"This week, the Department of Transportation (DOT) announced a new rule requiring airlines to make bathrooms more accessible for disabled people. All new single-aisle aircraft will be fitted with fully-accessible lavatories.
Most flights inside the United States are single-aisle and as technology has improved, they are used more frequently for long flights, including coast-to-coast trips that can last as long as six hours. Double-aisle plans are already subject to the regulation but are primarily used for international flights.
Out Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg announced the new regulations, saying, “Traveling can be stressful enough without worrying about being able to access a restroom; yet today, millions of wheelchair users are forced to choose between dehydrating themselves before boarding a plane or avoiding air travel altogether.” ...
The secretary has made it a priority to improve service on airlines during his tenure. In 2022, six airlines were forced to pay millions of dollars in refunds to hundreds of thousands of customers and were also fined millions for causing the issues. The department’s firm stance on the side of customers has continued through this year after multiple companies have had meltdowns, stranding thousands of travelers.
All planes delivered to airlines starting in 2026 must include several upgrades. Planes already in service will not need to be retrofitted unless the plane is renovated.
“These aircraft must have at least one lavatory of sufficient size to permit a passenger with a disability (with the help of an assistant, if necessary) to approach, enter, and maneuver within the aircraft lavatory, to use all lavatory facilities, and leave by means of the aircraft’s onboard wheelchair if necessary,” the DOT said in a statement.
Accessible faucets and controls, grab bars, accessible call buttons and door locks, minimum obstruction to the passage of an onboard wheelchair, and an available visual barrier for privacy are also required upgrades."
-via LGBTQ Nation, July 28, 2023
Wayyyyyyy fucking overdue but I'll take it!! Also, very nice curb cut effect: We all get to be less miserable on airplanes, and older people don't have to worry as much about airplane bathroom fall risks.
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Mind the digital gap: survey finds 1.5m Londoners 'left behind'
Tube strikes notwithstanding, transport watchdog London TravelWatch has today published a report that shows 1.5million people in the capital are unable to buy a bus, Tube or tram ticket because they can’t use or don’t have access to a smartphone or internet connection.
Tapped out: 1-in-5 Londoners do not have digital access to be able to use discount fares and payment systems
And 20per cent of…
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(found a minute to finish a wip based on a couple posts by @thesexydancingcrepe from a while ago; something about reader meeting the monkey boys when they’re kids, and the adorable shenanigans they get into)
the bad end boys, because of their “birthless”nature (one came outta a rock, the other a shadow? idk), are raised by…all the mama monkey yaoguai in their troop. since they’re nobodies babies, they’re everybody’s babies. they don’t see humans very often (or ever, since they’re on an island). but they're not horrible yet, so cuteness will ensue :)
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Book one of The Murderbot Diaries, All Systems Red, is a survival mystery as a small team of scientists are faced with an unknown threat while trapped on an isolated, hostile planet, with no hope but to trust their second hand, possibly murderous, robot security.
Artificial Condition, book two of The Murderbot Diaries, is about two robots in a trench coat pretending to be human for a job interview.
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Self indulgent drawing of Murderbot <3 It and ART are cruising through space, just the two of them, and Murderbot is relaxed and comfortable. ART has more than a few feelings about this and saves an image to its archive -- unfortunately Murderbot is aware of ART watching it and it flips off one of the drones.
(it doesn't dislike the attention ART is giving it... it just makes it a bit flustered!)
See some bonus images (including ones without text) below the cut, along with an explanation of some of the design choices!
I am 100% in the camp of Murderbot having a much more expressive face than it realizes, especially when it's alone and/or comfortable.
All text in the images with a color block behind it is essentially metadata that ART has attached to any tag it makes for Murderbot.
The blue inorganics are purely because @hazelek found a post with early 2000s vibrant, semi-transparent tech and we were joking around about MB getting aesthetic upgrades lmao.
About half the tags in the last image are courtesy of @scificrows alkdjfl;kj thank you dearly for those additions!
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I don’t really care about “defining” Murderbot and ART’s relationship I think they’re both uniquely insane human-adjacent but Not Quite sentiences that defy total human comprehension. Murderbot is the only way ART can contextualize human experience. ART is how Murderbot allows itself to be vulnerable because it literally doesn't let it be alone in its brain where it can generate 5 trillion faulty risk assessments per second. ART gaslights Murderbot into thinking it died and then shoots missiles at the colony when it gets kidnapped. They made a kamikaze AI baby together.
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