Rant

I just popped out, down to the local shops. At the final road junction before I got there, a woman had parked across the dropped kerb, and was still sitting in the car. I asked her, very politely, to move.

It pains me to report to you that I was greeted with a load of swearie-words. About the only bit I can repeat to your tender ears (/eyes), reader, is:

"How was I supposed to know you'd be here?"

Well you know what, love? THAT'S THE WHOLE BLOODY POINT! If it was just a case of "Margo'll be along at 12.57, Sunday lunchtime", you could roll your car out of the way for the moment and then roll it back. But it's not. I could be along at any time. (Well, not early mornings, to be fair. I do have MS.) So could any other wheelchair or scooter user, or someone pushing a buggy.

That's why we need the dropped kerb to be free. That's why the powers that be, in a rare example of common sense, have demarcated it with a double yellow line.

So don't fecking park your car across it in the first place. OK? OK, good. I'm glad we've got that sorted.

It wasn't my intention...

...to do an accessibility audit of a hotel, two taxis and a theatre in Cambridge. That's kind of how it worked out though.

The purpose of the trip, and the best bit, was seeing Uncaged Monkeys. Hard to explain, but imagine a particle physicist (Brian Cox), a mathematician (Simon Singh), an epidemiologist (Ben Goldacre) and a comedian (Robin Ince) talking about science and cracking jokes...it were right good. Nerdgasms all round the theatre!

So the actual show was great - but one way and another, there were a lot of complications to do with travelling and accommodation.

I drove to Cambridge. I was staying overnight in the Holiday Inn Express, Cambridge, where I'd booked an accessible room. Now tell me: if you were designing a hotel, which floor would you put the accessible rooms on? You know, the rooms for people with mobility problems? People who maybe can't manage stairs too well? Yes that's right! The 1st and 2nd floors! Which is clearly a particularly excellent piece of planning when the lift has broken down, as it had.

Now, I need to stress here that the staff could not have been more helpful than they were. They very swiftly allocated me to a standard room on the ground floor. Since it emerged that I couldn't actually get into the room in my wheelchair due to the layout, one of them even came along and propped the second bed on its end against the wall, giving me lots more room to move around. Nice, friendly people.

Also, the tables in the restaurant area were high enough to get the control pod of my power wheelchair underneath. No small thing, I can promise you, having dropped many a hot meal into my groin before now because I couldn't get anywhere near the table. Plenty of room to maneouvre round the room, and attentive but not irritatingly so staff.

So, while I can't comment on the accessible rooms (not having been in one), the hotel in general gets a thumbs up. The dining room (where you also have breakfast) is very accessible, and I found the staff extremely friendly and helpful.

Next...the saga of the taxis.

I asked the hotel to book me a wheelchair accessible taxi, to take me to the theatre, and in due course one arrived. The driver clearly didn't use his wheelchair ramps all that often, though...

He eventually managed to get them extended (fully extended, at my request) and attached to the taxi. But my wheelchair is a bit idiosyncratic. The front wheels are very close together.

In "channel ramps", like this, it can be impossible to get the ramps placed so that they're both close enough together for my front wheels, and far enough apart for my back wheels. It depends on the width of the channels. This taxi had channel ramps. Narrow ones. We just about managed to get the chair into the taxi, but at the other end it was impossible for me (going backwards, with the taxi driver out of sight behind me yelling "This way!" and randomly grabbing the chair handles) to get the wheels lined up right. Eventually, the taxi driver and a nice passerby had to lift the chair out, and I had to clamber down the stairs. Fortunate I could, really.

Once I was on level ground again, I phoned the cab company. I explained that I'd like to use their company again to get home: as a visitor to Cambridge, I didn't know any others. But I needed their assurance that in the late evening, there would be a cab on with a one-part ramp (like the one above). After some muttering and clicking of keys, I was promised there would be. After the show, I duly phoned up. I know you know what's coming...no cabs with one-part ramps.

So, after I had a little shout at them, they gave me the number of another cab company. They turned up within about 5 minutes, which was not at all bad. And the cab did indeed have a one-part ramp. Unfortunately it was also rather short, and the street had a ferocious camber. Meaning that if I'd gone up the ramp where he initially parked, my head would have been touching the tarmac. Probably not a good plan...

And finally in this little roundup of Cantabrigian accessibility, the theatre - the Cambridge Corn Exchange. It's an old building externally, which has clearly been very extensively adapted and modernised internally, and seems generally very accessible. I was in a box right next to the stage, with a great view. Three things I noticed...

1. Once you're in the disabled loo, it's impossible to close the door without turning right round, going half way out again, grabbing the door handle, and reversing back. When I went, another theatre-goer spotted my predicament and closed the door for me - but you don't necessarily want to broadcast to the entire foyer that you're going to the toilet, y'know?
2. The "sill" into the box is quite high, considering it's meant to be level. The other wheelchair user in the same box as me had a manual chair, and I could see he was having a bit of a struggle with it at times.
3. The lift is one of those irritating ones where you have to hold the button all the time you're in there. All well and good, as long as you have the hand strength to do that, and as long as you can twist round in your seat to do it.

Oh and by the way. Motorway services having the disabled loos right at the furthest corner away from the entry door. What's that all about?

On accessibility and the Big Society

Those of us who are unable to work due to disability or illness are in the middle of a change from Incapacity Benefit (IB) to Employment and Supprt Allowance (ESA). Under the old IB test, one thing considered was whether you could walk, and if so, how far. The ESA test replaces this with the activity of "mobilising" with or without a walking stick, manual wheelchair, or other aid.

So, it seems, the Government is assuming that the environment is now so accessible, and technology so advanced, that mobilising using a manual wheelchair is no different from walking. But is this really the case? And even if it is, are currently able-bodied people getting in the way of disabled people using it?

Being part of the mainstream isn't so easy when a major music venue (*cough* Brixton Academy *cough*) has this as its idea of accessibility..

And to be frank, inside wasn't a whole lot better.

At least they'd made the attempt though. All that's required is that service providers make "reasonable adjustments". What is "reasonable" depends (among other things) on the cost of the adjustment and the size and resources of the organisation. The small pharmacy I use has a step at the entrance, and it would be difficult to have a ramp: so they've installed a doorbell at the door, meaning that I and others who can't get in can summon someone to help us. Clearly it's not ideal transacting my pharmacy business on the pavement, but I think in view of the size of the business and the costs of installing a ramp, the adjustment they've made is reasonable.

And what of the Big Society? Insofar as anyone can work out what the phrase means, part of it seems to involve people taking an active role in their communities. Even if people don't want to get involved in voluntary work, you would think that the bare minimum would be having a tiny bit of consideration to make sure that others are able to move around.

Apparently not.

I have a marked disabled bay outside my house - not a blue badge bay, just a bay marked in white paint with the universal disability sign. Because it's not a blue badge bay, it's not legally enforceable. It's a kind of "look guys, there's someone disabled living here, so howsabout leaving the space free, yeah?" bay. It depends on people's goodwill and consideration for others.

Except that those seem to be qualities in short supply. Few of the houses in my street have off-street parking, and even among those that do, many have more than one car. So parking spaces are in high demand. If I happen to be out (It does happen. Occasionally) I can guarantee that the space will be filled when I get back.

My car is modified to be wheelchair accessible. It's great - totally designed round my needs, completely accessible. I get into it up a ramp at the back, and have a large sticker in the back window saying "Wheelchair access needed - please leave at least 3 metres space". Yeah, you can guess what happens. Parked right up to the bumper.

Then there's drop kerbs. The other day, I made it out as far as my local shop. Came out, up the hill to the junction. But someone had parked across the dropped kerb...so back downhill, right to the shop again, down the drop kerb there, back up the hill in the road, and finally across the junction. Now fortunately I was using my power wheelchair so going three times the distance someone walking would have to was no extra effort. But an environment so accessible that using a chair is no different from walking? Uh...no, I don't think so.

You know when you read in the paper about some elderly person being picked up by the police driving their mobility scooter down the hard shoulder of the motorway? Well, I don't reckon they have confusion at all. I think they're just trying to find a drop kerb that mobody's parked across.