Blind Mama Dragon

With AlysonHannigan – I just got recognized as one of their top fans! 🎉

A step forward 

“The Myrtle Beach City Council has approved a plan to make the beach more accessible for people with mobility challenges.

The ordinance amends the city's budget to allow hospitality tax funds for purchasing four automated beach wheelchair rental lockers.”

Sorry it’s been a rough week for me but I’m not giving up, I’m just trying to keep myself from drowning right now.

It is National Accessibility Week!

Accessibility asks:
“Is the feature there?”

Usability asks:
“Is the feature installed in a way that actually works for the people who need it?”

Why accessibility is not always usability.

Have you ever noticed the rows of raised bumps at intersections, bus or train stations?

Those are called truncated domes.

For those of us who are blind or have low vision, they provide an important tactile warning that we are approaching a street crossing, curb edge, platform edge, or other potential hazard.

The bumps can be detected with a white cane and underfoot, helping us recognize that we are leaving the sidewalk and entering a roadway.

That is accessibility.

Usability is making sure they are installed correctly.

At some intersections, especially wider corners, the truncated domes are positioned at an angle that points people toward the middle of the intersection rather than directly across the street.

The warning surface is present, so technically the accessibility feature exists.

The challenge is that it may not provide clear directional information for the person using it.

When placement, size, colour contrast, spacing, and consistency vary from one intersection to another, it can create confusion instead of confidence.

Accessibility means the feature is there.

Usability means the feature works the way people expect it to work.

The goal should never be to simply check a box.

The goal should be creating environments that people can navigate safely, independently, and with confidence.

This is why lived experience matters.

People who use accessibility features every day can often identify the difference between something that is technically accessible and something that is truly usable.

Accessible is a word.

Usable is an experience.

“Having a disability does not change who we are, it changes our interactions with the world.,”- Gina Martin

If you were wanting to increase the useability of the space in your business , I can help.
Our aDAPT Accessibility and Usability workshop or our aDAPT Workplace Inclusion workshop can help shift your space to be more welcoming.

DiverseAbilities.ca



Image description
Text reads placement in colour matter.
Access accessible isn’t always usable. Truncated domes provide an important tactile warning for people who are blind or have low vision. They help identify the edge of a curb, stairs, platform, and other potential hazards. Placement makes all the difference.
Three images of a crosswalk, stairs, and a railway platform show the yellow trunk domes. These are incorrect placement. The second image is an example of. unsafe placement. 

The employee reached for a $1.69 bottle of orange juice during their shift at Dollar General.

They had diabetes. Their blood sugar had dropped. They needed it.

Dollar General fired them for it.

The reason given was "grazing," a term in the company's employee handbook for consuming merchandise without first completing a purchase. The policy was clear in the company's telling: no food or drinks consumed at the register, no exceptions stated, no carve-outs written in for medical need.

People with diabetes can experience hypoglycemic episodes with very little warning. The symptoms escalate quickly: dizziness, confusion, shakiness. In serious cases, loss of consciousness. Managing the episode means getting fast-acting sugar into the bloodstream without delay.

Orange juice works. It is cheap, effective, and readily available. A $1.69 bottle was right there.

The employee took it, intending to pay. Then came the termination.

Dollar General's position was consistent with the letter of its own rules. Grazing was a fireable offense. The act had been documented. The policy had been violated.

What the policy did not account for was the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The ADA, signed into law in 1990, prohibits employers from discriminating against qualified individuals on the basis of disability. It also requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to disabled employees, unless doing so creates an undue hardship on the business.

Accommodating a diabetic employee's need to treat a hypoglycemic episode with a small beverage is, by almost any legal reading, a reasonable accommodation.

A $1.69 juice is not an undue hardship.

The employee took the case to court.

These cases are rarely simple. They require documentation of the disability, evidence that the employer knew about the condition, and a showing that the accommodation was reasonable and the denial unjustified. Dollar General, like most large employers, had legal resources that a terminated hourly worker could not easily match.

The evidence held anyway.

The jury found in favor of the employee.

The award came to $277,565 in damages, covering lost wages, compensatory damages, and the jury's judgment of what had been wrongfully taken.

Cases like this one sit at a particular intersection: the gap between what a written policy says and what federal disability law actually requires.

Zero-tolerance rules are a management tool. They reduce variability, remove judgment calls from individual supervisors, and create predictable outcomes across large workforces. For a company with locations across thousands of communities, that consistency has genuine value.

But consistency applied without regard to disability status is not a legal defense under the ADA. The law requires accommodation. Accommodation means exceptions. A policy that cannot make room for a diabetic employee reaching for a bottle of juice during a medical episode is a policy being applied in violation of federal law.

The dollar amount matters less than what it represents.

An employee with a documented medical condition, managing it in the least disruptive way available to them, should not need a jury verdict to keep their job.

They got the verdict anyway.

$277,565.

For a $1.69 juice.

Image: "Jacksonville Dollar General 2020" by allen @ Mapillary.com · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons