OPINION: Being disabled in Medford

By Kate Ryan

What is it like to be disabled in Medford?

Well, that is a difficult question to answer, because disabilities are so incredibly varied and so are people themselves. It would be like asking what food is like in Medford — we have everything!

However, as it happens, I also have (nearly) everything, meaning that my disabilities fall into a broad range of categories. A genetic disability means that I have chronic pain and use a wheelchair part time, and that genetic lottery ticket also ensures that I have a host of other rather unpleasant physical conditions. I also have a number of invisible disabilities; although my main one is autism, I also have various learning and mental health disabilities.

I have lived in Medford for over 10 years. I started in South Medford, then moved to a public housing building on Canal Street, and then my lucky number came up and I got Section 8, a federal housing program for low-income and disabled people. I was fortunate enough to be able to remain in West Medford.*

I stay remarkably busy and active for someone with my limitations, and I love living where so many things are so close by. Wright’s Pond, various parks, and the Mystic River Reservation are all very accessible. Unfortunately, many other places are not.

For example, the entire Middlesex Fells (2,575 acres!) has not a single place where I can go to use my wheelchair. And the sidewalks… Well, let’s just say that I hope you drive slowly, as I very often end up in the street because of tree roots, or cracked or broken sidewalks that block my path.

I can deal with that, though. I can drive to other accessible places. The West Medford commuter rail station has wonderful new ramps that enable me to zip onto the train and be in Boston in 10 minutes, for example.

What makes me sad is that I often run into problems here that could be fixed so easily, but are not. I do not think it is right that I should have to fight to be included here, but I often do.

Probably the most egregious example was last November’s election. For various reasons, I use the electronic voting machine. I have been doing so for a few years, and there has not been a single time when I could just use it easily. It is always a process and takes at least 45 minutes before I can submit my vote.

Unfortunately, unlike in previous times, after I finally got the machine going and it submitted all my choices, the machine would not print. The clerk could not fix it. I had the number for a voting hotline for people with disabilities in my phone, (because the disability community had been publicizing the number and telling everyone to be prepared for voting obstacles) and I called them.

The hotline talked to City Hall, City Hall sent down a very nice person who attempted to fix it, but failed. I was assured (I am always assured) that they had all worked just this morning/very recently, but the end result was…. I could not vote. I was very upset over this.

They asked me if I would let a cop help me vote. I said no. Luckily, a friend in my neighborhood came up and helped me to fill in the ballot, but it was humiliating. Everyone else could vote so easily. As I sat and waited for help, I wondered if they knew how envious I was.

One thing that many nondisabled people may not understand is not just one annoyance. It is one little thing after another after another, and they build up, and stew and fester inside you.

You probably think that you are the first person to ever come up with the line ‘Hey, you got a license for that thing?’ in regards to my wheelchair, but you aren’t. I have heard that line so many times I have lost count.

So although I know that I’m supposed to react with grace and patience, sometimes my patience is just done for the day. Sometimes I cannot find the words to be polite. Sometimes I want to go about my own business without catering to somebody who thinks he has come up with the greatest joke ever.

Or when people touch my wheelchair – ugh! I literally feel slimy, especially when it is someone I don’t like. Wheelchairs are considered part of the person’s body, and you shouldn’t touch people’s chair without their explicit permission. But because I spend the majority of my time with people who know that, it is really jarring to encounter people who don’t.

As a New Englander, I think it is genetic that I hate asking for help. But I have to ask for help all the time. The state sends out people to help me with medical care and housekeeping, and I hate the fact that I cannot do these things independently.

I do not want people to see me as special. My needs are not special. They are the exact same things that anyone else needs. I just need a bit more. A bit more patience, a bit more room, a bit more time. (OK, and a lot more medical care for the things that my body has decided it will not do.)

When the Medford library opened in 2022, I was excited at how incredibly accessible it was. Coincidentally, I became a wheelchair user in the time between when the old one was demolished and the new one was opened.

As someone who had gone to Mystic maker space events for years, I was especially excited about the maker space. Unfortunately, the chairs and table selected for the maker space do not work for me. The tables are too high and, although I can transfer to the chairs easily, the chairs are also high and on wheels, which is just plain dangerous for me.

I asked the librarians if they could put an accessible table in there. Someone in charge said that I could just ask for one when I got there and they would happily bring it in. I said that I did not want to ask for one, that was embarrassing. They said that I could email or call ahead of time and they would have one in there.

But I don’t want to have to email or call. Nobody else has to do so. I want to be able to use the maker space on a whim, and I don’t want furniture to have to be moved around especially for me when I go there.

The maker space knows about this issue, but nothing has been done. It has been years. I love to do crafts, but I don’t remember the last time I used the maker space.

Sometimes the problems are not physical, but attitudinal. I have been told that I am not really autistic because I am mostly verbal, have a college degree, and I am “nothing like their kid.”

I absolutely refuse to disclose the intimate details and difficulties of my life in order to convince people like this that I am or have been like their child. Yet, at the same time, I have been chastised for my social skills, for my blunt way of stating facts and calling out wrongs.

It always strikes me as kind of weird that I have so much paperwork related to my autism (dating back to the mid-80s) and people don’t believe that I’m autistic. Yet, when I say I am gay, which I have no paperwork for, they have no problem with that.

One thing that I absolutely hate since my body decided that walking was not a full-time thing anymore is that people see the wheelchair and they think that disability is my only identity. It isn’t! I have interests and skills in many places.

It’s just that instead of a full-time job in an office, my full-time job is in my body and consists of keeping it alive. My body and brain mean that I live in a different world than nondisabled people, but I also live in the same city.

You don’t have to find the third dislocation of my day hilarious like I do, but you do have to move out of the way and leave the aisles clear. You do have to understand that my communication abilities are different than yours. You do have to respect disabled people, both as a minority group with its own culture and mores and as individual people.

As the saying goes, we are the only minority that you can join at any time and that everyone will eventually join, if they live long enough. So maybe if you do not feel like respecting me…… at least respect your future self.

* Although given the federal administrations promises of drastic cuts to the federal programs that keep me alive and housed, such as Medicaid and Section 8, I honestly do not know how long I will be able to stay here.

Kate Ryan lives in West Medford and has been a disability advocate for over 20 years. She can be reached at kateryan160@gmail.com.