The majority of people take for granted that we can travel anywhere we want to go using airplanes and transit systems. However, for some people this is not always the case as transit and air travel are both very difficult for individuals who either lack abilities most also take for granted, like climbing stairs or fitting through narrow aisles, or individuals whose sheer size is far greater than average. In the former case, picture a disabled individual attempting to ride a subway. Subways require the use of stairs to descend below ground level and ascend back to street level. For those without the ability to climb stairs such as those with wheel chairs, elevators are the most common solution in place except for the fact that they frequently do not work.

Flying gets further worse as these people must now squeeze through aisles through which their assistive devices won’t fit. If these devices break in the cargo hold, the plight only gets worse. This all assumes that disabled people manage to get by the TSA, remember them? I wrote previously that the TSA love to treat passengers as suspects. In fact, this is so true that even disabled people must pass through the body scanner that has been set for their gender. This will clearly be impossible in many cases, leading to an invasive and embarrassing pat down. With all this going on, people rightly call for better accommodations and legislation to enforce such standards. For public services like transit, this is important as public transit represents a promise by a local authority to provide efficient transport to its people. Broken elevators mean that cities fail people who rely on them for traveling to work. The elevators need to be fixed. For businesses, practical concerns abound as changing the architecture might ruin a fundamental attraction to customers, but a reasonable method of accommodation those with disabilities needs to be found. When businesses are not accessible they alienate a large portion of their market and deprive a group of people of important services. This needs to change, but ideally this should occur on the terms of business owners to ensure that the product offered is not detrimentally affected.

For air travel, practical concerns also come into play as the plane must be a specific shape to stay airborne. Seats cannot be made too large for profit, but safety is also affected by the accommodations offered by airlines. In my previous post, I only half-jokingly wrote that seat sizes would make you wish you were 5’ 4”, but I forgot to mention they would make you wish you were underweight as well. As Roxanne Gay stated in the interview, she frequently purchases two plane tickets in order to fit. As seats and aisles both shrink, all people, but especially those who are above average size or below average mobility or both, will have trouble evacuating in emergency landing situations. In extreme cases, these individuals will be closed off from the service. That cannot be allowed to happen. In this case I think the airlines are pushing an unethical design.