It wasn’t until publishing a recent string of columns that in one way or another touched on the experience of being physically disabled that I realized how mistreated this population of people feels.

The stories I heard were incredible:

• A deaf mother forced to argue with school officials to allow sign-language interpreters to stand where she could see them at a high school graduation ceremony. The school kept trying to move them to the side of the stage or behind flowers.

• A Sacramento, Calif., doctor who treats wheelchair patients in their cars in the alley behind his office to avoid the expense of installing a wheelchair ramp up to his building. The person who reported this knows two other patients who get “alley treatment” from this doctor.

• Motorists rushing to “beat” wheelchair users through intersections, zipping around right turns in front of them before they’ve made it across a crosswalk.

“I’m no match for an 800-pound car. Can’t they see that?” one woman asked. The motorists she describes should be able to. Her disabilities are extensive; she maneuvers her wheelchair with mouth controls.

Others sent in photos of failed attempts to make everyday places more accessible. One showed a van-accessible handicap parking space, the kind with the diagonal lines indicating space for a wheelchair to be unloaded. In the photo, the space where a wheelchair would access the sidewalk leads directly to a bulky curb, not the ramp cutout. The ramp cutout was where the car would be parked and not at all accessible – not even close.

“No one cares,” said Pat Hill, who uses a wheelchair. “They put it in because they have to. They don’t care if it’s actually usable.”

Yet, as America ages, the needs will only continue to grow. In the case of handicap parking, those who use the vividly marked blue spaces maintain the biggest problem is that there aren’t enough of them.

Judy Harper has learned to wing it. Take the time she searched and searched, finally resorting to a regular space with more than the usual amount of room on the driver’s side. (All the handicap spaces were taken.)

“Unfortunately, when I returned, another car occupied the space on the driver’s side and had not left me enough room to get back into the car,” she said. “I was at a loss for what to do. I waited with my walker for quite a while and then accosted a woman walking by. I asked if she could help me – she probably thought I was going to ask her for money – and when she cautiously said yes, I gave her my car keys and asked her to pull my car out of the spot so I could get into it. She agreed, and it all worked out. But it illustrates the frustrations involved when there are not sufficient spaces.”

Readers also sent in a great Web site that seems to be everything ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) with information on accessibility laws and regulations and civil rights for the disabled. Whether you’re a business needing to re-stripe your parking lot correctly or a disabled person fighting an access issue, check out the site, www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada.