Freedom isn’t free: Movement for wheelchair users

I previously indicated that in real life, freedom is not a ‘free gift’. Achieving freedom takes the form of a ‘budget’. The statement is startling and counterintuitive. This matter can be explored further. As an example, consider the overt and covert consequences of providing freedom of movement about town to ‘active’ wheelchair users. This analysis is illustrative and has no normative implications whatsoever.

Should ‘active’ wheelchair-bound people be able to go about town in their vehicles?

How many ‘active’ wheelchair users – that is, persons able to go about freely and independently – are there? Many wheelchair-bound people, of course, are past going out due to other disabilities and should be excluded from the estimate (they’ll need targeted assistance in one way or another). So, ‘active’ is a subset of ‘all.’

This question is difficult to answer, as statistical data do not differentiate between these two categories. Indications suggest that the gross figure for wheelchair-bound people is 0.62% in France and maybe 1% in the EU as a whole. Assuming 0.4% are ‘active’ seems reasonable. For a city like Aix-en-Provence, used here to contextualise this analysis, this translates to a pool of less than 600 persons, including a few tourists (this figure does not coincide with subjective experience of wheelchairs about town, but it will be left at that).

Are these citizens few, or many, compared to other needy citizens? To put matters in perspective, the poverty rate in the town is 14%, or 7,500 households, representing about 17,250 persons.

Disability as a ‘rights issue’

‘The EU promotes the active inclusion and full participation of disabled people in society, in line with the EU human rights approach to disability issues. Disability is a rights issue and not a matter of discretion. This approach is also at the core of the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (UNCRPD), to which the EU is a signatory,’ notes the EU. In implementing this convention, the EU issued a European Disability Strategy 2010–2020 with an impressive catalogue of measures, including directives to secure effective implementation of these rights.

Combating poverty, providing health and education, or employment are mere ‘goals,’ not legally enshrined ‘rights’. There may have been contingent reasons behind this path-dependent outcome. One wonders, though, whether the ‘rights-based approach’ reflects the unavowed judgment that helping victims is non-controversial, hence ‘easy.’ It projects the image of activism even if running in place.

Transforming the environment or adapting to it?

When considering the policy goal of ensuring mobility for such disabled persons, two strategies emerge:

• Transforming the material environment so that active people in wheelchairs can go about unhindered
• Helping them adapt to their condition by giving them targeted assistance in going about

Both solutions can arguably be effective, depending on costs and delays involved.

Little evidence suggests this means question was considered when establishing the ‘right’ to go about in wheelchairs. This dissonance is evident particularly with international treaties, as states agree to share goals while reserving the means. Even at the national level, policy deliberations conventionally separate issues of goals from those of means (see Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis by Paul Pierson).

This pragmatic sequencing of decisions has unintended consequences. Lacking a consensus on ‘goals,’ the discussion likely continues under the guise of ‘means’; the principal decision can be silently subverted or at least delayed in this context. Framing the outcome in terms of ‘rights’ prevents subversion by stigmatising a discussion of means as unseemly – a betrayal of the principle. Implementing the principle is unconditional and brooks no delay. TINA = There Is No Alternative but to go forward and fulfil the promise – damn the bills.

The post was first published on DeepDip.