Accessible date in COMO

Personal Travel Narrative

By Ben Mayforth, Jazzmine Easterling, and Sterling Waldman

To start our date, we plan to meet at the Student Center. From there, we plan to travel to the Heidelberg for a bite to eat. After our meal, we plan on travelling to the Missouri Theater to catch a show. We end our date at Peace Park where we can have some extra time to chat, get to know each other a little, and maybe get a little physical. Since the entire date would be spent near campus, all of the travelling would be done by rolling and walking.

We assume our date would also be a MU student. All wheelchair-using MU students live on campus, so they should be able to travel to the Student Center on their own without little difficulty. We meet our date in the Student Center at a table by Infusion, on the north side of the Student Center (near Arts & Science building). We exit through the automatic door near the bathrooms and begin our trip to the Heidelberg.

As we walk through one of the pathways, our date’s wheelchair gets briefly stuck in some cracks. These large cracks are on the right side of the pathway. They free themselves and we continue our trip. We pass Speaker’s Circle, and continue travelling towards Downtown on 9th Street. We stop and pet a dog or two along the way. We reach the Heidelberg and seat ourselves at one of the tables. Our date excuses themself to the restroom. To their surprise, they notice that the accessible restroom is out of order. They return to our table and inform us that they will use the bathroom at our next stop. Had the bathroom been open, our date would have still had some difficulty moving using the restroom anyway. It is very narrow and only someone with a manual wheelchair would be able to fit through. There are also no gender neutral bathrooms here, so if our date was non-binary, they face another challenge. Nonetheless, we get our food and leave the Heidelberg for the show at the Missouri Theater.

As we walk towards the theater, we notice that there is a large branch on the right side of the sidewalk near University Ave. Our date may have some trouble maneuvering around this branch, so we make sure to walk on the right side of the sidewalk so they can avoid any other trouble. The street itself is slightly angled downward so our date has little trouble travelling on this street.

Unfortunately, the Missouri Theater is closed. So we decide to go to Ragtag Cinema instead. We continue on 9th Street, then turn and cross the street on Cherry Street. Our date has a trouble on this street because it is on a steep upward slope, there are many large cracks in the sidewalk, and large cracks at the edges of the streets (within the crosswalks). There are a few trees with large roots growing out of the ground along this street. None of the roots are large enough to make the sidewalk significantly uneven, but they do create some cracks in the sidewalk. There are also a few handicap parking spaces on this street. One of them is located next to a garbage can.

We reach Ragtag, excited to see our movie. Our date talks about ordering a drink from the bar. Unfortunately, the bar is too high for our date to reach, so we order the drinks for us. They are able to reach the ticket counter, so they go and purchase the tickets while we get drinks. We make our way towards the theater together. We end up choosing to sit at one of the couches in the front row. Here, there is enough room for our date to comfortably transfer from their chair to one of the couches. There is also plenty of room for their chair to remain in front of us (instead of putting it off to the side or somewhere in the back of the room). Before the movie starts, our date excuses themself to the bathroom. The bathrooms available are accessible and working properly, which is a plus, but there are still no gender neutral bathrooms. Our date returns to the theater and the movie begins shortly after.

It is still a nice day outside and our date seems to be going pretty well, so we decide to take our date to Peace Park for some private time. We start walking on Hitt Street towards Elm Street. Our date has a lot more trouble on Hitt St. There are more cracks and uneven sidewalks on this street than any of the others. The sidewalk itself is very narrow, making it difficult for our date to maneuver around on. There is a very large hole in between the sidewalk and grass (across the street from the University Ave. Parking Garage) that one of our date’s wheels almost falls into. We turn onto Elm Street. There is a large construction sign on the corner of Elm and 9th Street. The legs of this sign are very long and take up a lot of room on the sidewalk. Our date cannot wheel over the legs of the sign, so they must move around it.

We cross the street and make our way to Peace Park. We decide to sit at one of the benches along the pathway. This bench is facing away from the street. Our date is able to move from their chair into the bench with no trouble. The bench is positioned on a very small piece of concrete, so the only two locations they can put their chair is either out in front of them, or in the grass. They decide to put their chair out in front of them. Their chair is blocking part of the pathway, but they are able to use it as a nice foot rest. We spend the rest of our time chatting. Towards the end, we put our arm around our date and ask if we can see them again sometime. They say yes!

While doing this project, we learned about some of the difficulties of navigating through Columbia. Overall, it took us a little over an hour to travel from each place to the next. The non-wheelchair using members of our group became aware of things that wheelchair users constantly have to be conscious of such as how steep the street is, how high the curbs are on the streets, how narrow the sidewalks are, whether there are any cracks in the sidewalks and potholes in the street, whether there are accessible bathrooms or not, whether one can reach a bar or counter or not, how dirty our date’s hands can get from touching their chair’s wheels, and how much general space there is in one’s surroundings at all times for them to be able to move around comfortably. We also had to make sure that we were not walking too fast for our date to keep up with us. Even though this project was specifically focusing on access in terms of wheelchair users, we also considered other types of disabilities during this date. For example, we actually went to two restaurants (the Heidelberg and Noodles & Co.) and checked to see if each had physical menus to help those with visual disabilities. Noodles & Co. did not have physical menus. We also checked to see if there were gender neutral bathrooms in each facility to consider the experience for non-binary wheelchair users. The lack of gender neutral bathrooms was a pretty large disappointment. Another observation we had was with the placement of handicap parking spaces. We noticed a pattern of handicap parking spaces being placed next to garbage cans, which perpetuates the idea that people with disabilities are second class citizens and should be treated as such.