Disability Awareness Paper

The disability simulation that I choose to do was to rent a wheelchair from the mall and spend an hour navigating around the mall in the wheelchair. The reason that I choose this simulation is because I thought it would be a great idea for me to experience what obstacles the people who are in wheelchairs have to endure on a daily basis in simple day-to-day activities. There are many things that people without disabilities, more specifically in this simulation people not in wheelchairs, do every single day without even thinking that people who are in wheelchairs have to make modifications or work harder to do the same thing. I felt knowing what people in wheelchairs have to go through on a daily basis would help me setting up a classroom to make it wheelchair accessible if I ever had to. I would want to make sure a student in a wheelchair had the same opportunity to learn just as much as any other student. I went to the Marketplace Mall in Henrietta, NY on February 3rd 2011 at 11:00 AM to complete this assignment. Being in a wheelchair during my visit to the mall was definitely a completely different experience from when I usually go to the mall. I think one of the biggest obstacles that I had to overcome was when navigating through the stores a lot of the clothing racks were spaced very close together. This made it extremely difficult getting around in some of the stores or getting to some clothing racks located in the center of other racks. I know from previous visits to the mall that even without being in a wheelchair some of those racks are hard to go or walk through but trying to do it in a wheelchair wasn’t just an inconvenience, it was nearly impossible. Sometimes I enjoy going to the mall by myself but being in a wheelchair would make that normally delightful thing a very difficult and painstakingly thing to do. It is much easier having someone there to push you around and get you through the stores rather than trying to navigate the wheelchair