Word: wheelchair
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...title Ms. Wheelchair Wisconsin was awarded last week to the third-place contestant after the winner was forced to give back her crown and the first runner-up refused to take it. Why the pageant turmoil? Officials said Janeal Lee, 30, a scooter-dependent teacher with muscular dystrophy who can still walk about 50 feet a day, violated a rule against appearing in public out of her wheelchair. "Every year there are tasks I have to give up doing because of my disease," says Lee. "I guess when it progresses enough, I'd be able to enter [the contest] again...
...When we arrive, we often have to use the delivery entrance," he says. "On most trains there isn't space for wheelchairs, and we are put in the common area where other passengers put their luggage." Political will and injections of funding could smooth out most problems with public transport. Europe's rich heritage of old buildings throws up knottier problems. A survey last year by the office of Rome city councillor Ileana Argentin, 40, a lawyer with the genetic disease spinal amyotrophy, found that only 20% of public buildings in the city were fully accessible; wheelchair users could enter...
...There are a few places trying to make life easier, like the city of Arhus in Denmark. City authorities offer newly disabled Arhus residents wheelchair-accessible housing; if that's not possible, they get help in adapting their homes. Local trains are equipped with same-level access, space for wheelchairs and disabled-friendly toilets. A 2003 policy requires all new and renovated buildings to be accessible, and retailers are instructed by city building authorities on how to improve shop layouts for the disabled. "We are unrelenting when owners - both private and public - apply for building permission for buildings with public...
...they meet the requirements for accessibility. Our aim is to make Arhus a city for all." In Berlin, one new structure looks set to remain difficult for the disabled. The Holocaust memorial - a 19,000-sq-m installation of 2,700 concrete blocks - officially opens on May 10, but wheelchair users will find their visits tricky. Many of the blocks are spaced just 95 cm apart along paths with gradients of up to 25%; many wheelchair users can't navigate the corners, and they and other disabled people find the slopes too steep. "I want to be able to remember...
Instead, he was another kind of example. Once proud and private, John Paul showed a youth-obsessed world that illness and old age are not badges of shame. From a wheelchair, he gave audience after audience and celebrated Mass after public Mass, one of which was witnessed, with some awe, by Beverly Firmin of Augusta, Ga. "I was up close enough where I could see the drool just coming down," Firmin said, "... and I thought, 'How sad.' Then I thought, 'Really, how beautiful.' What a strong man it takes to let people see you in that condition...