On the door of a women's room in the basement of a Denver building...

Aw, man, I really gotta go, here's a--

Are you kidding me?  I'm in the basement and I gotta make a deposit at the First Bank of Vitreous China, and here's the sign I'm given?!  [flips up middle finger] Here's my sign for you and your toilet room apartheid.  


I've been in this toilet room, and I think I know why they haven't retrofitted it.  Making a stall inside the toilet room itself wouldn't be that hard, but there's a rather circuitous path from this door to the door of the actual toilet room.  I suppose they could put automatic openers on the doors--this one and the toilet room door--but those are generally $1,000 each and require running power, etc. to the doors and possibly changing doors and door frames.  Again, we're running into the equivalent-experience thing here.


Still, though, if I had to pee and I was in a wheelchair, and I saw this sign, I'd be mighty, um, pissed.

Monday Visual Inspiration: How to know if your toilet isn't ADA accessible

Step 1: is there at least 42" clear outside your stall door? No?

Step 2: Well, are there any grab bars inside your stall, and the stall is 60" wide by 56" deep?  Not so much?

Step 3: Exit the stall.  Are you sure there isn't a path that's at least 42" wide outside your stall?  Really?

Step 4: Can you turn on the water at the sink with the equivalent of a closed fist?

At least one of the sinks, anyway?

Step 5: Is the top of the sink surface at no more than 34" off the floor, and there's clear space under the sink, and the sink apron is no more than about 6" deep, and the pipes are protected from you hitting it with your knees in a wheelchair?

Hmm, then maybe you really do need to go to the toilet room marked "accessible" in this shopping center.  This toilet room definitely doesn't meet your needs.


I see separate accessible toilet rooms in a lot of retrofitted buildings, and while I appreciate the effort, it still creeps me out that if I have even the slightest disability, I have to go to a separate room.  ADA requires that persons with disabilities have an "equivalent experience" in places like zoos, aquariums, movie theaters, and even office buildings.  They can't not be able to use the space, but they have to be able to experience all the functions and educational content, entertainment experience, etc. from whatever limited spaces they can occupy.


But what that often means in retrofitted buildings is that people in wheelchairs get a entrance on the icky-shady side of the building, or even in back.  They get a weird separate toilet room that's not always near the other toilet rooms.  They still get to enter and operate the building, and they still get to go pee, but it's not quite the same.  Like sitting in a chair isn't enough difference already, they have to go to a different entry or floor or part of the building to get their most basic needs met.  It's almost like...separate but equal.

Monday Visual Inspiration: Attack of the modern unisex public bathroom

Public bathrooms fascinate me for many reasons.  They are places that seem so detail-oriented yet so half-assed--elegant hands-free fixtures and Ann Sacks tile in a room that more often that not doesn't actually meet the ADA clearance requirements.  It's a room in which we are most human and most private, yet the guy that has to come in after us knows just exactly what we've been up to.  I could do countless posts on bathrooms, but I'll start with just one, showing lovely pictures of an almost-acceptable toilet room in Cherry Creek.

The toilet is beautiful, and the flushing mechanism is simple (the stainless steel panel above it), but I'm not sure how as a person in a wheelchair I'm supposed to reach it with the toilet in the way.  How am I supposed to get on the can in the first place with only a side grab bar, and not a back grab bar as well?

Let's look at that sink a little better.

 Wow, that's a true hands-free faucet, and there are little smooth stones in the sink basin.  Squee!  WANT!

 This door is crazy cool.  The glass panels are frosted, so you can neither see in or out, but it lets light in for a less claustrophobic potty-going experience.

The lighting in this room is really nice and flattering to anyone using the can or the mirror, but that grey square on the left is an exhaust vent absolutely caked with lint.  Can someone bring a Swiffer cloth in here once a month, please?