While discussing the topic of access, or the lack thereof, in modern society, people often seem to carefully tiptoe around the real issues to reduce the risk of offending someone. The climate of political correctness that surrounds societal factors that divide specific populations of people, such as physical/mental disabilities, weight discrimination, and poverty, consistently restrict the development of solutions. Therefore, I am going to very blatantly refer to the truths of these topics for the sake of developing a meaningful argument.

As mentioned in the “Ableist Architecture” article, nearly 20 percent of the global population identify as disabled. For these people, access means that there are several resources, including housing, transportation, services, etc. available to them without being further marginalized. I have seen first hand the difficulties that disabled people face since I was a young kid but only recently did I really begin to understand the reality behind the lack of accessibility for those with physical disabilities. My mother has been dealing with physical disabilities since the late 1990’s. As a result, she has back surgeries and has had her hip replaced as well as both of her knees. Watching her having to deal with all the pain, discomfort, and inconveniences that come with her disabilities has been awful but has also enabled me to understand the difficulties that others must be facing and empathize with them as well.

Overweight individuals face similar aspects of inequity and also require comparable levels of access in society. As cited by Roxane Gay, most methods of public transportation are very rarely designed to fully accommodate people that exceed average body sizes. Additionally, obese people also face unsolicited and impolite comments and attitudes from individuals in society that are discriminating against these groups of people simply because of their weight. Ultimately, overweight people are still people, and deserve the opportunity to be accomodated in our society and need to live their lives without the worry of not “fitting” into the world.

Solutions have been developed more for disabled people than overweight people, and often, overweight people are forced to use the accommodations created for disabled people. These solutions include ramps leading to buildings, handicap parking spaces, elevators, handicap seating, and much more. I believe that there is no limit to how far we should go to accommodate these groups of people because their standard of living should be valued just as highly as any other human. We live in a world where we have all the resources to achieve this goal, but most lack the willingness and the resolve. It needs to be done, someway, somehow, and I just hope that one day this dream that so many people fight for, will come true.