Week 4 Comment Paper

French, S. (1993). What’s so great about independence? Disabling Barriers – Enabling Environments. London: Sage. pp

Gleeson, B. (1999). Can technology overcome the disabling city? Mind and Body Spaces: Geographies of Illness, Impairment and Disability. New York: Routledge.

Imrie, R. (1998). Oppression, disability and access in the built environment. The Disability Reader: Social Science Perspectives. London: Cassell.



Independence is something that all individuals strive for, and once we achieve this asset we do all we can to maintain it through out our lives regardless of our capabilities as human beings. Having someone strip us of our independence however is almost like a slap in the face, for all. Maintaining independence for an individual who does have limitations or a disability can be such a challenging task that no one would be able to understand. The idea of independence is discussed in Sally French’s article, “What’s so great about independence?” French (1993) comments that this idea of independence tends to restrict rather than enrich the lives of those who are disabled. Being disabled does not necessarily mean that you are not capable of providing, caring or living for yourself, it just simply means that those who are disabled have a different time line for all of these activities.
The common themes in all three articles seemed to be this idea of independence as well as the technological aids that we see as a savior to all our problems, that we rely heavily only to be let down in the end. Technology can not cure an individual’s limitations it can only provide some assistance. Gleeson (1999) provides an insight as to how technology can provide better access to public buildings, transportation and even in the workplace, yet most cities lack the design for these particular individuals that may be in need of a ramp, elevator or even a fitting room that has the capacity to fit a wheel chair into. How society can choose to restrict those with limitations these rights is unreal, however what is more disturbing is that this problem still exists today. We can look at our own University. Some hallways are not large enough for a wheel chair to roll down with the flow of other students as well as the access to our elevators is limited as they only work how many days of the school year.
As able bodied individuals we take the simplistic things of everyday life for granted, without acknowledging the fact that some people struggle with these simplistic things. For example, Imrie (1998) discusses the simple task of going to a cash-dispensing machine. A technological device that provides access to all who desire. Wrong, these machines are placed too high for those restricted to a wheel chair. Once again, technology sets us up for failure instead of making life easier as well as leaving an individual with a limitation feeling dependant as they must either find another way to access this machine or rely on others to provide the service for them.
As we live day to day, we continue to use these technological aids that are provided for us to help make our daily activities simpler, but for some of us these advances do nothing but cause frustration. It is clear that we do not always think of others when developing these aids, we think of others that are like ourselves, but it is those others that are faced with limitations that we should be thinking about. The same when it comes to ones independence. We all like to maintain our independence to a certain degree and by having to rely heavily on these technologies we seem to minimize our independence greatly.