Little Girl Experiences First Wheelchair-Accessible Pool Vacationing In Florida
Discover with Dallas
A video of a young girl enjoying a wheelchair-accessible swimming pool for the first time is warming hearts all over the world.
Mom of four, Katrina Placzek recently shared a video of her eight-year-old daughter Dallas using a special pool-friendly wheelchair at Tiff's Place, a wheelchair-accessible vacation home in Chuluota, Florida.
Dallas, who was born premature at 28 weeks, has quadriplegic spastic cerebral palsy. The condition affects her limbs and makes it difficult for her to walk.
Pools weren't accessible to the vibrant youngster before her family vacationed at Tiff's Place.
"We'd never seen a wheelchair like that before. It was made out of PVC," Placzek recalled to Good Morning America. "We sat Dallas in there and it just had a ramp and then you go around the ramp area and then it gets deep but there's a speed bump sort of thing at the bottom so you know not to go where it drops. So if you're a wheelchair user, you don't go and drop at the bottom. It was really cool to see the entire house [at Tiff's Place] was designed with wheelchair users in mind."
The mom from Illinois told GMA she started Discover with Dallas on Instagram and YouTube after a wheelchair accessible park was installed at a local playground. Thanks to the swing, Dallas could finally enjoy the playground like her siblings, which meant everything to the family.
Ultimately, Placzek hopes the pool video does more than just make people smile. The sweet video also raises awareness.
"I never thought of it, like how important this is, and to see how inclusion makes someone feel in front of your eyes. It was like, 'I think I need to show the world what this means for kids like her,' " Placzek told GMA. "You don't really think about it until you're in a wheelchair because we don't live in that world and when you have a kid that can't go to a lot of places, you just stop going."
She said she hopes the buzz around the pool video encourages more people to design places and products with accessibility and inclusivity in mind.
"The most important thing is just for people to think about disabled children and think about disabled adults when they're making a business, or they're designing a playground, or if the school is building a new, updated playground," Placzek said.
