Disabled access

I know it’s all too easy to knock Health and Safety rules, and the like. I’ve done it before and – yes – that smirky cynicism will be knocked out of me, if ever I get trapped in a blazing building because the Evac chairs have not been properly installed, or the emergency lighting isn’t working.

All the same . . . try this story.

The Classical Faculty building in Cambridge (where I tend at the moment, finishing my Pompeii book, to spend rather more hours of my life than I do at home) has just installed disabled access: (semi-)automatic front doors. This isn’t anyone’s fault. We were obliged to do this to be “compliant” (and, as one of my senior colleagues put it, to be “transparent” and “robust” too, no doubt).

So, until two weeks ago we had perfectly manageable front doors : a double set - one pair of outside doors plus another pair the other side of a small lobby. They were very easy to handle. The outside pair were heavy-ish, opened one way only and were still just about possible to manage if you had a large pile of books in your arms. The inner pair swung both ways and were easy to push or pull from whichever way you approached.

They have now been “up-graded’ to disabled use, and are almost unusable by the rest of us.

Both sets have been fitted with automatic openers, operated with a push button, wheel-chair height. If you choose not to push the buttons, they are unwieldy and certainly far too heavy to open with a pile of books in hand. If you opt for the button method, you have to stand and wait for several seconds while the doors graciously  (ie very slowly) open before you. It’s inconvenient enough with just a few graduate students and elderly academics going to and fro during the vacation. Heaven knows how this system will work when confronted with hundreds of undergraduates, trying to go both ways.

In addition to this, these once relatively elegant doors are now encumbered with machinery and look quite ghastly. And given the complicated system and the couple of nice guys who took about a week to install it, I expect that we could have financed several Masters’ students for the price of all this.

How many disabled people visit our Faculty each year? A handful. Now, I realise that the current policy is that wheel-chair users or others who are “physically challenged” should not have to ASK for help; they should have free access wherever without having to draw attention to their needs. But surely, in most cases, it would be better, more efficient, cheaper and (frankly) more ideologically sound to change hearts and minds -- so that no-one at all would ever see a disabled user hoving into view without stopping to hold the door open, offer a hand or whatever. Shouldn’t we all think it our job to help those who need it, as a matter of course?

These, legislation-driven, installations are a way of making us feel that we’re doing something for the disabled, without actually having to do anything ourselves. A bit like all those emergency notices in Braille in American hotels – fine, if the blind know where to put their hands to find them. But don’t you imagine that, when fire strikes, we able-bodied will have scarpered, leaving the blind to find the notices we so kindly put up for them?

In our case in the Faculty, the disabled can now get into the lobby by merely pushing a couple of buttons. But what then? They can’t get upstairs (because the lift to the first floor is via another entrance). And the library has no push button doors.

So now we’re “compliant” because they can wheel themselves around the lobby and go out again.

Comments

[F]

Most people (particularly Lidwina) commenting have completely misunderstood the point of Mary's article. She is not bemoaning the installation of the doors, or the "special treatment" given to physically less able people. She's asking for us to return to the outlook where offering your seat to a pregnant woman or an elderly person, or opening the door for someone ina wheelchair, wasn't considered to be "drawing attention to their situation" but rather simply a polite gesture. If people gained some good old fashioned manners and held the door open for more people in general, regardless of their physical ability, this stand-off between those physically able and those less able would be far less prevalent.

[Lidwina]

As you could tell by googling my nickname, I suffer from one of these nasty diseases which will put me in a wheelchair one of these days. I can actually get quite annoyed at articles which suggest wheelchair users don't need to go to places other people can visit without a thought.

Contemplating a badly thought out solution like yours: Surely a university full of supposedly intelligent people could come up with a better way?

Dear Mary, get in a wheelchair and try to visit a public loo or library or your town hall. Wait at every stiff door or steep ramp for someone to help you - ha ha. There are whole websites dedicated to photographs of blocked wheelchair access. Very funny for the two-legged, I am sure.

[Tony Francis]

There is an ancient "action in trove" or "trover" whereby the finder of a treasure trove was the owner, unless the real owner could be identified. A typical case found in many law school texts is the 1722 action of Armory v. Delamirie:
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armory_v._Delamirie
Note the amusing change in tense of this article: it starts off in present tense, then shifts to past tense.
The wiki article on trover is incorrect.
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trover
Action in trove means "finders keepers, losers weepers", unless the loser can be identified.

A typical case is from Tennessee, 1887, Deaderick v. Oulds in which a number of logs were being floated down a river. One of the logs ended up on a man's land by mistake. He claimed (successfully) ownership of the log in trove. American law of trover is found:
http://www.muenzgeschichte.ch/downloads/laws-usa.pdf

[PL]

The inheritance from Law French is richer than one might think: not only legal terms like plaintiff, culprit, tort, attorney general, court martial, and the "-ee" ending of passives like employee, divorcee, trainee, etc, but everyday expressions like default, recovery, gist (the "gist" of the matter is where the matter "lies"), trove (as in treasure trove), etc.

[Tony Francis]

Dear Lucy: I am chuckling also. Some of the comments were of this ilk: "Aquinas has no place on Wiki"; "Aquinas has no place in a discussion of US law"; "Aquinas has no place in a discussion of the United States"; "All heretics were Catholics so there is no point in discussing whether they were baptized, since they were all baptized"; "Discussing Aquinas has a point, but you chose the wrong things to discuss"; "No discussion of Aquinas should be made without stating that he was a complete failure"; "Theology has no place in a discussion of the death penalty"; "How do we know if Aquinas picked the right scriptural pasages?"; "Using Aquinas' own words expressed a point of view, which isn't allowed on Wiki"; "Aquinas' work is original research, which is not allowed on Wiki";. These are bone head comments, made by men, in an authoritarian manner, by people who have no idea what they are talking about. I have given up on this topic! I will leave it to these know-it-alls to sort out. There is no satisfying them.
Bracton was an ecclesiastic, meaning he probably wrote in Latin. Church courts were recorded in Latin in those days (1210-1268). Common law courts were conducted in Law French:
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_French
The Wiki article is incomplete: there were repetitive actions by Parliament outlawing Law French from about 1300 until the mid 1700's which the common law courts ignored. A good source of medieval documents is:
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook-law.html#ENGLAND%20LAW
Bracton's book was titled: "De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae" -"On the Laws and Customs of England"- but that page seems to not be available (at least I can't get it to come up on the Fordham site).
Derek Roebuck wrote a nice little book on Common Law which details Law French and the growth of the English langauge. I don't have it right now, but there is a copy at the Wichita State library.

[PL]

Dear Tony Francis,
There are abler pens (keyboards) than mine to comment, but here's what I can say off the top of my inadequately filled head.
"Gutter language" is an exaggeration-- though of course the language of a conquered people, however illustrious it once was, is naturally apt to suffer a loss of prestige. But I know the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle continued to be written (in Anglo-Saxon, sive Old English) for about 60 years after the Conquest. True, there seems to have been no English literature to speak of in post-Conquest England until the 14th-- or at least late 13th-- century. But neither was there much in French-- Norman or otherwise-- I believe.
After the Conquest the English language went underground, if not quite into the gutter, and re-emerged, transformed, only around the beginning of the 100 Years War, when (as you note) English national self-consciousness was beginning to be felt. The usurper Henry IV Bolingbroke was, I'm told, the first post-Conquest monarch to speak English as his mother-tongue-- though he and his successors, down at least to Elizabeth I, could probably all speak French as fluently as the post-Petrine tsars did).
When Old English re-emerged as Middle English its grammatical forms had become simplified and its vocabulary had undergone a massive infusion of French words. But it was still essentially the same language: its basic structure, most of its homely vocabulary, and its "genius" or spirit-- that indefinable thing-- were intact. At least such is the view of most who can claim real learning in the matter; and I think anyone who has gone even the short way I have in OE I (as far as working my way through the whole of Beowulf) can see why it makes sense to regard it, not as a foreign language, like German or Dutch (though it superficially resembles them more than modern English), but as an early form of the language we speak today.
In its heyday, from the 7th to 10th century, OE was probably the richest, most sophisticated vernacular in Western Europe. Unfortunately, most of the vast literature we know to have been written in it has been lost. What we have, including Beowulf, is just fragments.
But as I say, there are many better able to tell you about this than I (perhaps not on Wiki ?). I can recommend the extensive history of English (very thorough, especially for the the early periods) printed at the beginning of Merriam Webster's 2nd International, Unabridged (not the debased 3rd International, which doesn't know or care about such things).
Did Bracton write only in Latin, or what?

[Michael Bulley]

To Paulo: I've only just seen your question to me about the subjunctive, so I'm afraid this reply is late.

I think it's reasonable to say that Modern English has a subjunctive, even if it's often well hidden. I'd say its forms from Old English are still here. So, if you take the old verb binden, the present indicative starts binde, bindest, bindeth whereas the present subjuctive starts binde, binde, binde. Even though most of the terminations no longer exist in modern English, the distinction between present indicative and subjunctive in the 3rd person singular remains. In the "be" variety of "be" in Old English, the indic is beo, bist, bith... and the subj beo, beo, beo...., this giving the modern subjunctive "I be", "you be", "he/she be" etc.

So "I insist she depart" contains a present subjunctive. I'd go out on a limb and say modern English also has a past subjunctive, though, except for the verb "to be", it looks just like the simple past in all persons. So, although you could use the present subj in "It was important that Richard Branson run his trains on time", I think you could also have "ran" for "run" with the same sense, and there "ran" would be subj.

It is important not to mix up grammatical terminology with the use of grammatical forms (present tenses are frequently used to refer to times other than the present, for example). So your example of "God save the Queen" may well have an optative sense, but English, like Latin, has no optative form. In English and Latin, that idea is expressed by the subjunctive. The sense is optative, the form subjunctive.

Hope this helps.

[Lucy]

... Um, Tony, looking over the most recent blog entry and comments, you had a go at those evil 'roving editors and their annoying habits, 'especially saying things with great authority, even though they don't know what they are saying'.

(A dig, but a friendly dig ... please take in the spirit it's meant)

[Lucy]

Tony,
Alfred the Great promoted the learning of English by all young 'angelcynn' (English) men, so that they could study religious texts and thus avert the threat of the Danes (God's punishment on the English for failing to be pious, as he thought). You could say English as a national language (and indeed the concept of 'angelcynn' or English-ness) came into being then, before the Norman conquest, and before the 100 years war. Certainly, I don't see why (or how!) Chaucer is a'first' English writer - even in a medieval (as opposed to Old English) context, you've got plenty before him - Laymon's Brut, for a start(c.1215).

English is quite a subtle and resilient language, but I don't think its grammar has ever really been analysed independently of the Latin tradition, which leads to the interesting situation PL describes.

[Tony Francis]

Dear PL: It is written that Anglo-Saxon English was considered a gutter language, something only the lowest members of society used after the Norman Conquest. The Kings after William I spoke only Norman French. Apparently, Henry II understood a few phrases in English, and spoke none. It was the 100 Years War that gave rise to English Nationalism, and birth to English as a legitimate langauge. There was a general eschewing of everything French during that time. This is why Chaucer, Wycliff, the story of Robin Hood, etc. are the first "English" writers/stories, and date from this time. Care to comment on this?
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_years_war

[Lucy]

PL - yes. And Paulo, I'm a student of English, and I'm not confused, because to me the term is more familiar than the optative. All this really goes back to SW Foska's point that understanding is more important than arbitrary classifications - so, if the classification system works for me, I'll use it. If it doesn't for you, use something else. Just be aware of what system you're referring to - what's the problem?

[PL]

Of course I meant "Schnell zu gehen".

[PL]

Dear Paulo-- the word "subjunctive" doesn't describe the thing very well; it's almost as bad as the word "participle" for a word that "participates" in the nature of both a verb and an adjective. But we mustn't let the clumsiness of grammatical terminology affect how we construct our sentences (Cf the irrelevance to objections against the traditional avoidance of split infinitives by good writers of the observation that English infinitives cannot be split, since the introductory "to" is a particle and not part of the verb), I suppose grammarians (speaking mainly about Latin) said "subjunctive" because that form of the verb was always used in an-- actual or implied-- "subjoined" clause.
Descriptively there is nothing wrong with regarding the "be" of "I know not what it be" as an infinitive introduced by an implied but omitted "may". I prefer calling it a "subjunctive" because, whatever the supposed innate genius of English may be, those who fashioned the language into the forms in which we have been usung it for the past 1500-odd years were nearly all trained in Latin grammar and thought about the structures of English in terms of Latin grammar (isn't that, for example, why we can quite normally say things like "I know him to be a good man", which are structurally Latin rather than native Germanic?). Latin grammar is a deep and pervasive part of our English linguistic heritage, and I hate to see it thrown away because linguistic science considers it an impurity.
In my Latin grammar "optative" is classified as one of the functions of the subjunctive.
But-- to go back to an example I cited earlier--- the "were" in "as it were" is pure subjunctive of uncertainty, and was traditionally used to translate Latin "quasi" (qua si esset: not to be confused with Italian "quasi", which usually just means "almost").
But I believe the reason the construction we clumsily call a "split infinitive" is very rare in English writing before the 19th century-- and thereafter mostly avoided by careful writers-- has less to do with imitating Latin (or French) construction than with the natural rhythms of English as a Germanic language. Shakespeare was no pedantic classicist, but it's hard to imagine him writing "To be or not to be . . ."; or Tennyson writing "To strive, to seek, to find, and to not yield". Anthony Burgess noted the parallel with German: "To go quickly" is "Schnell zu gangen", not "Zu schnell ganngen".
By all means let's preserve the Germanic soul of our language, but not at the expense of the shaping it has undergone over more than a millennium of association with other tongues, particularly Latin and French.

[Tony Francis]

Appalachian English is heard all through the south. My father's family (which was from Alabama, via Scotland, circa 1700) would often revert back to "hill talk" when mocking someone or just clowning around. Really, it was just a variant of Elizabethan English. Still, it was viewed by them as being backwards and ignorant. My mother would even talk like this on occassion, although where she picked it up remains to be demonstrated- maybe from my father's family. There is a variant of black American language called Ebonics, although it has been something of a joke:
http://www.en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Ebonics
After Desert Storm, I was in an Army hospital, and they were scurrying about trying to find someone who could speak Korean. A black kid from Louisiana, who was a big clown, announced: "I can't help you with Korean, but if you need someone to translate Ebonics, give me a call." I used to tell him of black idiomatic expressions I remembered from childhood, which were new to him. He would say, "Dotter Francis be teaching me archeological Ebonics."

Dear Michael Bulley

Where does this word "subjunctive" come from,and how does it apply to English? It works for Latin grammar, and for Greek, but, I suggest to apply it to English is not only a solecism, but confusing. I agree that using "be" instead of "should be" etc. avoids the "heaviness" or pleonasm, but the result is something rather more like the optative than the subjunctive. I need also to bring in the category of "conditional", which in English largely replaces the need to talk about "subjunctive" - "I'd forget about that if I were you" - this is optative and then conditional - why talk about "subjunctive"? It's very confusing to students of English. French, of course, really does have separate categories of "subjunctive and "conditional", but in English, if there ever was such a distinction, it is long dead, except in apparently hallowed grammar books.

"Hallowed be thy Name" - straightforward optative. "God save the Queen" - not Imperative, surely, but optative. Please leave the category "subjunctive" to Latin or French, where there is some systematic linguistic reason for taking it into account.

On your own head be it should you dispute this.

Paulo

[Michael Bulley]

The subjunctive, when it can be distinguished from the indicative, can be just right, without the heaviness of adding "should" or "may". There's a sonnet by William Browne, the text of a fine setting for baritone and piano by Mary Plumstead, in which the poet refers to his heart and says "if mine want aid" (= if mine should want aid). And, if it doesn't sound too boastful, I was satisfied to have thought up "though Quintilia grieve" for a translation I did of Catullus 96 (= though Q may grieve).

I never checked, but it was said a few years ago that the supermarket Sainsbury's had a certain range of wines, the expensive bottles in which had a label saying "It is recommended that this wine be...", whereas the cheaper ones had "It is recommended that this wine is...". The subjunctive only for the well-off.

[Tony Francis]

http://www.wvculture.org/history/journal_wvh/wvh30-2.html
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachian_English

[Lucy]

Yes, 'would of' is fine in terms of conveying meaning. I'm really interested in dialects and variations -thanks PL for the comments re. Black English; I like that idea about it being 'more permanent' - that's a really good example of how a non-standard (annoying term; don't know a less po-faced way of putting it) English is actually more expressive than its standard counterpart. If you want to be purely grammar-book correct, however, XLJ, 'would of' is not correct English grammar in any way, shape or form. But I think SW Foska's joke has it right. :-)

Nicholas, can you explain what you mean about the present infinitive? Maybe with an example? I still don't see how Miller isn't using 'it be' as a substitute for 'it is' (Though I'm aware he made some linguistic decisions for euphonic/poetic reasons rather than to adhere to strict linguistic-historical accuracy).

This has all gone wandering off Mary's original article, but please can we keep posting?

[PL]

Ain't that a whole nother question, XJY?

[SW Foska]

"would of" is fine as long as the other person understands. The point is not whether it conforms to what some tosser wrote in a book, but whether it means what it's supposed to mean to the recipient. I'm not sure it's a contraction though.
Old joke: American in Oxford to a don: "Say, dude! Where's the library at?"
Don: "It is not customary to end a sentence with a preposition."
American (after some thought): "OK, dude. How about this - Where's the library at, asshole?"

[Nicholas Wibberley]

Everything around us may be observed in many quite different ways. These differences arise neither from what is being observed, since all involved observe the same, nor from significant differences between observers since we are all the same species. The key is that differences of perspective are similar to the notion of observing one tree, a lot of trees, or the wood. I suggest that we are, most of us, not only conscious of our ability to switch between perspectives but confused when we find ourselves amongst those who lack not only such a facility, but any perspective sense at all.

The subjunctive usage is the tiniest thread in a vast tapestry. Lucy’s comment is illuminating because it is a mirror comment; ‘it be’ is not in fact used by Miller as an alternative to ‘it is’, it is rather the present infinitive which is now more frequently used in place of the subjunctive. And, yes, indeed, the subjunctive was extensively used in England in the Middle Ages and flourishing at the time of the Mayflower, and Miller’s use of it evokes the period. Anyone interested in the language of the Middle Ages might read The Paston Letters, OUP (ISBN-13: 978-0192836403). Aside from the readability of that collection, the letters illustrate, as does Shakespeare, how the subjunctive once flourished.

However, all this begins somewhere quite else; the subject is like one of those rotating illuminated mirror spheres in 1950’s dance halls, spheres with a circumference made up of countless tiny mirrors all having an identical relationship to the sphere as a whole.

It is my perception that increased population density has had, and is having, profound effects on almost every aspect of human life and I am engaged in a discursion on this matter. My difficulty in the ordinary way is that, whereas sometimes I feel I might have things to say, I have not the least idea to whom to address them. In this case I am considering something in the manner of the Lucretian hexameter, hoping that by wrapping myself in an all but incomprehensible artistic exercise, I may succeed in smuggling something of value through the Customs of the politically correct.

[Xjy]

"Would of" etc is correct grammar but incorrect orthography. I'm right in thinking that contracted forms are perfectly OK grammatically speaking, aren't I?

[PL]

Lucy-- The East Midlands "of/ have" confusion you mention is common all over America: "I should of known", "I might of been a contender".
Come to think of it, "be" as present indicative is still very much alive in (American) "Black English", where it is said to convey a slightly different sense from "am/is/are", which is also used. I think it suggests a more permanent sort of "being"; and when coupled with a gerund, a repeated action; so that "He be coming over every evening" is the same as standard English "He comes over every evening". But the the Black English speaker will also say, as in standard English, "He's coming over this evening".
This may be a clipped (or rump) form, as you suggest, derived in this case from something like "He's wont to be coming over every evening" (not that I've ever heard "wont" from the lips of a living speaker).
I didn't think you were belittling, only confused.

[doggerel]

The subjunctive:
it interests me that PL (who appears to be an American) has noticed that the subjunctive is used in constructions of necessity, requirement, command.
It had already occurred to me from Nicholas's first musings on this subject, that the subjunctive is a remnant of the effete ruling classes; it is mainly privileged people who speak using the subjunctive in England today. (Whether because highly educated, or because in positions of military or legal power).
Also, use of the subjunctive creates a distance between the speaker/writer and the subject, (whether it be the subject of discussion, or the person being addressed). Use of the subjunctive creates the effect of "I am actually way above you, some distance off, but I have the right to pontificate".
So what interests me about PL is the survival of the subjunctive in USA, and in French, where Revolutions have taken place (quoi que se soit), and the oppressor's yoke has been thrown off.
Does anyone have an explanation for this classless phenomenon?

[Lucy]

... trying to think of an example of what I meant. In East Midlands dialect, the phrases like 'would have', 'should have', 'could have' are slurred, and sound like 'would've' or 'would of'. Because, of course 'of' is a familiar word in the language, small children often think that 'would of' is a proper construction, and will write 'I would of gone out to play, but I was kept in'. In this case, it's incorrect grammar that is reinforced by prior familiarity with a commonly used word, but it might have been the same with 'it be' (present tense is more commonly used than the subjunctive) and 'it is necessary that it be'.

[Lucy]

PL - yes, I know that's what you meant, and I wasn't trying to belittle a correct American usage, just being interested in how it survived. I thought the survival might have been reinforced by ppl. using 'be' in another context until more recently, that's all. My impression from what you say is that Americans are more careful in general with speech - I know very few people who'd remember to use a phrase like'it is necessary that this be done' in writing. How much dialect variation is there with American grammar?

[PL]

Let me add that our imperfect subjunctive also survives in the fixed phrase "as it were", traditionally translating Latin "quasi"-- Note; not Italian "quasi", which usually translates our "almost".

[jt from PA]

Once again Mary is right on.

[PL]

Dear Lucy,
No; "be" as in "Here be dragons" is not what I meant. That usage is indeed archaic, and, as far as I know, extinct in both our countries, at least outside the remotest backwoods.
What I meant was the present subjunctive, discernable in the third person singular of all verbs by its lack of the final "-s" of the indicative and in all persons by its formal identity with the infinitive (e.g. the difference between "if these things be true . . ." and "if these things are true . . ."; and in the imperfect subjunctive, where it is discernable only in the first and third persons singualr of the verb "to be", by its replacement of "was" with "were" (e.g. the difference between "If I were you I'd be more careful" and "If I was you I'd be more careful"; or between "if he were more careful, he wouldn't make so many mistakes" and "If he was more careful, he wouldn't make so many mistakes". The contrary-to-fact conditional is not the only construction which calls for the English subjunctive. It also belongs in general statements of necessity, requirement, command, etc (e.g. "It is important/ necessary/ required/ ordered / (etc) that every report carry [not carries] the signature of its author.
My impression is that Brits, when writing carefully, are as observant of this distinction as Americans, but in their everyday speech are much less so.
Of course, there are several other points of usage in which we Yanks are the sloppy ones (e.g. the distinction between simple past tense and present perfect: between "Did you see him?" and "Have you seen him?"

[Lucy]

Ok, Nicholas, no worries. Maybe the example of people who should have known better ought to be kept well away from Dierdre's example of miscarriage, though. I'm think I read you as being more dismissive than you were - probably because I thought you were having a crack at CED moving from conditional to subjunctive in the same sentence (oops ... you're not as petty as me, are you? ;-) Though I suppose I could say the shift is indicative of CED's assumption that Dr. Beard only has to wish something for it to be so ... )

I'm also interested in examples of your theory - please, examples.

PL - that's really cool. My knowledge of American usage is sketchy at best, but in Miller's The Crucible people seem to use 'it be' to mean 'it is', which also survives in older English dialect. Do you know if the modern American usage could be a survival from that?

[PL]

I'm interested in Nicholas Wibberley's theory about the disappearing subjunctive. Could he explicate it a little with examples. My only observation about the little that Modern English has left of a disceranable sunbjunctive is that it's preservation is one of the points on which we Yanks tend to be more conservative than the Brits. The average carelessly speaking Britisher will say, for example, "It is necessary that everyone is on time", while the average carelessly speaking American will say "it is necessary that everyone be on time".

[Nicholas Wibberley]

Gracious me, what a cat to have loosed. I intended first simply to enquire what advice the gentleman had sought about so distressing an event, and prefaced my question by insisting that I did not wish to appear unkind. Nor did I. There exists, as I pointed out, a great deal of free advice available, much concerned with occurrences a good deal less significant than a miscarriage.

I did not make myself clear, and apologise for that, when I further sought to express the view that regulations become increasingly necessary as population density intensifies. This I consider not only a verifiable truth, but an inexorable process demanding much common sense and careful planning to avoid regulation applications such as the Cambridge doors. There are myriad parallel social processes arising from population growth such as a decline in personal responsibility and, oddly, changes in grammar whereby, for instance, the subjunctive is insensibly replaced by the present infinitive. In less densely populated areas personal responsibility remains the norm, regulations are fewer, and the subjunctive flourishes. Such observations may appear fanciful but the decline of the subjunctive represents a conceptual loss and an attendant loss in subtlety of thought and language.

Deidre, I do not have employee responsibilities but when I did I took them seriously; it would be irresponsible to do otherwise.

[Cogito Ergo Doleo]

Le plafond des uns est le plancher des autres. Ain't here for prescripture nor grammatical stricture. Nature of the boast, I guess. I don'ts got to be grammatically *anything* when I give it away on the fly-by cyber-hi. End of snory.

Un-thought-out? Quoi? Ill-conceived, surely? Ah, but, of course, it's so contra-PC, Lucy, when a dame gets surly. Do pop a chill pill; and then, take a free tip: Zip a lip. Ta.

Oh, Lard. I'm laughing all the way to the brink. You don't "wish to be rude"; but, you jes' can't help yerself? PKBull. Grammar lames are the last holdout for a retort done gone down in flames, Hon. Picayune to the Nth dragoon. Get a gripe. Seize the sun. (My shade shan't comfort you.) Gotta do-ron-ron . . .

Jane [*blush*]? I'm yer fan; you're a kind soul, as tell as best I may have ought to think I can.

"I done it and I warn’t ever sorry for it afterwards." (Which explains why my mother warned me about me . . ..)
p.s. Wow 'em in the aisles next week, Dr. Beard

[Lucy]

Hi Nicholas. I wish I could like what you've said, since Cogito Ergo Doleo's bad grammar irritates me too. However:

I don't wish to be rude, especially since Dierdre managed to keep her temper - but perhaps you don't realise that your comment was quite offensive? A woman may miscarry without realising she is pregnant; certainly, if her job involves heavy lifting, she surely cannot wait for a test to confirm pregnancy before abstaining. As I read it, the point was that no-one should be lifting weights heavy enough to induce miscarriage in a care home. The point being that one could lose a baby without knowing of the pregnancy beforehand - even if it were a much-wanted pregnancy.

[Deirdre]

Nicholas
It is hard to reply to your post without being offensive.
I've thought about it and the most I can put in print is that I sincerely hope that you are not in a position of responsibility in your job. (If you have one).

[Nicholas Wibberley]

Deidre, the reason for having a go at tiresome regulations is simply that they are self-generating and we are danger of becoming buried under them. The fact that someone seeks advice because a pregnant woman has lifted too heavy a weight in some place quite unconnected with his own work environment surely proves the point. I do not wish to appear unkind but what advice did he need about an event that had already so distressfully occurred? TV is replete with free advice to persons who should simply have known better than swan about in an environment unsuited to their choice of footwear, etc. Yes, I accept that personal responsibility is in decline, but is that a good thing? Maybe we are, as a species, undergoing a mutation towards the collective; from, as it were, being bumble to becoming honey bees. If so, it is likely just another symptom of local population explosion, the sort of thing the Duke of Edinburgh exercised agin in the 1950s. If so, the process is inexorable. I am seriously persuaded that the decline in personal responsibility is in direct proportion to the fading use of the subjunctive, and intend, in consequence, to go live in Southern Spain.

[Cogito Ergo Doleo]

ISTM Dr. Beard takes umbrage with the design of the doors, not their installation nor purpose. If Dr. Beard had noted department stores, hotels, supermarkets, and like commercial enterprises have had automatic doors for decades, she may have made the point more clearly: Consistency, coherence, and compatibility are all factors in her argument (somewhat conveniently overlooked by those suggesting she spend a day in a wheelchair — holier-than-thou-ites, IMO).

It seems, too, from the description, if a disabled individual goes through the doors they can *only* retrace their route or have a look-see at the lobby since there are no other entrances or rooms that are accessible for the disabled. IOW, she does not, IMO, deride enabling anyone who is, in some way, challenged (either physically or mentally); rather, she rightly states the equivalent of a logical fallacy in practical terms. The doors are there; but, they get you absolutely nowhere. What (public) good is that?

[Lucy]

I think Mary has a good point about the money spent on a poor 'solution' that might have been put to better use. I know of dons who would love to teach, and students who would love to learn, but who are hampered by a lack of appropriate disability funding (eg. the money for a taxi from college to Sidgewick, to avoid crossing a very busy road, etc.). In my second year, I was sent (on my DoS's request, not mine) to a nice lady at Anglia Ruskin, the nearest assessment centre to Cambridge, to tell me what 'help' I was entitled to. I'm quite dyslexic; occasionally you might notice it. At the meeting, I was urged strongly to ask for a computer, a laptop, various speech software, expenses for photocopying, and a book allowance. The whole lot couldn't have cost less than a grand. When I said it was unnecessary (and undeserved!), the attitude was, 'but the money is there, why not use it?'.

This is a typically un-thought-out, hit-and-miss approach to disability provision similar to providing annoying, expensive doors to a lobby, and no further access. As Mary says, just think what ELSE could be done with the money.

[Deirdre]

Re insatiate regulations;
posting from the factory, (where, as I said before, we used to moan about apparently pointless and costly impositions from HSE, when we thought our commonsense and experience were adequate regulators). As employers, we went though the official rules for Manual Handling, showed the staff a video, insisted on them not taking short cuts when lifting heavy loads. (Male pride, a twisted sense of self-promotion, led workers to dodge the rules and put their backs at risk).
Anyway, latest news, as I promised.
Yesterday an employee came into my office to ask for guidance on case of his daughter, who works in a care home and was expected to lift patients unaided, she suffered a miscarriage.
Was able to give him chapter and verse to back up his complaint.
The point is, althouth we may think that these regulations are overkill and too much bother when we can easily see the commonsense approach, rules are needed to prevent criminal negligence and to protect the vulnerable, and the less articulate members of society.
I think it's a bit like universal suffrage, we take it for granted now, but it took decades (over a century) to achieve, and was achieved by a series of piecemeal victories chipping away at bad practice.
Improvements for vulnerable and disabled people may seem inconvenient to the privileged and swift of foot as they are being painstakingly built up, but one day good systems will be universal and people will wonder how we ever did without them.

[Nicholas Wibberley]

These Cambridge doors were never for the disabled, they simply feed insatiate regulations. No more do you need to be disabled to despair of extracting an aspirin from its packaging.

[Shocker]

I am not too sure that "becoming an Oxbridge chair" qualifies one as the diametric opposite of "stupid". Scalar wise, there are eprobably better fits for both classifications- buts that's for another time.

Giving this some thought this afternoon. It's not really abut the ease of access or egress to the various rooms and mobiity devices once inside the establishment. It really seems about conferring entry to those who should, by every right, have it.

Achieve that, and you have a fat moral pacifier shoved into the gob of all but the most indignent patron, irrespective of dissability.

[Kath]

While I'd like to be kind, I should point out that, if you were really in a wheelchair, you wouldn't be allowed to say "Can I finish the book first?" And while advice and instruction on managing a wheelchair, use of disabled toilets, etc. would be fine and the presence of a companion for part of the day would be usual, I think you should spend part of the day seeing what it feels like to depend on the kindness of strangers (and consider what that might feel like long-term).

Good luck!

[Mary]

Kath -- I take the point.I am sure that on a micro level an automatic door would help -- but on the grander scale it doesn't, and is even counter productive, as it somehow leaves the obligation of all of us looking out for each other (I'm not saying looking 'after' each other) to technology. (See Francesca's comments about the self-same doors)

But OK I should take the challenge. Am I allowed to finish the book on Pompeii first? And can someone help me out with the wheel chair?

[Kath]

Mary, I'm in agreement with other posters and think you really should take up the challenge of spending a day in a wheelchair and see whether your perspective alters - and you might be able to make some really helpful suggestions to people at the university as a result. Obviously you'd have the advantage of knowing you'd be out of the chair at the end of the day.

Good luck if there's a fire by the way. I can always tell if there's a real fire or a practice when alarms go off. In a practice, people in wheelchairs or with other mobility problems are carefully helped from the "refuge point" to the "assembly point". When there's a real (small so far) fire, they get forgotten, often with their caring tutors as the fire brigade takes over. No deaths or injuries so far.

[Francesca]

I take it all back. Not only did the button not work yesterday when I went to the Faculty, but it's on the inner doors, whereas I assumed it would be on the outer doors, the one's which were, before this, the difficult ones to open.

Dear ABC

You write about "It becomes a bit like telling someone who is dyslexic that they are hugely stupid and could never become an Oxbridge chair."

Can I refer you to the case of Eamonn Duffy, professor of History at Magdelene College Cambridge, who was cerainly considered hopelessly stupid and illiterate by his erstwhile school in Birmingham. "Dyslexic" is a euphemism used for that nowadays. I happen to know about this because I happen to be acqainted both with his very ancient teacher of history at school and at least two of his more recent pupils. His writings have changed the way mediaeval and Tudor history are now talked about.

If Mary thinks this might cause embarrassment to him, she will of course ignore it.

Paulo

[Eileen]

it would be more humane in every way to just get rid of these evil-doing doors and hire, as HUW said, doormen/doorwomen instead...
I have to say the only time you see doormen in the USA is at swanky hotels or way-upscale apartment/condo buildings, but it would give employment to a lot of people and the person-to person situation would be appreciated by many people I think.

[anon]

And "Our boys are being blown up in the Middle East. Just like me. Can't you hack it?"

[anon]

I don't think they need the training. I think they need to be told "Do you know what a Chair is?"

[doggerel]

I have a dear friend who has been reduced to tears on more than one occasion by the door system at the University Library in Cambridge.
Following major surgery, she finds the revolving door too heavy to push. But she has been publicly humiliated by the desk staff, who have scolded her for pushing the disabled door button although not in a wheel chair.
Proper training in customer service for the desk staff would be beneficial.
Also, they should be trained by being put in a wheelchair for half a day. And by simulating other disabilities (eg having one arm tied behind their backs). This includes those who design the systems.

[abc]

I don't think it's the speed. One can always skip to the other pavement. "Oh, watch out!" response. It is probably more to do with whether one would pick a supervisor who said he runs? Would there be much in common, or could it be a physical hindrance in the end, because realistically he or she is passionate about running and his or her own physicality is utmost. He or she might always undermine someone who did not think along the same lines. Obviously, the same prejudice could be done in pure intellectual terms...the tortoise won the race in the end...It becomes a bit like telling someone who is dyslexic that they are hugely stupid and could never become an Oxbridge chair. That judgement could be made too in this type of scenario.

Comments?

[Legal Eagle]

They have recently installed some doors just such as these at my Cambridge college (Selwyn)! I will agree with Mary that they are a royal pain in the arse (or, as the case may be, shoulder).

However, I think that any slight reduction in the speed with which I can race around college is compensated for in enabling the few disabled students that we can accommmodate to enjoy something of the independence that the rest of us all take so much for granted.

I know I would have found going to university at all an impossibly daunting task were I in such a position, and my only hope is that these new-fangled doors serve in some way to give effect to the purpose of the legislation which is the reason for their installation (whatever that may be; any suggestions?)

[Tony Francis]

From the scehdule of the Union Pacific Railroad, April 26, 1970:
"Any person who, because of mental, physical or other disability, is incapable of properly caring for himself or herself, will be received as a passenger, ONLY when accompanied by a competent attendent."
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Pacific_Railroad
Of course, this was at the nadir of US passenger traffic. The UP's famed City trains (City of Los Angeles, City of Denver, City of San Francisco, etc.) had been lumped into one train called pejoratively, the "City of Everywhere". Amtrak (read US government) took over in May, 1971:
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amtrak
Their first brochures dropped the "disabled persons" reference, although they didn't mention making any accomodations, either. They did mention they would try to make meals compatible with deitary needs. By 1973, they were inviting people to write letters to "make things better". Concerning the ills of passenger rail travel see (Peter Lyon "To Hell in a Day Choach"):
http://www.antiqbook.com/boox/reb/05126.shtml
I read this in junior high school, and thought it one of the best books ever. I re-read it about 4 years ago - the tone of the author is pretty hysterical. Why buy it? You can still read it for free courtesy of the Wichita State U. library. Still, those old streamliners were a pretty cool way to travel. Too bad they are gone.

[Lux Aeterna]

Mind you, it's the lack of joined up thinking. I'm reminded of a 4 year old university (no, not Cambridge!) building I visit where the corridors were clearly designed to be *just* wide enough for 2 standard wheelchairs to pass. Then someone else came along and hung big fire extinguishers all down the walls . . .

[Mary]

Dear Huw Chance, I think I am being a little more nuanced than you imagine... I am pointing to the superficiality of some of this apparent access-friendly legislation. As I said at the end of my post, when you have got through these doors, you can't actually get anywhere if you need further help: the Museum is upstairs and the lift access is via another entrance; the library itself has not been fitted with any form of electronic opening, nor any offices...
Should they be? Well -- do we really think that EVERY door should be kitted out like this? Andwhat then when the mechanisms go wrong, as sure as anything they will....?

There is also a conflict here between Disability Righhts and Health/Safety Legislation. It is one thing to be able to push a button to getinto the building, but Hand S would ideally have all mobility impaired people reporting to reception and not being allowed upstairs unless there was a trained evac chair operator on the premises...Err?

[Huw Chance]

I find this article and many of the comments just mindblowing for 2008.
Is Mary Beard really suggesting that these doors aimed at increasing access for all are not needed?. Maybe you could get a doorman? obviously a man, because of those big heavy doors...this kind of writing in a quality paper is beyond belief. I am troubled by such an out of touch attitude, by an educated individual. I am, as you may have gathered someone who may be more comfortable using the button, rather than waiting for Mary to offer me assistance.

[BGreen]

I'm currently cramming for dissertation deadline in the very same Faculty of Classics and have actually found the doors to be fantastic! They take such an effort to open that you are now forced to pause and think if you really WANT to go in. Library use was once flippant, but now it takes COMMITMENT.

[Tony Francis]

Braille, in general, is necessary in most operating rooms, so the surgeons can figure out where they are. In medicine, defamation of one doctor by the others is standard of care. At least that is the way it was when I was practicing spinal surgery. Lawyers are a little more reticent about saying things about each other - that is until the liquor starts flowing. That is why the court houses in the US close down at 4:30 PM. The bars open at 5:00 PM. (You didn't hear this here!) I don't know if bars in the US have Braille. Everyone is too blitzed to notice.

[PL]

In sizeable blocks of text, sans-serif fonts (e.g. the Ariel mandated by your busybodies) are harder to read than ordinary body-text. Sans-serif is fine for captions, titles, etc., but in quantity it wearies the eye (which serifs aid by correcting its tendency to prolong lines and by supplying horizontal strokes to move it along). Much empirical evidence confirms this.
Another justification for the use of sans-serif is having to print very small in a low-resolution medium-- e.g. online. Nevertheless, why not try an edition or two of this blog in a seriffed font-- say, Times? The result might be a pleasant surprise.
Mandating 14-point Ariel on handouts for sight-impaired students is downright perverse.

[alice]

It tends to be viewed as bad practice for doctors, lawyers, vets etc to launch formal complaints against each other. There is a code of recognised conduct between certain professionals and practioners. They may gossip about market viability (and if you are secure with your client that doesn't matter) but it is rare to issue a formal complaint.

[adq]

Most able-bodied people are in some shape or form disabled.

[Deirdre]

I work in an industrial environment. H&S is a big issue in factories. At first, both I and the other directors thought, "What a waste of time and money", and "More government interference."
But then we had a spate of minor accidents, plus one more serious one which involved a follow-up by HSE. We became aware of the Corporate Manslaughter Act. That concentrated our minds.
We carried out thorough and deep-seated reviews of all practices and work-place mehtods.
We felt a lot better when it was all done, the Accident Book hasn't been used for over a year, and the workforce have a lot more confidence and respect in their management.
So do see H&S as part of a bigger picture.
I notice that CU is advertising for a Head of H&S. They need someone good.
Part of the problem in a big, publicly funded institution, is remoteness of decision-makers from both the ultimate clients, and the funding.
Sounds like these decisions were made in precisely these circumstances.
One can but go through the proper channels to make one's views known.

[adq]

The key thing with disability is to keep with it because, as with anything, the more you do, the better you get at it. Like shitty exams.

[Shocker]

I go to Napier U, which is in Edinburgh and located up the hill at the old Craiglochart Hospital (that institution of famed homosexual first firld war poets). It is a Business School now, so I cannot use my real name here. Anyhow, these self same doors have been installed there at the student entrance but have been sensibly accompanied by the more normal push and shove variety. Here is the point - if there is a regulation required to assure compliance to whatever weird and wonderful byzantine laws that we accept as normal, then its acceptance is always in addition to and not instead of the standard common sense option.

Which, when you think about it, is appropriate for a business school.
Thank God its not a political science building, eh?

[adq]

And then Mary Beard and other more capable chairs have to decide the spectrum for the department and/or the college.

[Annette Laing]

While I was teaching American students in London this summer, an old ankle injury flared up. I was in some pain, and carried a stick. I was very grateful to be living and working in a UCL building with a nice modern lift. However, every morning that I taught, to get to my classroom, I had to shove my way through a set of narrow double doors that inevitably bashed my shoulder. Two points here: First, I learned to walk a mile in the shoes of people with disabilities, and realized that, no, I did not wish to have to smile ingratiatingly at helpers: I wanted to be able to open the bloody doors myself. Second, Britain is full of sado-masochistic experiences in the form of doors. All the difficult doors I encountered were modern, so I see no cultural vandalism taking place with their replacement. And, Mary, may I gently suggest that perhaps you haven't seen many disabled people in your library precisely because it's so inaccessible. I've had a substantial number of blind students and students in wheelchairs in my classes in the U.S. Their wonderful independence is in marked contrast to my memories of the brave girl who attended my 1970s comprehensive in a wheelchair, and who had an aide with her at all times to navigate the many stairs. The rest of us were polite and even helpful, but socially, we treated her as an alien.

[adq]

And what one manages and what one actually did is not really about what other people tell you you did, in disability terms, it is about knowing what you did and knowing what you can do and how far one's individual spectrum reaches and that is about ability. No one can determine that and it's not really about up and down. It is about who you are, ultimately, as a person, and what you think your potential is.

[adq]

Needs vary Mary. A lot of it is about resilence. The Einstein example is a good one because he, of course, was thought to have had autism/ aspergers which is a really impossible syndrome to access. I see it all the time at my school. In mental health cases, tough titty isn't a solution because before you know it there has been a death, either through suicide or harm to someone else in the community. It's like actively watching a child cross the road and not shouting out to someone. It really becomes a test as to management ability. Some people have all the strings to their bow, others lose some along the way up.

[Xjy]

How about a DIY solution. Get some of the girls together to orchestrate a "student prank". Remove the bloody doors, and then signpost all the impossible lobby exits with "NOT this way to..." or "access denied" or "tough titty, cripple" - all in Braille

You've been had by the Tom Lehrer/Werner von Braun principle:
" 'I make it go up,
Who cares where it comes down -
That's not my department'
Says Werner von Braun."

[Seán]

Why haven't you created a "society" where you discreetly ask the student "Can you read this?" instead of forcing them to say for the umpteenth time in their lives "Excuse me, I can't read this".

It's not about allowing cripples to be cripples.

[Tony Francis]

The wiki article on Quia Emptores is about 95% complete. There are a lot of typos to correct. If you want to add something intelligent, please do so.
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quia_emptores

[Tony Francis]

We went through all this in the US twenty years ago. Every building, and I mean every building has access for everyone, including elevators for wheelchairs (and the blind). I went to the Chemistry Colloquium at WSU last week. There was a deaf Chinese grad student there who having the lecture translated to him in sign language. There were two girls who were tag teaming with the signing. I don't know if it was in Chinese or English, but I imagine it was the latter. The girls were really into dramatic lip-syncing the lecture. One was serious. The other one got to yawning, in between pathos and over-acting, then got to laughing. It was really entertaining watching her. I asked my old teachers what was up with all this. I seems laughing girl had taken a chemistry class about a year ago. No one knew about the other one. Concerning the lecture, it was by one of the Rice University members of the team that won the Nobel Prize for Bucky Balls:
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fullerenes
They were using these for imaging in MRIs. Bucky balls are out, but long carbon tubes with gadolinium ions inside are the rage:
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_nanotube
They selectively collect in cancers, then the patient gets a radio-frequency (slightly larger than standing in front of an AM radio), and the cancer heats up to 43 degree C, and is destoryed. No side effects, whatsoever. They are treating prostate cancer with this in Germany. None of the quantum mechanics predicted this, so they are looking for a mathematician to work out the theory.
Dearest Foska:
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_door_operator
One of my old professors had gotten involved as an expert in a patent lawsuit with a Canadian drug company suing and American company. Dealing with lawyers had soured him on the process. It is true: dealing with lawyers if like handling rattlesnakes; if you don't know what you are doing, you will get bit all the time. If you know what you are doing, you still get bit, just not as often. The facts seemed to indicate the Canadians were pissing up a rope on this one. He concurred.

[Eileen]

the point I was trying to make in my previous post is sometimes regulations are so broad they become absurd... I am fascinated by the signs in braille next to the doors of operating rooms that say "(this is) the operating room"

[Mary]

Eileen - do report back. I shall be in the US next week..and I wil keep a sharper eye out than usual, m

[Michael Bulley]

If the laws against stealing were rescinded tomorrow, it would be nice to think that theft would not increase, but parliament is unlikely to risk relying on the general goodness of people. Similarly, if the political will is that buildings such as libraries should be usable independently by people in wheelchairs, then, since you couldn't rely on all those people responsible for such buildings to make the arrangements voluntarily, legal measures have to be taken. If the job is done badly, some inspector can make a decision about it and require that things be done properly. How people should behave towards each other is independent of all that.

[Mary]

OK Foska.. you point to an 'unclarity".
Yes they are rubbish doors.. and I am sure that that does not necessarily follow from making doors 'disabled access'..but in this case it does.

My bigger worry is the tick-box nature of this exercise... make sure we have 'compliant doors'.. even though no one who could not open the previous doors could do anything more now than enter the lobby. (The lift to our museum is ,as I said, accessible by a different set of -- unelectronic -- doors.) This disguises the issue, not solves it.

And.. do we really think that electronic doors are a good substitute for a culture of helping anyone who needs...those with too many books/weak arms/limited mobility or whatever?

m

[Eileen]

I'll be in several hotels during the next week or so and I'll take look for those braille signs, but as I recall they are located next to the standard printed text info which is typically placed on the middle of the interior of the room's door. So as I blind person I guess you are expected to know. Reminds me years ago I took a friend to small university museum- the label on the glass entry door said "no dogs allowed, except seeing-eye" or something like that. My non pc friend said: why would a blind person want to come in here anyway??

[SW Foska]

Mary, I read through to the end but I still have problems with the reasoning.
It seems to me there are several ways of classifying doors.
Schema One: a) rubbish doors; b) other doors.
Schema Two: a) ugly doors ('look quite ghastly'); b) other doors.
Schema Three: a) disabled-access doors; b) other doors.
You obviously have some rubbish ugly disabled-access doors. They fit into category a) in all three Schemas.
But are they rubbish or ugly BECAUSE they are disabled-access doors? No! Yet your piece implies this.

Mary

Not so long ago I abandoned a PhD at the University of Birmingham (UK)because I could no longer get through to their postgraduate computer room through the multiple fire doors that blocked the way. I am physically not strong, but most or many of them had to be scraped or kicked along the floor. In the same building, award-winning and notoriously disgraceful, I tried to teach English to Chinese students. The windows had to be kept closed to keep the pigeons out, not that it was possible to close or open them anyway. A pity about the lifts, which were under reconstruction, yet again. There were toilets, but you had to search for them. Even the room numbering was confusing. And there were security keypads on the last doors, but they kept changing the numbers without telling us, or any means of telling us, so that even if I had braved the building, I still could not get in. Once or twice I waited for a braver co-student to help me, and he/she usually did. The distress I felt took me to a local doctor, who diagnosed premature senile dementia, well perhaps he was right, but it doesn't seem to matter here in Africa.

Paulo

[Mary]

Look - I dont know how many of you have read my post through to the end, without getting too cross (Katharine Edgar had, acknowledge). But there is a bigger point here -- about whether legislation solves a problem or lets everyone off the hook (yes..the law looks after this; but come on guys, we CANT rely on the law to solve this problem..to judge who needs legal protection and who doesnt...we have to rely on heightened humanity to do that).

OK - take an example. Suppose, as happened to me, I have a sight impaired student. Should I already have catered by him/her by doing all my handouts (as we are now instructed) in 14 point ariel (which s/he couldnt read anyway)..and so destroying the planet with all that extra paper. Or do I rely on him/her to say "I cant read this" and then spend a little more time doing a readable version in 24 point...?? Surely the latter. And surely we should be creatimg a community in which saying "I cant read this" is OK.

Needs vary... and, as some readers picked up, those needs are not necessarily best satisfied by a one size fits all legal policy.

And noone has explained to me how the blind are helped by US hotel notices...

[Tony Francis]

http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_with_Disabilities_Act_of_1990
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disability_rights_movement
You can save this fine wiki article on disability by removing the delete tag. Otherwise, it will be gone in 24 hours!
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piss_on_pity

[adq]

One also forgets the other disability. Albert Einstein in your fac.

[adq]

You need a pretty big wheelchair to scare off the runners. That's an idea. Let's all get one.

[xjy]

Who designed this in the first place? Was there any review procedure? Any feedback?
Surely refitting a building for access needs an overall approach, with a walkaround (wheelaround) by potential users as part of the process?

As it is it sounds as if the best thing is to moan as loud as you can. Obviously the doors must be fully automatic, obviously any stairs without nearby lifts must be fitted with wheelchair lifts. Otherwise we're back to the old days when one had one's servant/porter with one at all times, pushing one and carrying one and transporting one's books in a wheelbarrow.

[Anon2]

It could be worse -- as Anon1 points out, there are similar doors in Newnham's long corridor. THREE sets of them. In a row. Not only do they open very slowly, the sensor doesn't always work and trying to open one manually requires the full weight of the average Newnhamite pulling on it before it deigns to open. On top of this, once the said door has opened far enough for the said average Newnhamite to slip (admittedly, impatiently) through, the other door decides to open as well, just at the point where one's head wants to be passing through the space that the other door is now also trying to occupy.

AND all three sets of doors are between the college library, and Clough/Kennedy/Peile. Two of which are probably only there as (no doubt regulation-dictated) 'fire doors'. Because clearly if there's a fire all the wheelchair users will have patiently congregated in the buttery corridor to use these annoyingly slow electronic doors and not in any other part of college without them. Yes, there should be a better system, but where is it? Though I'm not a wheel-chair user (yet) I have problems opening the other *very* heavy doors in college too due to joint and muscle problems but at least they don't try to hit me in the face on the way through!

[Hussein]

I'm Sure we all agree that provisions for disabled people are a necessary part of building planning.

I feel, though, some people are misrepresenting Prof. Beard's views. I'm with Robert here, this is not an attack on disabled provisions but an attack on poorly thought out ones.

I must add though that it might be hard to understand the thrust of the argument when one has never visited the classics faculty. The doors in question really do only provide access to the lobby, from where there really are not many options that do not involve stairs or more doors.

[David]

Shouldn't we all hold doors, gates open for each other anyway? Disabled or not?

[Robert]

No I don't agree with Sean here. As I read this blog it is in sympathy with access provision for everyone, but, it is argued, that provision should be well thought through. I was reminded by this blog of a recent experience at the dreaded Heathrow T5 where I found the same sort of muddled architectural hazards. Any movement there needs using lifts or escalators (many weren't working when I was there). But if you take the wrong lift (like the one to the Heathrow express instead of the underground), the planning is so bad that you have to go back to where you started and try and plan a different route. The classics faculty sounds the same - if you go through this new arrangement, does it lead you to the upstairs cast gallery for example? - or do you have to go out and find a different route.

[Ann]

I agree with Seán, try being in a wheelchair, or even just on crutches for one day. You've done as much for Guantanamo Bay prisoners.

The fact that they've equipped one set of doors isn't a problem, the fact that they haven't fixed the rest is. It's not that we shouldn't be nice and hold the door open for people; that's not the point. The point is to give the handicapped control over as much of their environment as possible. Having independence is incredibly important.

And may I suggest you carry your books in a bag or backpack? That ought to solve your problem. If you still have too many, maybe some kind person will take pity on you and help you with the door. If you need help it's their job to help you...as a matter of course...isn't it?

[Katharine Edgar]

"But surely, in most cases, it would be better, more efficient, cheaper and (frankly) more ideologically sound to change hearts and minds "

Since when was it cheap or efficient to change hearts and minds? Surely installing machinery is way easier.

[Lux Aeterna]

What to say? I'm able bodied but I regularly push a wheelchair. The simple point here is that the doors should be fully automatic; that way, all anyone has to do is approach.

The wider point is that a lot of places are poorly accessible to anyone who is fully ambulant. In another side of my life I regularly push a child in a pram; again struggling with doors is a nightmare.

Yes, there is too much form filling and box ticking, but there is a real problem that needs to be addressed.

[Seán]

Why don't you try a morning or an afternoon in a wheelchair and see just how much fun it is to wait around for someone to help you.

If the doors take too long to open get the nice chaps back in and get them to speed it up.

Your poorly thought out rant should be followed by an apology.

[Michael Bulley]

Those inner doors that swung both ways: did they pose any problems for users who were only heterosexual?

[Anon1]

Could say similar things about the swish electronic doors recently installed in Newnham. Wheelchair-friendly push-buttons to open (very slowly)...but to get to the doors in the first place you have to go down a long corridor with decidedly UNfriendly doors. And the buttons are very difficult to manoeuver to in a wheelchair. Good designing, chaps.

[Susanna]

It's not the fault of the legislation - as well as of the disabled persons - if the system is unconvenient to use. The mechanics are simply ill designed and not easy to use, there should be a better system to apply. Quickly working, when you approach the door with your arms full of books, robust in the sense of degrading gracefully, ie still working when electricity is down.
I know this subject from accessible websites. People go on discussing why we need accessible websites and what we have to pay for it. They insist on accessibility beeing another word for ugly stuff nobody wants to see. That's simply wrong: accessibility has to be planned and implemented only by the needs it has to fulfill, not blindly following the words of the law prescribing it. Only this way it works and - alas - doesn't cost too much.

[Kath]

I remember being annoyed when similar doors were installed where I work. The doors became impossibly heavy and, to make it worse, there were a couple of cases when the mechanism opening the doors came loose and either dangled or fell. But I've become used to the buttons (I can operate them with my knee at speed when carrying large piles of books) and it's been worth to see the independence of a number of students - not just those in wheelchairs but those with arthritis and other physical problems.

As well as following your blog, I've been following the blog of a Canadian writer, Elizabeth McClung. I first became interested in her blog because of her accounts of fencing epee. In the past couple of years she has become dependent on carers and a wheelchair but tries to live as independently as she can. If you look at her blog http://elizabethmcclung.blogspot.com/ you may see things from a different point of view. She's currently on holiday in Japan with her partner. This post, written shortly after she started using a wheelchair, gives a sense of what it's like to be the wheelchair user going shopping:
http://elizabethmcclung.blogspot.com/2007/03/does-bc-victoria-transit-hate.html

[Francesca Sapsford]

Mary,

I understand that these types of doors can sometimes be a little annoying, but it's not just people in wheelchairs who have problems with doors. As an extremely frequent user of the Classics Faculty I'm really happy that finally I won't start every day with agonizing pain in my wrists and looking a bit stupid as I try to open those doors - the quick pull and then using my foot to open the door the rest of the way. I think perhaps being "compliant" will help more users of the Faculty than you think.

[Jackie]

Didn't you mention in an earlier blog about the use of stiles and 'kissing gates' in the countryside? This is a bit like that, all style and no common sense. Perhaps we should start a new political party 'The Party of Common Sense'? Unfortunately its in very short supply at the moment, so very few members!