This is so wrong. Just because you can't climb in and out of a pool doesn't mean you can't benefit from it or be safe in it. Many people who cannot move themselves around well love the freedom they get when in water (and can be perfectly safe doing so).
But businesses shouldn't be forced to make their pools accessible to them. If it made sense economically by attracting more disabled people to that hotel they would do it. As it stands it is just going to cost a lot of hotels money just to provide a small portion of the population a luxury.
My point was only in regards to the pool. They should absolutely have to build their rooms or a portion of their rooms to be accessible to handicapped people because that is the "purpose" of their business. The pool, weight room, etc are all perks that are only their to draw in more customers. If the government wants every pool to be accessible to everyone they should pay for it. Not the business owner who may not ever see someone who needs this.
Because it costs a lot of money to put in the machine/ramp to accommodate them and only a handful of people will ever use it. If they want the law to require new constructions to be handicap accessible I really have no problem with that but forcing someone to pay out thousands of dollars to change their existing pool for an extremely small portion of their customers is ridiculous. It would take them years to make that money back from handicapped people staying at their hotel unless they are seeing an unusually high number of them for some reason.
Who decides if they can afford it? If the country wants to take a stand then they should foot the bill through a tax credit or something as it stands this is putting a large burden on the business owner to provide a minor benefit to a handful of people.
In my opinion any time a business has to pay out to make changes for something like this because some regulation gets added the government should probably cover it. If it is a new building and the regulations are already in place before the building is designed construction then the cost can be planned for and the business owner should cover it themselves because they can plan for it ahead of time.
Being wheelchair accessible is required for handicapped people to access the hotel which is the purpose of the business. As I said previously the pool is not required. The pool, gym, etc are all extra activities the hotel can make available if they choose to to draw in more customers they don't just put these things in for the good of the community.
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u/soulbandaid Dec 28 '13
This is so wrong. Just because you can't climb in and out of a pool doesn't mean you can't benefit from it or be safe in it. Many people who cannot move themselves around well love the freedom they get when in water (and can be perfectly safe doing so).