Working for Blue Badge Style I’ve a lot of conversations over the phone with restaurants and bars asking them about their disabled access. During this time, there’s been one particularly odd thing that keeps cropping up a lot and I just can’t get my head around it. The conversation normally goes a little something like this:
“Sure, we have a disabled toilet.” The very friendly member of staff tells me. “Yep, with hand rails, an emergency alarm, a lowered sink and mirror. It’s fully equipped.”
“That’s great” I reply. “There’s just one other thing… I know this sounds ridiculous but I’ve come across it more often than you’d think. You’d really be amazed how often this happens but I still need to ask: the disabled toilet isn’t up or down a flight of stairs is it?”
There’s a long pause on the other end of the phone… “Oh… it’s down in the basement.”
“Is there a lift to get downstairs?”
“No…”
“Most people who need that toilet probably can’t get down the stairs. This hasn’t really been thought through has it?”
“Not really… I suppose it doesn’t make much sense now I think about it.”
No, it doesn’t make much sense at all!
I was coming across this bizarre situation, of putting something that is supposed to be accessible for someone in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs, so often that a couple of weeks ago I named it the Accessible Toilet Paradox. These downstairs disabled toilets are paradoxically accessible and inaccessible at the same time – they’re kitted out to be accessible for the less able but they’re in an inaccessible location.
It’s extremely frustrating, nonsensical and it just confuses me. I know a lot of venues are genuinely trying to help by fitting a toilet with hand rails and that these toilets are helpful for some less able people but it’s a bit of a half measure really. If you can’t get to a disabled toilet in a wheelchair then fitting it was a bit of a pointless endeavour in the first place.
It’s a really hard situation to get one’s head around. Are venues with this paradox actually trying to be helpful but they’re naive or do they just not care? You’d have to tell me; I’m too bewildered by it all.
These toilets are a bit of a cop out and they’re not very effective. It’s also just really difficult to understand why anyone bothers with them. Why would you make an accessible toilet inaccessibly downstairs?
All of this means I would suggest we just put the Accessible Toilet Paradox onto our BBS Bonfire next Tuesday.
What pet peeve would you add to the BBS Bonfire?
I was once at a busy club that was apparently modern and had just been renovated not long ago. I went into the disabled bathroom/useful store room, (navigating my wheelchair around the usual obstacle course of spare chairs, toilet rolls and mop handles ).
I was sitting on the toilet for only a minute or two before the door (which I had locked) was suddenly unlocked and opened. The manager of the venue stood there, door wide open, with a large crowd of people behind him peering in at me, and demanded me to hurry up because there was a large queue forming for the women’s!!.
The next time I attempted to use the same ‘disabled’ bathroom, the queue of abled bodied people trying to get in there was so big that I had to use the car park around the back of the club!. Upon trying to re-enter the club I was told I couldn’t come back in because it was too busy!!. Safe to say I have never returned to that s*** hole!!.