It is so true that one does not realize a lot of what is happening around you until it actually affects you.
My father recently suffered from a stroke due to which he had to move around only in a wheel chair for a couple of days. Being a person who has been very active all his life I tried to ensure that we take him out as often as possible. It was during these outings that it struck me like a BOLT OF LIGHTNING out of the blue ... ! "Pune, the IT hub of India, a cultural super city and a university city is so wheel chair unfriendly. Pune does not care for wheel chair bound citizens."
Most malls, restaurants, shops, cinemas, commercial & residential establishments do not cater for a person in a wheel chair. Most entrances have stairs without ramps, elevators locations & sizes not catered for a person in a wheel chair. Passages, doors, corridors, product displays & billing stations designed in such a manner a wheel chair would not even fit. The toilets and rest rooms would be a nightmare and at times totally inaccessible for a disabled person. Of course parking for a normally abled person is disastrous so who would care for the disabled.
I happened to mention this to a person who has been in a wheel chair for the last 16 years and he told me that it was even worse earlier!!. He continued to say that we do have the laws and building codes in place to ensure that disabled citizens are catered for but these are not adhered to in majority of cases and no one seems to mind. He told me that if one went abroad especially to the USA, the disabled are catered for FIRST and you would not feel the inconveniences of being in a wheel chair.
Pity, it took my father getting a stroke to make me realize just another one of those crucial human issues involving compassion and care we have chosen not to care about ... shame on us as a people.
