A wheelchair stays with the person who uses it, as an 80 year old woman at a mall food court insisted. Stock image, not the actual photo
A mall food court became the setting for a plain fact: a wheelchair is not a spare seat. When a child grew tired, a stranger demanded the wheelchair of an older woman, who answered that it was her chair for moving about. For her, a mobility aid is how she gets out and sees her family, and giving it up would take that away.
The woman at the center of the story is 80. Months ago, and through no fault of her own, an accident broke both her prosthetic leg and her real leg, and she can no longer walk on her own. She spent decades insisting on living independently in her own home, and she arranged round the clock nursing there rather than move to a care home. Age and amputation together make walking harder, which is why only she can say what the chair does for her.
Without her prosthetic leg on and under a long skirt, her missing leg went unseen, so her disability was doubted on sight. She was told she could walk and accused of faking, the kind of guesswork about ability that People with Disabilities face. In reply, she lifted her skirt, showed the missing leg, and kept her chair.
Tiredness is real, yet it never turns another person's wheelchair into a free seat. Her story is about age as well as disability. Treating older people as less capable and less worthy of respect is what the World Health Organization calls ageism, and brushing aside an 80 year old woman's word about her own chair is exactly that. Our work starts from a different place: barriers appear when inclusion was never planned in, and the person who uses a mobility aid is the one to ask about it. Instead of being believed, she had to defend her chair out loud. We plan the programs, services, and communications where that moment can be prevented before it starts.
In what we plan and run, a wheelchair is its owner's personal space, so we ask before offering a hand and never touch a mobility aid without permission. A tired child is never a reason to ask for someone's wheelchair, and when its owner says it is in use, we take their word. Leaving a wheelchair with its owner is our part in Vibrant, Diverse, Inclusive, Accessible Communities for People with Disabilities.
So a tired child finds a seat of their own, and the wheelchair stays with its owner.
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