Wheelchair-Bound Teen Tries To Advocate For Accessibility, Gets Accused Of Stealing Instead

Disability discrimination isn’t always loud or obvious. Sometimes it disguises itself as a misunderstanding or a procedural concern. And on the odd occasion it gets even more disgraceful.

One teenager emailed a store to flag some accessibility issues with their aisle displays. The store called back, but instead of an apology, accusations started flying. The employee’s evidence was airtight, too. A wheelchair user had been seen in that store that week. That was it. That was the whole case.

Wheelchair users face a lot of difficulty on a daily basis, and people’s ableism only add to that struggle

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A teenage wheelchair user went to the shop with their mother, but the visit was made very difficult by inconsiderate product placement in the aisles

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The teen decided to complain to the store manager via email, making them aware of the situation

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But instead of an apology, the teenager was accused of shoplifting, but the accusation was coming from a branch they had never visited

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The only evidence the accusing store manager had was that the thief was also in a wheelchair

According to Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, people with disabilities make up the largest minority group in both the United States and the world, with an estimated 27% of American adults living with some form of disability. That is more than one in four people, and the number grows when you factor in that most people will experience disability at some point in their lives through age, illness, or injury.

Wheelchair users are not a rare sight. They are everywhere, which makes the employee’s logic that only one wheelchair user could possibly exist in a given week not just offensive but mathematically absurd.

A YouGov study conducted a decade after the UK’s Equality Act 2010 found that 51% of disabled people feel existing legislation is not strong enough to protect their rights, and only one in five believe the current law does enough.

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That gap between what the law says and what disabled people actually experience is not a small one. So good on this teen for trying to advocate for themselves and people in the same position as them.

The Robert Bosch Foundation’s Diversity Barometer found that social acceptance of people with disabilities has remained consistently high in surveys, which sounds encouraging until you look at the next statistic. One in four inquiries to the Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency concerns disability-based discrimination.

There is a huge discrepancy between what people say they believe about disability and how they actually behave when a wheelchair user visits their store. The employee who lost her job over this particular gap is a small but satisfying data point in the direction of consequences actually following actions.

What do you think we could do as a society to move away from this stunted way of thinking? Share your thoughts in the comments!

People in the comments were appalled by the lousy $10 shopping credit the store offered as an eventual apology

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