We all live in a Disney submarine
Some time ago, Aussie comedian Adam Hills wrote a piece for Ouch exposing the alleged disablist philosophy of the, er, "Hillsy Corporation".
Now, obviously, I’ve got no idea which corporation Adam was talking about. None. At all. That devilishly cunning code was far too impenetrable for me.
Nevertheless, I was – for some reason - reminded of that article of his when I came across this news story a couple of weeks ago.
Disneyland’s Submarine Voyage (which first opened in 1959) has recently reopened as the “Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage”. Disney’s “imagineers” (pardon me for a moment while I flinch at that insult to the English language) couldn’t make the subs themselves wheelchair-accessible. Instead, they’ve filmed the “undersea voyage” and will be playing it on a plasma screen in “a theatre designed to represent an observation outpost”.
Which is great. They’ve thought about accessibility for all the ride’s visitors. Can’t knock that. Not in itself. But do they have to make such a song and dance about the fact that they’ve gone to the effort and expense of making something accessible when their legal obligations under the ADA in regard to that particular something were “a grey area”? Are we supposed to kiss their feet in gratitude?
The whole tone of that article implies (to me, at least) that Disney feel they should be patted on the back for what they’ve done. That they’ve done something really special. Something they could have got away without doing, were it not for their saintly understanding of the tragic truth that some of their frailer(paying) visitors can’t actually shin down spiral staircases.
Whereas, frankly, if I had to pay for admission to the park, I’d expect either the whole place to be accessible to me, or my admission fee to be discounted accordingly. I may be a crip, but my money’s as good as anyone else’s. Call me unreasonable but, if I’m paying full whack for entertainment, I don’t feel there’s any need for me to be grateful that I can actually access that entertainment. Surprised, possibly. But not grateful.
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Comments
THANK YOU for putting into words just the kind of thing I often think.
Some years ago, I used to put a lot of time and energy into advocating with video companies and so forth to put closed captions on more of their videos, partly by writing letters. When I was starting out, I heard all the usual advice that gets given to people who write advocacy letters. Namely, be polite, and ideally find something to thank them for first--including thanking them for whatever captions they do already. The idea being that if they don't get thanked once in a while, or otherwise hear something from the Deaf community, they'll think we just aren't interested in captions. Plus, of course, businesses are always more responsive to NICE requests sandwhiched by thanks for whatever they're already doing.
To this day, most of my advocacy letters still include a "thank you" somewhere. But I usually feel resentful that deaf people are supposed to express thanks for the little bit of access we get. I mean, hearing people don't write letters gushing in gratitude, "Thank you so much for including spoken dialogue in Gone with the Wind! The movie just wouldn't be the same without it!" So why, precisely, are WE supposed to do that?
Indeed.
There is a difference between being pleased and being grateful. It is courteous to thank people politely for making the effort to meet your needs, but there is no call to grovel and abase yourself.
The bottom line with something like an amusement park is profit. The more people can use the attractions, the higher the take.
You don't have to be a philanthropist to recognise that it makes good commercial sense to make what you're selling accessible to as many potential buyers as possible.
Given that we can safely assume that profit was the ultimate criterion in the decision to upgrade this ride, why do they feel the need to release the cost of said upgrade to the press?
When Joe and I were travelling north in British Columbia we stopped at Barkerville, a famous Canadian tourist stop. When we were entering I noticed that there was different pricing for people with disabilities. In fact it was around the same pricing as for a child. I was about to protest when it was explained to me that Barkerville was not fully accessible so they discounted the fare to cover only the portion of the site that was accessible. That, I thought was cool. Even cooler was that when we entered Barkerville (a ghost town from gold rush days) it had been raining and my wheelchair sunk into the earth and it was impossible to make our way through, they immediately and without question refunded our money and explained that after a few sunny days the earth was solid and there would be no difficulty with the wheelchair.
That is cool.
It seems Adam's stories of disablism by this company (though of course Mr Hills was probably talking about a completely different entity) are true. How the stories of their aledged appauling attitude to disbaled people aren't published across the world is beyond me.
I'm only glad that I already hate Disney because I won't have to throw any of their dvd's away because I already boycott them.