When your wheelchair is called Karma, you need a sense of humour

Ned moved into a wheelchair four years ago when his legs stopped working. Our life and travel adventures have continued with me as pusher and Ned as sitter.

It came as a surprise to me how many people have pushed a wheelchair short or longer term, often helping elderly parents. And grandchildren love to push … for a while. But I found that people, especially in medical settings, often talk to me instead of talking to Ned, who is more than capable of speaking for himself.

Ned’s chair is a light, snug, collapsible number (with the cruelly ironic brand name, Karma). We’ve had great travel excursions in Australia and abroad. But it’s remarkable how attention to detail – or the absence of it – can make or break a wheelchair adventure. Architects, developers, town planners and legislators would do well to take a spin in our wheels.

Footpaths vary. The approaches to some pedestrian crossings are on too steep a kerb, requiring a wheelchair half-circle dance which allows the larger back wheels to navigate the slope without tipping Ned out. And sometimes the surface itself lets you down.

At a Queensland dinosaur experience in Winton, the level concrete path ended abruptly and we then navigated a few metres of thick gravel, which was like pulling the wheelchair through a primordial swamp.

But our biggest adventures have been with public accessible toilets. These places often hold a special grudge against wheelchair users: not all, but quite a few.

There are those with a small step onto the tiles, just too high for small front wheelchair wheels: not impossible to navigate but requiring the wheelchair half-circle dance to get over the lip, then another slower confined half-circle dance to face the right way around once inside.

Automatic loo doors can be excruciatingly slow – which has callous disregard for urgency and privacy. I understand these sliding doors need to be slow but when you’re in very public view until the last inch – such as some accessible toilets at the Sydney Opera House – both urgency and privacy issues arise. If by chance the door doesn’t lock, then one is on the throne in full view for the diners, a disheartening experience for all concerned. Perhaps a screen or an angle?