Ten things wheelchair users who travel by airplane want you to know.

In April through August, the planets align. This is the busiest part of "conference season" for my field, digital accessibility, with Global Accessibility Awareness Day taking place on the third Thursday of every May. It is also summer archery season. While four of the tournaments I participated in last year required air travel, I will be traveling to at least nine this year since I am trying to qualify for the Paralympic team.

With apologies to David Lettermen, here is my list of "Ten Things" I wish all airline passengers and employees understood about wheelchair-using passengers.

10. Some of us can walk

We might use a wheelchair because of fatigue, because we don't walk well, or because have been told by our doctors to walk as little as possible. That doesn't make our wheelchair use invalid. I had one woman ask a gate agent in So Cal to revoke my preboard status because I was "clearly faking" my disability - her evidence was that she saw me cross my legs while sitting in my wheelchair. If I had a dollar for the look of surprise on a flight attendant's face every time I turned down an aisle chair because I can walk short distances, I could retire.

9. It is not magical, miraculous, or any other type of special that wheelchair users travel by themselves

Yes, it's complicated. Yes, it's hard. Most of us would prefer not to be praised for it, as it is an infantilizing form of ableism. Does your parent/spouse travel with you on every trip? Probably not.

8. It does, however, take a lot more time and paperwork for wheelchair users to travel

The amount of non-recyclable material generated for a single cross-country trip in a wheelchair is unreal. I just did a trip from SFO to Florida - four sets of non-recyclable paperwork/gate check tags coming out and two more coming back. Multiply that by the 3-4 roundtrips I make every month from April to August. Tell me again why they can't associate our wheelchair info with a frequent flyer number? Delta has done it. No one else is even trying to figure it out, near as I can tell. I've had it take up to 45 minutes to be screened at airports that do a lousy job of making sure they have enough female TSA agents available, and that's not counting waiting in line. I have to wait 15 minutes for my chair at the end of every leg of every flight. Then, if I have a connecting flight, I almost always have to go through the entire gate-check process again. Not fun.

7. We take every step imaginable to increase the chances of our wheelchairs arriving intact

We may be required by law to bring our batteries on board. We might bring our headrests, joystick controllers, seat cushions, and backrests. That is because the airlines' cargo handlers have such a miserably atrocious record of losing and breaking wheelchairs. Thousands of wheelchairs are broken by US airlines every year, even recently, resulting in someone's death. What looks like a "pillow" to you might be a $600 piece of custom molded foam with a washable covering and titanium stiffener. If it's important, expensive, easily broken, or would take forever to replace, plus detachable, we bring it with us.

6. It's not a "pre-board" unless you ensure the wheelchair users are in their seats before letting non-disabled passengers on

It is rare for me to actually be on board before airline staff let all the entitled first-class passengers and people with diamond-iridium-star sapphire-premium status down. This creates a traffic jam at the front of the plane and stresses the crap out of people with mobility challenges with a real fear of getting injured. On some airlines (Southwest, looking at you here), it might mean we don't get the seat we need because other passengers are on grabbing all the close aisle seats while we are still preparing our wheelchairs for transport. For destinations with a large number of elderly people, this is even more important. Vegas and Orlando frequently have ten or more wheelchair-using passengers on a single flight. Don't crowd us, please.

5. We can't stop our wheelchairs on a dime

Wheelchairs plus the user's weight can carry 300-500 lbs of momentum (10 % of some small cars as a reference point), with some chairs traveling at 4 mph at top speeds. There are rarely brakes that slow or stop motion, only ones that keep the wheelchair stationary after the user has stopped and they don't want to budge. If a non-disabled person walks in front of a moving wheelchair, that person risks causing an accident. Since many wheelchair users have fragile bones due to not being weight-bearing for extended periods of time, it's the wheelchair users who, despite being in the "vehicle," are more likely to end up seriously injured.

Waiting for wheelchairs to be fixed requires specialists, takes forever, and repairs are costly and frequently not covered by insurance. How long are you willing to go without your legs? If that thought makes you uncomfortable, wheelchair damage, especially on the outbound part of trips, makes wheelchair users equally, if not more, uncomfortable.

4. Walking too close behind a wheelchair on an uphill slant is a bad idea

For those of us in power chairs, sometimes our batteries rebel and power down if the slants are too steep. We can poop out or have muscle spasms in manual chairs if we are pushing ourselves on an extended uphill stretch. If we are not immediately on top of either of those conditions (and even if we are), we can start to slide backward.

3. Cutting in front of us on a downhill slant is an even worse idea

Manual chairs can cause some pretty serious friction on the wheelchair users' hands on long downhill stretches. Think of it like a rope burn. That can make stopping hard, and then our momentum is zero and we have to get going again. Gloves help, but not everyone uses them; even if they do, they get torn and wear out fairly quickly. Power chairs have a lot of forward momentum and are much heavier.

2. The most dangerous thing to us isn't our medical condition(s)

The most dangerous thing to people in wheelchairs is others walking with 100 % of their focus on the phone in front of their nose. When other passengers are obliviously focused on something other than their surroundings they are much more likely to cause an accident.

and, the most important thing we want you to know?

1. Accessible bathrooms are for people with accessibility needs, not for people who think they are entitled to extra space for non-disability-related reasons !!!

I've waited for people to finish changing their kids into pajamas, flight attendants to change out of their uniforms, people condensing shopping bags into their carry-ons, and someone potty training a "service chihuahua." None of these are valid reasons for using an accessible bathroom. Even if the accessible stall is empty when you get there, that doesn't eliminate the possibility that someone who really needs it showing up five seconds after you go in. People in wheelchairs frequently forgo drinking liquids on airplanes to avoid using airline bathrooms, which can range from difficult to impossible to use in a wheelchair, not to mention the embarrassment and inconvenience to the people sitting in our row. Having to wait while other individuals without disabilities completely ignore the true reason accessible bathrooms exist, or having to listen to ableist remarks like "if you need to go that badly, you should wear a diaper." is honestly the worst thing about airline travel that happens on literally every single trip I take.