davidgillon | Entries tagged with access

Our party split up once we got back to Athens: two flying to the UK, two to Munich and two staying in the apartment one of them owns. Meanwhile I caught a taxi to my second hotel. No problem with check-in, but then I came to use the lift - and my chair was wider than the door. The receptionist was convinced it should fit, but the edges of the doors were hitting wheels, never mind pushrims, so I have to climb out and half-collapse the chair every time I want to use the lift.

The room is great, even the accessible bathroom (mostly) makes sense, but the arrangement of furniture means you can't get the chair into the window half of the room, I'm not even certain it would be possible without taking at least the coffee table out and probably the drawers as well. That isn't too much of a problem as the room looks out on Vassilious Sofias Ave, which combines being the road past parliament, embassy row, and a six lane motorway (eight lane for the more adventurous). Glad I brought a good pair of earplugs!

Breakfast today was good, also leisurely, then I headed out to meet my friend Julia, and decided to be adventurous by wheeling all the way. Considering the whole embassy row/road past parliament thing, accessibility is pretty dire. If you find a good kerb-cut then 50% of the time it either has a dumpster in it or someone is using it for parking. Half the kerb-cuts don't have matching kerb-cuts on the other side of the road and I only saw one traffic island with kerb-cuts to match those on the pavement. Even the Hilton didn't have kerb-cuts. By the time I was half way there I was muttering dark threats against whoever is in charge of pavement maintenance, there's a man who needs to spend a few days in a wheelchair trying to navigate his city.

Julia and I met at the Benaki museum at about 1pm, but only got about half of it done before it closed at 3pm (Jules had already done the Parthenon, the jewellery museum and part of the open-top bus ride before we met up), then we wandered past Parliament to take pictures with the Efzones on guard, through Syntagma Square, then down Emlou, the main shopping street (mostly closed given it's Sunday), finishing of with a meal in a streetwise cafe (moussaka for Jules, a chicken and pork gyros for me, which had so much meat it beat me). And then I caught a taxi back to the hotel as I was pretty knackered - and it's up hill all the way (fare 7 euros, I pay nearly as much for the 5 minute ride between the station and my house - and more on Sundays!).

Current Mood: Bouncy (not in a good way!)
Current Location: Thoroughly rattled

Got to the hotel about 23:45 Athens time, up before 7AM to grab breakfast, then taxi to Acropolis to be in queue for it opening at 8AM. Glad I decided to go with stics, not chair. Theoretically wheelchair accessible and actually wheelchair accessible are two different things! Bit like the hotel, whose lifts turn out to be smaller than UK standard wheelchair, and the bathroom, which has all the right bits, but in a not very sensible arrangement - e.g. towel rack at above standing head height in a wheelchair accessible room. Rest of room is okay (once I rearranged the furniture), but only here the one night so not a major issue.

Acropolis and Parthenon are spectacular, even half-shrouded in scaffolding, also saw Greek military doing their flag ceremony (not too sure about their singing!)

Current Mood: Cultural
Current Location: Attica!

With laptop finally delivered (purple! it's purple! did I mention it's purple!) I was finally able to get out and about and do the errands that have been queueing up all week.

Firstly into Chatham and park in the most convenient car park (not actually the disabled car park as I still haven't renewed my blue badge). The whole car park is on a slope, making it annoyingly difficult to push in a straight line to get out of there, and while there's a kerb cut to get out of there (as there are a couple of disabled spaces), the corresponding kerb cut on the other side of the road is about 50 metres away. Somewhat amused by the parent who picked up a 5yo, scooter and all, and physically moved her out of my way once I was back on the path (she had actually steered out of my way, but her parental unit evidently decided there wasn't sufficient clearance). That bit of pavement does at least get me into the back of Debenhams, with a convenient lift down to street level.

First call at the phone store. (Note to phone store employees, calling me 'buddy' doesn't impress (note to American readers, British use of 'buddy' is negligible to zero, so it comes over as false, even patronising)). 'Hi, I need to stick some credit on my PAYG phone' 'Have you got your swipe card?', 'Ah, no', 'Well in that case we can't do it, but you can go to Sainsbury's (nearest supermarket), buy a credit voucher there then come back and we can do it then, or if you have the swipe card at home you can ring in and do it.' - Your system, it does not make sense!

Then to travel agents (Thomsons), I'd passed it on the way to the phone shop and realised access was going to be a sod, to the point I had a quick scout around to confirm there are no other travel agents about. Heavy door, with a lip. I needed one of the staff members to get the door and then had problems getting the front castors over the lip. Finally got in, and access wasn't much better inside, long, narrow space with a row of desks down the middle, they had to move chairs just to let me speak to someone. So I explain the issue - sailing in Greece, want to book flights, and hotel for a few extra days, and hope they might be better set up for working out which hotels are wheelchair accessible than the online apps seem to be, but it seems they're so tightly tied to particular companies they wanted to charge £160 more for flights I already thought were overpriced, and the best they could do on hotels is "we'd have to ring our broker and they'd probably have to ring the hotel". So that was a complete waste of time.

Head over to Rochester, intending to go to GPs and then go get my hair cut. In parking up behind the cathedral I realise that I've complete forgotten about the GPs (fortunately before I got the chair out), so head back over to there, navigate their nightmare of a car park, drop off repeat prescription request, head back to the cathedral, and fortunately there's still a parking place. Wheel into town, which seems to be mostly over cobbles, rattle, rattle, rattle (to the point I've had to re-tighten two of the screws holding the push-rims on, and I just checked those the other day), get to the barbers and there's only three of them working, with seven people in front of me (and of course every one of them opts for a wash and blow dry, when normally you can bet on most guys having the quicker dry cuts). If I hadn't been so irritated by how hot and sticky the weather has been I'd probably have given up. Indeed the guy who walked in just after me was told "about an hour and a half" and did turn around and walk out. It actually wasn't as bad as it could have been, I was done within the hour ("number 2 all over" really doesn't take very long once you get started).

Head back to the car, cursing cobbles, though at least I can now do the whole distance without needing to stop, even though it's uphill on the way back (and new summery wheelchair gloves, recommended by

kaberett are truly excellent).

Drive home, cursing rush-hour traffic, only to discover it's yet another crash just opposite my house, with a police car blocking off half the road while they recover three cars (none looked particularly bent, but they had to haul at least one away on a loader).

And I've still got to sort out flights and phone, grr!

Current Mood: irritated
Current Location: Hot and sticky

There's another festival on in Rochester (Fuse, which is Jazz IIRC), so they were building a prefab stage in the castle moat as I wheeled past (don't worry, it's a dry moat...). When I wheeled past again on my way back to the car they were building an access ramp to get you over the kerb that separates the footpath and the moat. And I do mean building, they had a carpenter making it on the spot from rough timber (never mind that they had a perfectly finished and properly surfaced one in exactly the same spot for Dickens only a couple of weeks ago).

As I got up to it the carpenter stuck out a toe and prodded one of the planks (yes, he'd built it from planks, longways, with no reinforcement other than at either end, rather than using a sheet of board or properly reinforcing it). Plank promptly deflects downwards two inches under just tow pressure (I'm not exaggerating!). When I glanced back over my shoulder they had it turned on its side and were muttering about 'battens, maybe we could use some battens underneath'.

I did think about offering to try it out for them, but nope, not going there, because I'm pretty sure 'going there' would be 'going through'!

Where do they find these people?

Current Mood: amused
Current Location: Staying right here where it's solid, thanks...

First time at new polling station at Balfour Road school (I refused to vote for PCC*). I took the chair just to make sure I looked at the access practicalities.

It would have been a nightmare to walk to, impossible to wheel to (down a very steep hill, then up the other side), just as well I can drive again. It does at least have offstreet parking, which neither of previous two polling stations did (they had similar hill problems).

If they've got disabled spaces in the parking I couldn't see them.

There was a ramp, but poorly signed.

Someone held the door for me going in (more on this in a moment)

Internal signage was poor.

They did have a wheelchair height booth, but they'd divided the hall in two lengthwise with benches and the last one neatly lined up with the front of the wheelchair accessible booth, you definitely wouldn't have gotten a large power chair in there, and it made the approach awkward for a standard sized manual wheelchair.

A teller asked me how the access was, and I suspect from context that meant I was the first wheelchair voter they'd had, at 3:30PM. That's worrying. I told them about signage and the bench issue and she seemed to be headed for the bench when I wheeled out.

When I got to the outside doors again they were shut, heavy, and only opened inward. I can open a heavy door in the chair, but that forces you to come at the doorway at an angle, and the footplates on the chair therefore went straight into the pillar outside, absolutely no way I was getting out on my own. Two women following me out tried to open the other door, it was locked shut - they opened two bolts and it still wouldn't move, fortunately with one of them holding the door I could back off and come straight at it, but the overall conclusion has to be that I couldn't independently access the polling station, which isn't good.

*PCC= Police and Crime Commissioner - for non-Brits these are newly introduced, politicising the former Police Authorities, many people, including me, opposed the change and felt voting would legitimise them. I otherwise always vote, but this was a rare occasion in which not voting was a valid form of political expression.

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Location: Sitting down for democracy
Current Music: The Red Flag

As a disabled person I'm unfortunately well used to the environment failing to cater for me, which is why in the Social Model of Disability we define disability as the discrimination we face from the failure of society to provide us with equality of outcome.

Yesterday was the General Election here in the UK and unfortunately I found myself facing not one but two major access fails in a single day.

Taking the election first, the press have been focused on voters having the doors slammed in their faces at 10PM, which is rightly a scandal, but this is far from the only problem people, and particularly disabled people, have faced voting. If we look at my experience then the problems started the moment the polling card dropped through the letter box.

The Polling Card: as in the past it wasn't clear on the map where in the sprawling local comprehensive school you need to go, usually made doubly worse in reality by a hedge hiding the door that is the access. The new problem was that the polling station wasn't actually there any more.... They have moved it to the infant school a couple of hundred yards down the road on the opposite side, but not updated the map. The confusion wasn't helped by both schools being 'St Johns'

The Location: at the top of a large, steep hill, not exactly ideal for anyone with mobility issues. (Particularly as there is a larger junior school with on-site parking at the bottom of the hill, and a large church, also with on-site parking and ISTR a hall right next to that).

The Parking: no disabled parking bays whatsoever, nor any on-site parking. It's all resident on-street bay parking in the vicinity, so there's no hope of anything available post-6PM and it was getting seriously iffy post-3PM when I voted. The closest I could park was about 100 metres away and just getting to the polling station and back left me shaking in pain.

The Signage: Very poor, One large 'Polling station sign (apparently taped together out of sheets of A4 paper), but for pointing you to the appropriate, and very unobvious, gate to get inside they were using unbacked paper strips about 10cm by 75cm taped to iron railings, so that the ends (with the arrows!) had curled around the railings.

The Site: a small, Victorian-style primary school. The entrance was sloped somewhere betwee 1 in 5 and 1 in 10 in rough-poured concrete, and roughly vee-shaped down that slope -- not a flat surface in site. Not exactly great. The relevant entrance to the polling station could have been much better sign-posted, there were at least three different doors in sight and it took me 30 seconds to figure out which was relevant. How someone with a visual impairment was meant to find their way I have no idea. The corridor through to the room in use could have been much better lighted. There was a portable ramp at the entrance to the polling room, which I tripped over - not because I missed it in the lighting, but because it was about 32" wide with 4" lips at the side, while I stand about 36" wide from crutch to crutch.... I don't use any of the legally required access provisions for completing the poll form myself, but I had a general check around for the required facilities. At first glance I couldn't spot the low-level, wheelchair accessible booth, but I think that was just because someone (non-disabled) was using it; the template for VI voters wasn't apparent, but may have been hidden under a desk somewhere, but more worrying WRT that there are multiple reports already of VI voters finding polling officers who had no idea what the template was for nor how to use it, having had absolutely no briefing on access issues. If I had needed to sit then there were no seats ready, though a few were pushed under tables that had been shoved to the side. Overall I think the new polling site is worse than the old one, and the old one wasn't good enough to start with.

Now I got to vote, at the cost of a significant amount of pain, but how many disabled people faced similar obstacles and found them insurmountable? If I wasn't a driver I couldn't have made it to the polling station, never mind the difficulties I faced inside and getting from car to door. I've talked to the staff in the past, and they genuinely have no idea of the issues disabled people face, or even how to show them common courtesy -- one online friend reports being fairly comprehensively patronised yesterday. Beyond the physical issues there is obviously a general failure in training. Some people might think that if disabled people find accessing the polling station difficult then we should use postal votes instead, but that misses the whole point of democracy and equality, we should all be able to access an equivalent and identical voting experience.

So what can we do? Blog about it, obviously, but you can complain (and I plan to): to council officers, councillors and press, in the most egregious cases to the Electoral Commission, and you can log your voting experience at Scope's Polls Apart website and hope that we can bring enough pressure to bear that they will do better next time.

Moving on to the second major access fail of the day....

After December's farrago with Flexible New Deal -- yet another epic access fail which I talked about here -- the Job Centre decided that Job Seekers Allowance couldn't begin to cope with the limitations my disability imposed on my job search and that I would be better off on Employment and Support Allowance (the replacement for Incapacity Benefit). As a result of this I have been working my way through the ESA hoops since late January.

Today's hoop: ESA medical assessment, looking into the work-limiting elements of my disability, of which the major one is that I can't sit without escalating pain (and we're talking sharpened stakes being hammered into places best not elaborated on, not some minor discomfort). Not something I was looking forward to, the government has outsourced the process to ATOS-Origin, whose reputation precedes them, and it isn't a reputation to be proud of.

After voting I had to head home, sort out the papers they needed and head off; luckily the Assessment Centre is local. There's no disabled parking on site (hmm, bit of an oversight there for a site focused on disabled clients), but fortunately the local disabled parking is just a touch over 100m away and at 6PM I could find a space -- not something guaranteed any time between 8AM and 5:30PM. I signed in and was waved through into the waiting room. That had about a dozen chairs, not plastic bucket seats, but not much of a step up from them. None of them had any adjustment, only two of them had arms, the nearest of which I grabbed. After a minute I was already getting hypersensitivity (and that hurts), after two I couldn't sit flat on the chair anymore and I had to roll sideways so I was sitting on the outside of my hip with legs stuck out sideways and generally curled up in pain. By the time we got toward 10 minutes I was physically shaking and realised that there was no way I could sit on a similar chair any longer, so if they had similar chairs in the consultation room then they were going to have to go and find something better.

At that point I was called through. And it turned out that they didn't have the same seats in the consultation room, they were actually worse! Three chairs, no adjustment, no arms, the cheapest style of upholstery.

I didn't even sit down, I just propped myself against the examination couch and told the guy (who never introduced himself) that I need an adjustable seat if we're going to go through with this.

His answer was that that was all they have and that if I need an adjustable seat then they'll have to reschedule.

They have dragged me down there, I am shaking in pain because of it and they can't begin to offer me the most basic accommodation for my disability. It is fair to say I lost my temper, but I kept the criticism to the company rather than the staff, pointing out that amongst other things they had failed to meet the DDA's requirement that they make reasonable adjustments, and were expected to have thought about the needs of their clientele in advance in making those reasonable adjustments. The guy I was seeing said that they had raised the seats issue themselves and had been told to make do with what they had and that he would back my complaint.

So they bring me a complaints form and point to where I should write my complaint. Hello? Disabled person here! Amongst other things I can't write comfortably (or legibly).

And what makes it worse....

When I filled out the ESA medical form that is a preliminary to the assessment (by stapling a page or more of typescript to every page of the 28 page form), what was the last thing I wrote: "I have major problems with seating, if any extended wait is likely then ideally I need a chair adjustable in both height and seat angle."

Not exactly an unexpected requirement then....

It seems ATOS' reputation is fully justified.

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Location: flat on my back
Current Music: The Cave - Mumford and Sons