Accommodations at the 2012 LPA Conference

The 2012 Little People of America Conference is winding down today after a week of educational, social and medical programming.  This year's conference was hosted at a Sheraton Hotel in Dallas, Texas.  The Sheraton and many institutions around the city did their best to make visitors to Dallas feel welcome.

View more videos at: http://nbcdfw.com.

In addition to the physical accommodations made by the Sheraton, the Dallas Fort Worth airport also announced the installation of "step n wash" retracting stools in each of the airport's bathrooms.  When we arrived on Friday, June 29, my wife checked for a stool in the bathrooms, but couldn't find one.  Yesterday, on our way out of Dallas, we both checked bathrooms for the stools.  Again, we couldn't find any.  I imagine there is an explanation.  Either the stools integrate very well into the built environment and I couldn't find them, or the airport is a little behind on the installation of the stools.  If the latter is the case, it is too bad the stools were not ready in time for the conference.  But the step n wash stools are intended to be a permanent fixture at the airport.  More so than for a one week conference, it is important that the stools be available in the long term for all travelers who may happen to need them, not just people with dwarfism.  After all, there have been plenty of conferences in the past when dwarf travelers have been forced to adapt to the airport environment around them.  But going forward, it would be nice in Dallas and in cities around the country if the airport environment and other surrounding environments continue to make attempts to be inclusive of people of short stature.   And it would be nice if those inclusive measures turned out to be permanent, rather than just temporary changes that would disappear after conference attendees went home.  I think people will find, as the Dallas airport has hinted, these accommodations many more people than just people with dwarfism, and when implemented correctly, these changes won't interfere with the interaction of anyone else in the built environment.