Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Accessible? I doubt it.

So I had an appointment yesterday, the first time at this particular doctor.

Everybody knows the list of questions you have to ask when you make an appointment with someone new: Does the doctor take my insurance? Is there anything specific I need to bring for the appointment? If you're having tests, is there anything you should/shouldn't eat beforehand? In addition, I always ask, because I have to, "Is the office accessible?"

"Oh, yeah. We're accessible."

This particular appointment was for an eye exam, something I am about 4 1/2 years late in getting around to. (When you're going to doctor's appointments every other day, it's hard to get a non-emergency appointment to fit in, not to mention the fact that the insurance wouldn't pay for it until this summer.) And I really, really need new glasses. So, I asked when I made the appointment; again when I called back for directions to the office; and one final time when the receptionist called on Friday to confirm my appointment.

"Oh, yeah. We're accessible."

Let me just say that having a ramp does not make your office accessible. Having a ramp is nice, but if the doorway it leads up to is too narrow for a wheelchair to fit through, it means squat. If, once I manage to crawl through your doorway while someone else pushes the folded up chair, I still can't get into an actual exam room, then your office is not accessible. If I have to sit next to the trash while you "clear out a little space" in the HALLWAY for us to condut our exam, you are not accessible. If you have to skip over the "not so important" parts of the exam because someone is trying to get by and you want to "move things along," then your office is not accessible.
Ditto if the woman who fits the glasses has to try and drag her display case in piece by piece (while being totally impatient, as if it were my fault that she had to do so) because I can't get in there either.

That's pretty damn INaccessible, if you ask me.

And, what I should've done was storm off in a huff.

But I couldn't do that, because my mum had already left, and there's isn't so much of a huff if you're stuck in their backhallway until someone can come back to get you.

GRRR!

2 comments:

Maya's Granny said...

How outrageous! I so hope that you explained to them that they are not accessible and need to simply admit it.

And, I have the feeling that this sort of thing happens to you all the time. I know it happens to friends of mine, and it is just inexcusable.

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