Traveling isn't much fun
sometimes. After a long flight, you have to navigate through the
airport, grab transportation into the city and then lug your bags
into a hotel. Now, imagine going through all of that only to wind
up sleeping on the floor.
Matt Roloff doesn't
have to imagine it. He has slept on the floor of a fully furnished
guest room. Many times.
Obviously, it is
something he would rather not do. But often, Roloff told me, he had
no choice.
"You just pull the
bedspread down to floor and there's your bed," Roloff
said.
It's not that Roloff
finds hotel beds uncomfortable or that he has some sort of
phobia.
No, the reason he has
sometimes slept on the floor is much simpler: He was physically
unable to climb into the bed.
Roloff is not alone.
He knows lots of other people who have, at one time or another,
done exactly the same thing for exactly the same reason.
"It is not like the
end of the world. It is kind of what you have to do," Roloff said.
"You grow up and you get used to that."
Actually, I can't
image anyone getting used to it, even after getting a glimpse of
the world from Roloff's perspective.
Roloff is chairman of
Hillsboro, Ore.-based Direct Access Solutions. He has a form of
dwarfism called diastrophic dysplasia, which requires him to walk
with the aid of crutches. He sometimes uses a motorized
scooter.
You may be familiar
with Roloff. He and his wife, Amy, and their children -- twin sons
Zack and Jeremy, daughter Molly and youngest son Jacob -- are the
stars of "Little People Big World," a reality show on the TLC cable
channel.
"Little People Big
World" provides an intimate and often uplifting look at life in the
Roloff family, which comprises both little and average-size
people.
The show often
provides insights into how a world designed for average-size people
can pose significant challenges for little people. The average
adult with dwarfism is 4 feet tall, according to Little People of
America, an advocacy group. But actual heights range from 2 feet, 8
inches to 4 feet, 8 inches.
Typical hotel rooms,
even those that comply with the American with Disabilities Act, can
be rife with challenges.
Just hanging up a
coat or reaching the remote on top of a TV or washing up in the
bathroom sink can be daunting. Over the years, little people have
learned to improvise.
"The first thing that
any little person does when they go to a hotel is investigate what
they can take apart to step on," said Roloff, who once served as
president of Little People of America. "You take a big drawer out
of the armoire and a little drawer out of the night stand, stack
them on top of each other, and there's your step stool."
But not every
challenge can be solved with an improvisation.
"I don't know how
many times I have taken a shower where I have had to have my face
pressed against the tiles because the shower head is off to the
side," Roloff said. "You can't reach up and adjust it. So if you
are already in the shower, you are not going to get out and call
downstairs for somebody to adjust the shower. So you just
suffer."
Those examples and
dozens of others inspired the Short Stature Accessibility Kit.
Developed by Roloff's company, the kit includes a custom step
stool, an ergonomic reach grabber, a door security-latch adapter,
an extension or push-pull tool and a specially designed closet rod
adapter.
He's been marketing
the kit to hotel chains for several years.
"At first [hotels]
were like, 'Little people? What are you talking about? We don't see
any little people,' " Roloff said with a laugh.
But Roloff said
several chains were now using the kits, including Shilo Inns,
Marriott, Hyatt, Hilton, Microtel, Hawthorne Suites and
Radisson.
Somewhat
surprisingly, some hotel chains were not using them. One has
practically refused to use them, Roloff said, and that didn't make
sense to him. Nor to me.
Can there actually be
hotel chains out there that don't care if their guests pull apart
furniture or use other makeshift solutions in order to use a
bathroom sink?
Do hotel chains
really want guests sleeping on the floor?