Why Basic Decency Matters: Accessibility Isn't Optional

At age 19, I came to Germany for the first time for a summer language program in Freiburg. There was a wheelchair user from France in my course. Every afternoon,

we had a listening lab in the basement of some random building on campus. She would often ask someone to carry her wheelchair, while she crawled down the stairs by herself. She did this without complaining—like it was something she was used to—not having access. Witnessing the lack of accessibility that summer stayed with me and influenced my career of almost two decades working on improving health and wellbeing outcomes. 

My recent diagnoses of neurodivergence and autoimmune disease have forced me to reflect more deeply on disability—not as an abstract concept or as a witness, but as a lived reality that shapes how I move through the world. I also think a lot about the pandemic. COVID-19 transformed society in ways we're still struggling to acknowledge.

Researchers and advocates have characterized the pandemic as producing widespread disability across populations (UCLA Disabilities and Computing Program, 2021). Analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows that approximately 1.2 million additional people were identified as having a disability in 2021 compared to 2020 (Center for American Progress, 2022). Current estimates suggest that as many as 20 million American adults—representing roughly 1 in 13 people over age 18—continue to experience persistent symptoms that affect their daily functioning months after infection (CDC, 2022).

But here's what the pandemic revealed that many of us already knew: disability isn't an "if," it's a "when." Statistics show that more than 46 percent of older adults aged 60 and above live with disabilities, and in the United States, approximately 46 percent of those 75 and older experience some form of disability (UN Division for Inclusive Social Development, n.d.; Statista, 2022). The longer we live, the more likely we are to encounter disability ourselves.

When Basic Infrastructure Becomes a Barrier

There are certainly policy-level issues that need addressing—funding for disability services, healthcare access, and employment protections. But there's also something more immediate, more actionable: basic human decency. The small choices we make every day about how we occupy shared space.

Take e-scooters. If you know me, you’ve heard me rant about e-scooters. These devices have become ubiquitous in cities worldwide, marketed as convenient, eco-friendly transportation. Yet they've also become hazards—quite literally. Research from Copenhagen found that roughly half of injuries to non-riders occurred when individuals, particularly elderly people, tripped over scooters left on pathways (Blomberg et al., 2019). This isn't a minor inconvenience. It's a genuine safety risk with real costs.

The financial implications are substantial. German analysis indicates that each e-scooter accident involving personal injury averages more than €13,000 when factoring in medical treatment, work loss, and compensation (Euro Weekly News, 2024). A Helsinki study calculated that e-scooter injuries cost their healthcare system approximately €1.7 million, with a median expense of €1,148 per accident (Vasara et al., 2022). These figures don't even capture accidents caused by carelessly parked scooters—those incidents often aren't reported or tracked systematically.

Or consider snow and ice on walking paths. When municipalities fail to clear sidewalks properly, they're not just creating an inconvenience—they're actively excluding people with mobility challenges, vision impairments, or balance issues from participating in public life. They're making it dangerous for anyone with decreased mobility to leave their home.

The Cost of Looking Away

What strikes me most about these barriers is how preventable they are. We don't need massive infrastructure overhauls or billion-dollar/euro budgets to park an e-scooter properly or clear a sidewalk. We need to care. We need to recognize that our actions have consequences for others, particularly for those who are most vulnerable to injury.

The pandemic taught us—or should have taught us—that large-scale health crises can happen suddenly and affect millions. But it should also remind us that disability is not rare, not exceptional, not someone else's problem. It's woven into the fabric of human life, especially as we age. The person you're excluding today could be your parent tomorrow. It could be you in a decade.

Moving Forward with Intention

I don't have all the answers about disability policy, healthcare reform, or urban planning. But I know this: we can all do better. We can park our rental scooters in designated areas. We can shovel our sidewalks. We can think for just a moment about who else needs to use the space we're occupying.

Accessibility isn't a favor we're doing for "disabled people" as if they're a separate category of human. It's infrastructure we're building for our future selves, for our aging parents, for our neighbors recovering from surgery, for anyone navigating the world with different needs than we have today.

The longer we live, the more likely we are to experience disability. We make that experience harder through our own carelessness, when we choose convenience over community, when we look away from suffering, we have the power to prevent it.

We can't eliminate all barriers. But we can certainly stop creating new ones. That's not policy—that's just basic decency. 

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References

Blomberg, S. N., et al. (2019). Injury from electric scooters in Copenhagen: A retrospective cohort study. BMJ Open, 9(12).

Center for American Progress. (2022, April 11). COVID-19 likely resulted in 1.2 million more disabled people by the end of 2021. Retrieved from https://www.americanprogress.org

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2022). Long COVID prevalence estimates. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov

Euro Weekly News. (2024, July 27). E-scooters under scrutiny in Germany. Retrieved from https://euroweeklynews.com

Statista. (2022). Share of people with a disability in the U.S. as of 2022, by age. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com

UCLA Disabilities and Computing Program. (2021). Is COVID-19 a "mass disabling event"? Retrieved from https://dcp.ucla.edu

United Nations Division for Inclusive Social Development. (n.d.). Ageing and disability. Retrieved from https://social.desa.un.org

Vasara, H., et al. (2022). Characteristics and costs of electric scooter injuries in Helsinki: A retrospective cohort study. Acta Orthopaedica, 93, 417-422.