Art Irritates Life
The City of Denver is in trouble again, this time for wantonly endangering the blind through the reckless display of dangerous sculptures. Turns out the Americans with Disabilities Act specifies that "anything that protrudes 4 inches or more above a height of 28 inches requires some kind of warning for blind people using canes."
 Doesn't that more or less give disability attorneys a blank check? Fer crissake, by that criteria you could go after Britney Spears' rack with a lawsuit. Anyway, back to Denver. As you can see at left, the problem is this 36-ton marble sculpture of the Roman God Janus, which has an offending nose length. Forget violating the 4-inch rule, this two-faced deity sports a pair of 2-foot probosci, a clear and present danger to man, beast, and crop.
- "It is a good idea to do something about it before something happens. I am legally blind so if I ran across it I might bump into it," said La Tonya Reeves of the Denver chapter of ADAPT, a disabled rights group.
She has a point, I suppose. But then again, how fast does a person tapping along with a cane move? Fast enough that they're gonna have to erect protective berms around the statue, a "curb-like edging several inches high directly in front of the noses." Of course, then you have the problem of blind people tripping over said curb-like edging. But once you get into this kind of trouble, you're in deep. The Raven interviewed a number of visually impaired students at the local college campus to see what they thought about all this.
- "It's horrible, I mean, you're walking about then "bam!" some big nose hits you in the face."
"Being blind isn't that tough, but man, those Roman statues with the big noses, they're a problem."
"I could deal with my disability a lot better if public displays of art were strictly controlled. Forget cars and buses, it's those stationary statues that are the real menace."
You learn something new every day.
8:09:18 AM 
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Thursday, September 19, 2002
