Even if you have an ADA room, every disability is so different that people need different things. A lot of times they'll put something on the toilet to make it higher, and for someone transferring from their chair that's fine, but I transfer from the floor so it causes more problems.
in California I began to think that, except on the beaches, no-one had the use of their legs.
I've had versions of disability my whole life, first with my hearing and then when I couldn't walk for over a year.
The only thing I can't do is hear. I can drive, I have a life with four kids, I work on TV, I do movies, so the deafness question, is it that they want to know because, what? Not sure.
My experiences of traveling abroad and going to Italy with my father, having to break down a gigantic electric chair to get on trains. You've got three minutes. You go to Pompeii and there are shockingly few accessible hotels in a city that was covered in volcanic ash.
My dad lost his hearing in the last 18 months of his life, and as a result, I witnessed first-hand the effect that this can have on a family.
I went down to Venezuela and ended up renting a helicopter and flew with my sons to the tops of the tepuis, these freestanding jungle mesas, 'lost worlds' as it were. In fact, it's almost impossible to access them without one. So we were able to land and spend some time there. We were trapped for about six hours by clouds that came in.
The problems of the disabled are unpopular.
Pamela Anderson has more prosthetic in her body than I do. Nobody calls her disabled.
Obstruction of mobility, where it occurs, is one of the most serious and intractable problems of industrial society.
Technically I can get out of my wheelchair and crawl around and do things, but when I've traveled and they've lost my wheelchair in transit, I feel like I need to be bound to it. My functionality and autonomy are often bound to this.
