I spent 10 months on crutches. An example: the useless fuckwits who designed BART made some stations so that, to use the elevators to get from the platform level to the street, you have to
1 - crutch to the elevators on the platform level
2 - get out on the station level
3 - crutch the length of the station to get to the swipe machines;
4 - crutch back the length of the station to get to the elevators from the station level to the street;
5 - stand in a standing pool in the center of the elevator of fucking bum piss and shit on your way to the street.
For those of you who've never used crutches, well, (a) good call, and (b) your armpits look like they should conveniently support your body. In actuality, it hurts. Crutching is uncomfortable, and being unnecessarily forced to crutch station lengths is terrible.
And btw, this stuff isn't rocket science. Anyone who thinks for perhaps 2 seconds about making buildings accessible to people with mobility issues will realize that limiting unnecessary travel distances is one of the best ways to increase mobility.
Imagine having to constantly rely on friends/family to even be able to go get groceries. Nicola alludes to this at the end without getting too political:
"We live at the bottom of a steep hill in a neighbourhood without sidewalks and many blocks from a bus stop. The only way for me to leave the house is in a car. Uber and Lyft have no accessible vehicles in Seattle [if they don't have it in Seattle, we can assume this also rings true for most of America]. There are a handful of wheelchair-accessible taxis but you have to book way in advance, they are obscenely expensive, and, worst of all, utterly unreliable."
And: "This van is insured for $91,300."
I'm guessing Nicola spent a long time gathering enough money to be able to gain the "luxury" of being able to move from A to B like a non-disabled person - so I am assuming moving to a highly urban setting (say, San Francisco) is financially out of the question due to the price of housing in such settings.
Conclusion: in our country, if you're disabled, be prepared to fork up an unreasonable amount of money to gain even a modicum of independence. By definition, this means most disabled people in this country cannot (financially) attain independence, and our infrastructure is the reason why.