Assessing accessibility in the skies
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KANSAS CITY, MO (KCTV) — A Kansas City man is using the platform he was given to make Kansas City and the world more inclusive.
Wesley Hamilton is a hero in the most recent season of Netflix’s Queer Eye.
He now owns a gym and non-profit called “Disabled But Not Really,” and speaks across the country about issues related to people with disabilities. With all that traveling, he’s realized airports and airlines have a lot of work to do.
“I believe it’s time to start speaking up because if I’m paying the same amount of money like everybody else, then I should be flying as convenient as most people,” Hamilton said.
The Queer Eye hero is paralyzed from the waist down after surviving a shooting. Yet he’s in better shape than ever before.
He travels around the world doing motivational speaking and sharing his personal story.
He’s been to a lot of airports lately and has documented a lot of unpleasant experiences, starting at security. He has to lift himself up with his arms over and over to be patted down by TSA agents he says often aren’t trained to touch someone like him, like searching his shoes for example… and getting them back on.
“Because my ankles don’t move the way you want them to, my feet don’t move the way you want them to,” he said.
Then there’s boarding the plane. His own wheelchair goes in cargo under the plane. The airlines supply one to get him down the aisle where he would prefer to transfer himself to his seat.
“No one is trained to actually lift me up in a safe way to actually get me in my chair when there’s no armrest to be raised up,” Hamilton explained.
He says a flight attendant once asked if he was traveling alone. He was and usually is.
“She says so in case of an emergency what would you do? And I thought to myself, aren’t you supposed to help me? And my second thought was, if this armrest went up, I could literally hop out and crawl on the floor and get to the exit,” he said.
And then, there’s the issue of bathrooms.
“I don’t control my bladder, but I do know how to keep it under control. But if I’m moving, moving, moving, it’s just one pressure point that can make me have an accident,” Hamilton said.
He can’t use an airplane lavatory at all.
“I can get on a 13-hour flight but how am I using the restroom? Where’s that at? And if I do have a device on, am I comfortable enough to give a bag of whatever to somebody? Where does that give me my dignity?”
Hamilton says he’d prefer to drive everywhere and avoid air travel altogether. But his flourishing business and dad duties make that impossible. He must fly.
“I understand wholeheartedly why certain measures are in place but how can we make it change? I mean it’s 2020, innovation is everywhere. You’re telling me there’s no renovation for this?”
Hamilton is on committee appointed by Mayor Quinton Lucas for issues related to the disabled community. He says the designers of the new KCI Airport are working to ensure the new airport is as inclusive as possible, but he hopes to spread awareness of the issue to airports and airlines around the world as well.
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