Five Little Steps

Visiting a friend's apartment last night, I noticed something that made me upset. He lives in an older building in a good location (though pretty far from downtown), that's clean and well maintained with reasonable rents, at least by Toronto standards.

But there's a problem. Five little steps.

Two are on the walkway into the building.

Then there are three in the lobby.

They make the building completely inaccessible to anyone who has to use a power chair or scooter. It would be trivial to replace the outside steps with a ramp. There's about 50 feet from the sidewalk to the front of the building so the sidewalk could be gently sloped. The lobby would be trickier, but I've seen it done in other buildings. So why haven't they? It would probably have cost less than the fancy new entry access system in the lobby.

I guess people just don't care, until they end up in a wheelchair, and then it's too late.