Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"Thanks to the ubiquity of stairs within our architectural landscape, inaccessibility has been a constant companion of mine throughout both my personal and professional life. I have been turned away from theaters, trains, museums, restaurants, and all manner of other venues because of stairs and restrictive health and safety policies. Many buildings operate on a 'one wheelchair at a time' policy or else require wheelchairs to be left outside altogether. Consequently, my day-to-day planning often requires a full-blown reconnaissance operation.

"Such barriers are not something that someone without a mobility impairment has any cause to think about -- why would they? But this constant lack of thought becomes a very real problem when these same barriers exist in the study of disability itself.

"On a small scale, I have often had to ask a passerby to reach down books about mobility impairments from high shelves I'm unable to reach, or from narrow stacks I'm unable to squeeze my wheelchair down. In fact, on one particularly unfortunate occasion, I managed to firmly beach myself between two bookshelves after grossly miscalculating the available space. Objectively, this was really very funny. So the irony that this happened while looking for a book about mobility aids only compounded the situation. But such small ironies become a lot less funny when they reach a larger scale."

-- Annie Sharples, "Disabling Ableism in Classics", 2019-05-20