This is amazing, and I’m embarrassed to admit something I never considered.
The public restroom is almost inarguably THE WORST possible place to ever have to ‘feel your way’!
[Video shows a woman with a white cane pointing to a braille sign outside of a bathroom that includes a map. We zoom in on the sign while she taps parts of it and says,
I’m at a Guide Dog center here in Australia. This is a legend, a tactile and Braille map of the bathroom, right outside the door.
We zoom back out while she continues, with large hand gestures,
Do you want to know what the hardest part of my day is, as a blind person? 'Cause it’s probably not what you expect. It’s not the fact that I can’t drive, though it’s not ideal. It is the fact that public bathrooms are all designed differently. Do you know how stressful it is, when I have to pee in public on my own? My boyfriend leaves me at the door of the women’s room, and I have to walk into the great unknown. Is there going to be a line? Where in line am I supposed to stand? When I find the toilet - well, first off, when I’m with my guide dog I need the accessible stall, so I have to feel my way to the big stall. Then, when I get there, hopefully it’s open. If not, I stand. I wait. I get in. I have to find where is the toilet paper? Where is the toilet? I have to hope to God it’s clean 'cause I can’t see it. Then I have to find the flusher - is it a pull, is it automatic - who knows? Then I have to find my way to the sinks. Where is the soap? Where is the dryer?
She turns back to tap excitedly on the sign.
Hello! We have found the solution.
She starts telling us what the sign says as her fingers skim over it.
So, up here it says 'female and ambulatory toilet map’, and then it tells me 'A-T’ means it’s the 'ambulatory’, which means it’s the larger accessible stall. ’T’ means 'toilet’. Um, down here we have, like, ’D’ means 'dryer’.
She moves down to the map, showing us the location of the three stalls along the back wall.
So then I go here, and I know that this stall would be the one that my guide dog and I would use - 'cause it’s the 'A-T’, the bigger stall. Next to it, the two ones to the right are both normal sized toilets.
She goes back to the top left corner of the map to follow the left wall towards the front of the room. Halfway, she gets to,
Down here we have ’D’, so this means it’s the dryer for drying my hands.
She continues down, and at the front of the room takes turns tapping two squares for 'B’, and one between them for ’S’.
We have ’S’ and 'B’, which means I now know: if I’m at the sinks, the soap is in between the two basins.
We zoom back out, but then she remembers something, so we go back to look at the opening at the bottom right of the map.
I want this! … Ooh! And I know, look, here I walk in the door, so I immediately orient myself: toilets are right in front, I would go far left. Right next to the door is gonna be my sinks.
We zoom back out so she can finish,
Like, this, this is a game changer! This is a game changer. I want these everywhere. This is my plea. My next campaign. How to make toileting more accessible to everyone.
This guy alone just filled my “live your life with passion” quota for the year.
Funniest thing is the quick “settle down mate” and the dip into the Australian accent as he gushes over how pretty it is.
Knowing herpetologists: literally every one of them under 40 was influenced by Steve Irwin. The Austrailian accent and repetition of Irwinesque phrases (what a beauty, look at the size of this fella) is involuntary but an important part of the snake catching ritual.
Yup, that’s the point you just stay still and let it do whatever the fuck it wants that doesn’t involved you getting eaten.Â
REALLY FUN FACT for big cats cheetahs are fucking docile as shit
my grandfather ran a cheetah sanctuary in south africa and he’d just lie with them and sleep among them and they’d rub against him and chirp at him they’re big fucking babies
Another Fun Fact: Cheetahs are incredibly nervous animals. One of the (many) reason’s they’re going extinct is that cheetahs are so sensitive and nervous, some of them are literally too nervous to breed. Others will breed, but stress themselves out so much, they’ll lose their cubs.
So zoos with breeding programs had to figure out how to make cheetahs comfortable enough to first of all, get laid and secondly - not spazz themselves into miscarrying.
So what’d they do? They gave the cheetah’s their very own Service Dogs!
The dogs make them feel safe, protected and secure!
Also! Cheetahs are not in fact classified as big cats, they are simply very large lesser cats, due to the fact that they purr, meow, chirp, and cannot roar. Also many cheetahs have learned to recognize wildlife photographers are friends and not foes, so they will just come up to people and be friendly occasionally as pictured at the top of the chain. Some will even leave their Cubs with photographers to look after while they hunt. So. Yeah. Cheetahs are great
this works because cheetahs are actually fairly social animals, and they look to members of their group for context on how worried they should be about any given Situation. but since cheetahs are also nervous social animals, they can work each other into an anxiety spiral pretty easily over things like “being in an enclosed habitat” and “there’s a guy over there”.
so by introducing a dog as a member of the group, the cheetahs will now look to the dog for context clues on how worried they should be! and the dog Is Not Worried At All, Thanks, so the cheetahs think everything must be chill even if they were personally unsure about it, and they stop being so freaked out about literally everything.
Cheetah: oh god what’s going on how are we feeling weird spotless cheetah
Dog: :) fine, thanks
Cheetah: :) oh, okay
Wasn’t expecting this of all posts to be the first tumblr post I’ve ever seen crest 2mil notes, but I’ll take it
i love you vaccines i love you research i love you reading the book instead of having chatgpt summarize it i love you critically thinking rather than reacting to a headline i love you investigating the source material i love you science i love you math even though you are personally my enemy (math/yn slowburn) i love you writing even though you try to stab me a lot i love you Experts in Your Field i love you Using The Brain
