Travel

Best response by a hotel when told by a chair user that her bed was too high happened in Dallas back in 1996, when I attended a White House sponsored conference of Pw/Ds.

The hotel hosting this event had just signed a consent decree with the Dept. of Justice to avoid being sued over ADA violations, and had done major, major work to make themselves accessible. The event was the trail run/debut of the revamped facilities, and hotel management were on high alert to make sure there weren't any complaints from the 200 people with disabilities who were there for this event.

One of the of the conference organizers was a chair user from the National Council on Disability (NCD). As one of the hoo-hahs there, was given one of the hotel's best suites, and had invited a bunch of people up to her room for a get together right after everyone checked in.

Just before people arrived for the meet and greet, the woman from NCD had discovered that one of the accessibility problems the hotel had failed to correct was the bed height. The four poster, solid oak, king sized bed in her room was lovely, but way too high to allow her to transfer, so right before everyone was about to arrive in her suite, she put in a call to management to come and take the mattress off the frame to solve the problem.