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Synagogues are starting to remove stumbling blocks for people with disabilities

There is rarely no solution to accessibility issues

July 8, 2024 11:01
United Synagogue's Accessibility Symbols_ShabbatLift (Photo: Tatiana von Beelen)
The United Synagogue has created symbols for a new accessibility guide to its synagogues (Photo: Tatiana von Beelen)
2 min read

The other day, the rabbinic couple at our shul generously invited me and others to Shabbat lunch. “We have a minhag (custom),” the rebbetzin announced at the table. “Everyone must share either a good news story or a complaint. Complaints are especially encouraged!”

Not being one to gripe, initially I was nonplussed by the invitation to kvetch, but once my fellow guests had gamely chipped in on such familiar pain-points as the weather and communal bureaucracy, I found an apt topic for a sociable whinge, with a silver lining: accessibility.

Accessibility has been a lifelong question for me. Born with cerebral palsy, I have always had challenges with movement and stamina, which recently became more acute as I developed osteo-arthritis. Two years ago, I started using a wheelchair to mobilise outside home, which greatly increased my understanding of how easily we take access for granted.

As I explained at the Shabbat lunch, to live with a mobility impediment is to encounter the world as an obstacle course. Nor are all the challenges obvious: people often ask how I cope with stairs, but due to my faulty sense of balance, an open space with no handrail is much more difficult to traverse.