Disabled woman leaves Russia because of accessability issues, runs into accessable issues in USA
I was cleaning out my Firefox tabs when I realized that I never got around to writing about the September 28 "Heart of the Hood" column about something that seemed tailor-made to piss hettie_lz off.
Let us count the ways. A Russian woman with a disability that severely limits movement moved to America with her mother, because Motherland isn't very good at accommodating people with these kinds of disabilities. Things were going alright for a while. But in April 2015, the elevator at an L.A. Fitness heath club location where she went swimming broke - which is a problem, since she needed the elevator to get to the locker room. And while the chain initially promised to fix the problem ASAP, one year later, they seem to be in no hurry to do it.
Lebedeva has waited for more than a year for the elevator to be repaired. She is still a member, but her account is on hold because even though La Fitness provided a temporary accommodation, it doesn’t work at all for her. The shower by the pool isn’t private and, when she went there recently, it didn’t work at all.
“I simply couldn’t shower,” said Lebedeva. “it’s like a sick joke to me.”
“I have a right to equal access,” said Lebedeva. “i shouldn’t have to wait that long in order to access the same locker room and showers used by other members of La Fitness.”
The full article is available at this PDF (it starts on Page 3).
Since then, I have been checking "Heart of the Hood" for updates. Nothing so far.
Let us count the ways. A Russian woman with a disability that severely limits movement moved to America with her mother, because Motherland isn't very good at accommodating people with these kinds of disabilities. Things were going alright for a while. But in April 2015, the elevator at an L.A. Fitness heath club location where she went swimming broke - which is a problem, since she needed the elevator to get to the locker room. And while the chain initially promised to fix the problem ASAP, one year later, they seem to be in no hurry to do it.
Lebedeva has waited for more than a year for the elevator to be repaired. She is still a member, but her account is on hold because even though La Fitness provided a temporary accommodation, it doesn’t work at all for her. The shower by the pool isn’t private and, when she went there recently, it didn’t work at all.
“I simply couldn’t shower,” said Lebedeva. “it’s like a sick joke to me.”
“I have a right to equal access,” said Lebedeva. “i shouldn’t have to wait that long in order to access the same locker room and showers used by other members of La Fitness.”
The full article is available at this PDF (it starts on Page 3).
Since then, I have been checking "Heart of the Hood" for updates. Nothing so far.