them too. It gave them a lot more freedom. Dan got one and learned to use it partly because he was dating someone and it sucked to have his attendant accompany them.
(The show has a narrative around “things designed for one group of people turned out to help others”, but I’m not convinced the power wheelchair was specifically designed for vets and it just so happened that others could use it. I would guess it was more like, there were enough disabled vets, or they were prominent and sympathetic enough, to attract attention?)
But with or without a power wheelchair, curbs are impassable. So, curb cuts. There were stories of the Quad Wheelers going out at night with sledgehammers and making their own cuts, but someone says that only happened a few times. What they did do was attend a city council meeting, there was a motion to make a bunch of curb cuts, it passed unanimously.
Then later there was the ADA. Wheelchair riders couldn’t get up the steps of the capitol, so several of them got out and crawled, when they wanted to be there en masse. And the ADA passed, and it’s good but doesn’t do everything advocates want.
At some point Dan Roberts died, and his attendant took his wheelchair to the Smithsonian. It’s now on display on their website.
At some point there’s a mention of earlier curb cuts in a specific town, to help a disabled vet there. I don’t remember many specifics. The curbs were unusually high for flood reasons, no mention of whether the curb cuts caused problems there.
The “curb cut effect” is that curb cuts helped others too, e.g. bicyclists and people with strollers, and this sort of thing is generalizable. Like the button you can press to open a door with your hip if you’re carrying something, that was originally for disabled people.