Tuesday 30 July 2013

The world is not designed for this . . .

Have they run out of paint?


Most days the fact that I am almost blind is at the most annoying.  But there are days when I would like to take the people who design things and give them my limited vision for a day--hey, how about a week?  Anyone can live without a sense for a day.

I can no longer drive, so when making appointments or in the mood for, say a pizza, and they don't deliver out where we live, that mood had better be around someone else's ability to take me or go get it for me.  And appointment people, while they are polite, the almost hidden sigh or annoyance on the other end of the line when I say, no it has to be late afternoon that's the only time I can get a ride, is unmistakable. It says, you dumb fuck, why don't you have a car, or why don't you have a license, or why did you never learn to drive all rolled into one.  

Then there are the stores, starting outside.  Blind does not always mean the staring off into middle space, sunglass wearing, my world is dark sort of thing. In my case, I don't have any peripheral vision and no depth perception at all.  Maybe the creators of the Flat Earth Society saw the way I do.  I have other issues, but this lack of perception makes life a bit hard sometimes.  I step over things that are only lines and trip up curbs that are not painted, or fall over them.  I've learned how to navigate with a cane, but on those times when I don't have one, a painted curb is great!  I'd rather step over a line than  trip.

So why would you as a painter, stop that line at the front door?  Not just at the ramp that goes up to the door, but stop it with a foot of curb at each side of the ramp? Yes, you guessed it, I tripped over that curb, managed to keep my balance, well, sort of, after doing a windmill dance, and my foot landed on that curb. So, today, my foot is killing me.  I think I may have broken a bone in it.

I'm not asking for a visor, you know, Star Trek style, but is a painted curb too much to ask for?

3 comments:

Marci Baun said...

I have often wondered why they design things the way they do. It's obviously by someone who doesn't really need it or use it or has no foresight. We have curb ramps from sidewalk to street that, rather than built to let you down into the crosswalk, the point you out into the center of the intersection as if you were going to walk diagonally across it. o.O Yeah. Safe. o.O

Unknown said...

Oh, I hate those, they even confuse the dog who wants to take me in the cross walk. And the beeping things, they don't match traffic here at all, when cars are in the turn lane, it is beeping away with it's yes, it's safe to cross sound!

Jaime Samms said...

OMG, do not even get me started on the "accessible" park they built across the street. Sure. It has a ramp for easy access for, um, wheelchairs, I guess. ??? Because yes, I'm sure someone plans to take their chair down the slide...and in any case, the ramp starts four inches off the grown at the lowest point, and starts about ten feet beyond the concrete, and you have to walk that ten feet through about a foot deep of shifting wood mulch. So even if it was not for chairs, but for, say, someone who couldn't see well enough to manipulate the stairs, it's still a hazard because the wood mulch, concrete and ramp are all the same pale grey colour. Idiots.