131–140 of 219 posts
> You can't make investors have a hard on for a ramp that doesn't connect to the cloud. Someone more inclined toward fraud than me should figure out how to make a cloud connected ramp as a way to get VCs to fund more ramps.
> I don’t need a stair-climbing wheelchair that costs $30,000 and requires a maintenance crew. I need better doorknobs and/or a ramp. But a ramp is boring. You can't make investors have a hard on for a ramp that doesn't connect to the cloud. You can’t give a TED Talk about a ramp. You can’t get venture capital funding for a slightly wider doorframe.
It's a really cynical way to attack people who are at least sort of trying to help. And obviously the inventions of "a ramp" and "slightly wider door" already exist; those aren't a matter of invention, they're a matter of regulations and enforcement.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You replied "Letting perfect be the enemy of good" several times in the comments here. I think the sentence works against the arguments you're making: Perfect is the promise of a climb-everywhere-wheelchair. It's hypothetical, dreamed up, and causing people to forego the immediate and good solution (ramps).
You are also making the assumption that the hypothetical climb-everywhere-wheelchair is better than a ramp. The ramp is easier to make safe, and so we need to ask about safety if it works most of the time. This also gets into maintenance, the robot with moving parts is expected to have more parts to break. The ramp's batteries will never go dead (or if they do it doesn't matter since they are only for lights anyway?)…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But don't you see how the fact that many cases are individual makes it harder? You mention doorknobs, and it's easy to declare (which is why the US government has declared) that lever style door handles are more accessible and should be preferred. It's hard, impossibly so, to construct a world where nobody with wrist mobility problems will ever encounter a round doorknob they'd like to open.
It seems like the implication here is “if we can’t do anything, we shouldn’t do anything at all” under the social model. Not every doorknob will be disability friendly. If pressure from the social model fixes 20% of doorknobs, now there is a group of people can open 20% of doors where they could open 0% before.
Medi cal, medicare, and private insurance have all chipped in for my ramps, but none of them will touch something like an iBot chair with a 50 ft pole because it has ambiguous insurance coding associated to it rather than being a normal wheelchair.
So.. In other words, what's the problem? People are buying the high tech gimmicks either out of pocket or through equally spotty VA coverage.
The US has systems in place to aid the purchase of ramps for those in need and offers ample opportunity to sue businesses into bankruptcy for getting any ADA stuff wrong.. what's the demand exactly? It seems like "engineers shouldn't be so creative" to me, but the reality is that they should work on stuff they're interested in rather than some abstract civic duty, assigned unpassionate work is how you build crap.
-guy in a wheelchair
> I don’t need a stair-climbing wheelchair that costs $30,000 and requires a maintenance crew. I need better doorknobs and/or a ramp. But a ramp is boring. You can't make investors have a hard on for a ramp that doesn't connect to the cloud. You can’t give a TED Talk about a ramp. You can’t get venture capital funding for a slightly wider doorframe.
I don't see why it's either/or. There are a lot more legacy doors and stairs especially around the world, than there are people who could be helped with a climbing wheelchair or exoskeleton frame. And there's some infrastructure that might not be possible to upgrade, for historical preservation reasons. Maybe the tech will always be too bulky, but it could also be rented out on location when traveling.
Exoskeletons and climbing wheelchairs can help the people who need them on a regular basis. But when you hurt yourself so climbing stairs is an ordeal and need temporary accommodations, universal accessible design means those accommodations are already there, whereas there's probably not going to be climbing wheelchairs and exoskeletons easily available.
Doing both things is the way forward. It takes time for the built environment to change, but it's been about 35 years since the ADA passed and it's getting harder to find public buildings (in the US) without the basics like ramps, accessible doors, and accessible restrooms. This mostly happened without a lot of fanfare, but by enforcement over time; most jurisdictions will check for accessibility during the permit processes for building and occupancy permits; if not, the ADA provides a private right of enforcement.
There's no jurisdictions providing permitting for the digital world (except maybe app stores?); there's some ability to do private ADA enforcement, but it's not as established as for physical accessibility. There's also federal standards for municipal websites that are going to be in effect real soon now.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I did check for metaphor before commenting. It'd be odd to describe the chair in question as a "Transformer having a panic attack" if you didn't actually see it. If it was noisy, I might have described it as sounding like a blender choking on concrete, for example. I have no response for point #1, but it doesn't make my other observation go away.
https://sightlessscribbles.com/about/ > Kingett has Cerebral Palsy, CP, in addition to his blindness. He’s had both ever since he was a baby. He has Retinopathy of prematurity, commonly referred to as ROP. Even though he is ambulatory, his cerebral palsy makes it difficult to walk long distances or to stand for lengthy periods of time, which is probably why writing fell right into his lap! So it sounds* like he uses…
While I can understand the frustration and the author makes some good points, a lot of the anger feels oddly misplaced. Yes, engineer types want to solve problems with inventions rather than overhauling the entire nation's infrastructure. Maybe, just maybe, that's because inventing something is actually within their grasp, whereas wholesale replacing every civil engineer and architect in the country isn't? Or replaci…
I think their anger is justified. Yes there's not a lot that individual engineers can do to help, but a big part of the problem is that they don't even understand the people they're "helping". These tech gadgets are the annoying experience we've all had of someone taking a look at a problem from the outside and proposing unhelpful "solutions" that won't work because they don't fully understand it. It reminds me of co…
One company I was at wouldn't even keep basic first aid supplies stocked. Facilities succesfully made a big push to get a bunch of people CPR/AED training, especially because it was free. I then made the obvious point that we had no AEDs and should get some. Absolute crickets.
Weird, AEDs are cheap enough. Most companies I know have them now. They need to be checked to ensure they still work (that is the battery isn't dead)
Incredible.