I was a robot and this is what I learned
I&#x27;ve experienced this as well - albeit in a slightly modified form, but one more people can relate to.<p>I work with a friend of mine who has a non-profit to repair and donate power wheelchairs and scooters for people in need. Basically, he gets old or unused chairs (you&#x27;d be surprised at how many &quot;new&quot; chairs get donated - simply because the batteries died, and people can&#x27;t afford new ones), and we fix them up, clean them up, then donate them back out (many times they get donated back to us when the person no longer needs the chair).<p>Anyhow, one year we decided to go to the Abilities Expo which was being held in Los Angeles that year. As a part of this experience, we decided to take some of our chairs (including some we had customized in various ways - my friend is also an artist when it comes to metal craft - and fire art) to the expo to ride in them and &quot;experience&quot; what users of these chairs experience and gain that perspective, so we could apply what we learned to customizations and such.<p>What we learned are that people are assholes (big surprise).<p>Despite us being in chairs, at an Expo dedicated to products and companies marketing devices, materials, etc for those in need - we experienced on a constant basis people not watching out for us, stepping in our way of travel, not respecting us as human beings (like some people couldn&#x27;t even look us in the eye as we talked with them - like we weren&#x27;t human or something), etc. We also found the aisles between vendors to be poorly laid out for wheelchair and similar navigation.<p>We came away from that conference with a new perspective on what power wheelchair users and other people in similar situations face - and it isn&#x27;t a very nice situation to be in. Furthermore, these are real people, intelligent people - just with a different way of getting around.<p>Unfortunately, for many able-bodied individuals, it appears that those with less ability to move around either don&#x27;t exist to them, or are a nuisance in some manner - or they have some kind of fear about their situation. The experience greatly opened my eyes to something which until that time, I hadn&#x27;t been aware of (iow - I was probably one of those on &quot;the other side&quot;).