Everyone Needs Access to Walk and Roll – A Response to the Surgeon General’s Call-to-Action

“The Surgeon General wants you to start walking, Emily,” my mom announced, pointing to the headline of an article in the paper.

“That’s nice. Is he a surgeon or a miracle worker?”

We crack ourselves up with this sort of banter all the time. Being a wheelchair user, I find humor is the best way for me to shake off the constant walk or bust messages society sends to the rolling crowd. Articles about standing or walking vs. sitting always seem to have an air of doom. Once, I read a sitting-is-bad-for-your-health study that declared we’re all sitting ourselves to death. It’s scary to hear statements like that when consoling myself about my imminent sitting-related demise is easier to do by eating a burrito than by going for a run.

Seriously, I know that stressing the importance of walking isn’t meant to be an affront to people who cannot. There’s nothing inherently ableist about walking. But, when the actual act of walking is portrayed as a default, something “everyone” does, it perpetuates the lack of accessible fitness resources for the physically disabled community.

Of course, I expected nothing more than this usual exclusion of mobility disabilities in the article about Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s call-to-action for walking. This time, however, I was pleasantly surprised. He said, “I firmly believe that everybody in America needs a safe place to walk or to wheelchair roll. For too many of our communities, that is not the reality right now.” Two words. Wheelchair roll. Finally, though, it seems like small steps are being taken (pun intended) in the direction of inclusion.

But it’s not enough.

Clearly, calls-to-action for walking like the Surgeon General’s are really emphasizing the importance of incorporating exercise and motion into our daily routines. I’m totally on board with this, and I know I need to be better about it. But, in order to make this walk and roll initiative fully feasible, it’s high time more places across the United States start taking accessibility under consideration. Walking has long been touted as a free form of exercise that anyone can do at any time, anywhere. No need to pay for a fancy gym membership or buy expensive equipment to gather dust in your basement when you can go take a walk. For far too many people, though, this isn’t reality.

The Surgeon General’s announcement was accompanied by a call for safer pathways for pedestrians and cyclists, and the importance of this cannot be understated. Rolling AND walking are both problematic when places are filled with cracked or broken sidewalks, and unpaved paths. There are sidewalks that lead to potholes and rough road, to high curbs and no curb cuts. There are places that couldn’t be bothered with sidewalks at all. So, I then look to places like the gym, supposedly more safe, only to find that the ones I live near make zero efforts to be accessible despite repeated requests from my family. It’s a catch-22.

I’ve learned to be creative in trying to “save” myself from the giant sit-fest that is my life, because that is no one’s responsibility but my own. I turn to exercise equipment that I keep in my house and to seated workout videos in my best attempts to negate the sedentary lifestyle that science loves to sound the alarm bells on. Despite this, it IS the responsibility of people in charge of towns, businesses, public parks – of anywhere people can “go for a walk” – to provide basic access for people of all abilities who want to heed the Surgeon General’s call.

Emily Ladau is a writer and disability rights activist whose passion is to harness the powers of language and social media as tools for people to become informed and engaged social justice advocates. She is the owner of Social Justice Media Services, which provides communications, outreach, and social media management services for disability-related organizations. Emily also maintains a blog, Words I Wheel By, as a platform to address discrimination and to encourage people to understand the experience of having a disability in more positive, accepting, and supportive ways. You’re welcome to connect with her on Facebook and Twitter.