March 15, 2010
Guest blogger Isabel Hodge is a family support program manager for the Pentagon’s office of military community and family policy as well as a 21-year military spouse. Her husband, Marine Corps Chief Warrant Officer 5 Bruce Hodge, recently returned from a yearlong deployment in Iraq.
I asked Isabel to contribute to Family Matters occasionally and share her experiences as a military spouse and mother of three, including a special-needs teenager. In today’s entry, Isabel writes about the importance of accessibility for families with special-needs members and encourages leaders to evaluate the accessibility on their bases.
By Isabel Hodge
I recently received a request from a parent of a school-aged child with special needs. She asked me to write specifically about accessibility issues because, sadly, her son encounters daily challenges that impact his quality of life. When I read her message, I thought back to the multiple times my friends who also have children with special needs have vented about this same issue.
I remember on one occasion, a friend called me from the school parking lot. She was furious. Another parent had parked in the handicapped parking spot at the school and didn’t have a handicapped placard displayed or license plate. This wasn’t the first offense — this parent was a repeat offender and this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. My friend pulled her van behind the car, parked it and called the military police. She had already expressed her concern to school officials and they never took action.
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If you are not physically disabled yourself or don’t know someone who is disabled, then you may be thinking my friend’s actions were extreme.
I’m not sure I would have parked behind the other parent’s car, but I certainly would have called the military police. That’s because it is illegal to park in a space reserved for disabled individuals without displaying your disabled placard or plates. A conviction for this offense results in fines from $100 to $500 in most states.
Let’s put the legality aside for a minute and think about how the mother and child may be impacted by these situations. At that particular school, available parking was scarce when it was time to pick up or drop off children. Parents of nondisabled children were parking in the grassy areas where the surface was uneven and filled with protruding tree roots. It would have been very challenging for my friend to park, lower her ramp and maneuver her child in his wheelchair through the grass, across the road and over to the ramp and into the school. For her and the child, this was both a quality-of-life and safety issue.
Another friend approached me because there was no designated handicapped parking space in front of their on base accessible housing. Another problem was that the curb ramp was all the way at the end of the street instead of in front of the house. She also voiced her concern about the bathrooms because, although the house was accessible, an accessible shower stall that could accommodate a bath or shower chair wasn’t included. Her son had a manual lift, but it wouldn’t fit in the bathroom. That meant that she had to pick her teenage son up and place him in the tub. Life was particularly difficult for my friend when her husband deployed because he wasn’t around to help lift their son. Who would have cared for her child if she had injured her back from lifting him?
Even simple things, such as installing a power-assisted door, can make a world of difference to a child or an adult who cannot exert the three pounds of force needed to open a door when they are pushing or pulling from a stationary position. Again, this is a quality-of-life issue that many of our military family members with disabilities experience.
A few years ago, I asked a parent to provide me with a list of all the things she has to take with her when leaving the house with her special-needs teenage daughter. To put it in military terms, this military Mom was easily humping a 15-pound load with her every time she left the house! Visualize for a moment this mother juggling this load while pushing her teenage daughter in her wheelchair and navigating and maneuvering her chair through rough terrain.
Lately, I’ve also been giving a lot of thought to our installation movie theaters. Our blind, deaf or hearing-impaired wounded servicemembers or family members do not have full access to base movies. Access into a movie goes beyond ramps and accessible bathroom stalls. There is captioning and descriptive (narration) technology that exists today that is affordable and will make going to a movie an enjoyable experience for all.
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I ask, simply, that you think about the stories I’ve just shared because these are about our wounded warriors and our families. If you are a commanding officer or manage base housing or another program or facility, think about our wounded and military families with special needs, and evaluate whether you truly have an accessible program.
Can patrons fully access your building? How would you accommodate a teenager who dreams of attending the base youth program with his peers but requires diaper changing? Are the written and oral communication needs of your patrons being met?
This is why I encourage you to think, and take action to make a difference that will, without a doubt, improve the quality of life of all of our servicemembers and their families.
Here are some useful resources:
Fair Housing Accessibility Guidelines
The Uniform Federal Accessibility StandardsÂ
Architectural Barriers Act of 1968
Americans with Disabilities Act Accessibility Guidelines for Buildings and Facilities
Department of Defense Directive 1020.1, “Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Handicap in Programs and Activities Assisted or Conducted by the Department of Defense”, March 31, 1982