It was at about this time four hundred and eight years ago Guy Fawkes was allegedly putting the final touches on his big old pile of gunpowder underneath the Palace of Westminster (we say ‘allegedly’ wisely. It might be over four hundred years since he was hung drawn and quartered but you can never be too careful – defamation law suits are just no fun. Fact.) Now here we are, in 2013, with our own set of grievances that we want to set light to.
Where the Gunpowder Plotters sought to burn King James and the Protestant regime he represented we have far less controversial targets – the BBS Bonfire is for anything that specifically annoys less able people about access and disabled facilities. This is of course all symbolic, although we will be burning an envelope of the pet peeves we’ve discuss, which may provide some catharsis.
With Bonfire Night tomorrow we have just a few more things to chuck onto our bonfire of the inaccessibilities. Tomorrow we’ll be summing up what’s going on the fire – recapping our suggestions and adding some more of our own and from readers. But today we have something else to go on: ‘accessible’ hotel rooms with bathtubs.
Maybe this is something that I get more worked up about than I should but I simply don’t see how hotels are allowed to get away with it. The way I see it, getting into and out of a bath is a good deal of effort for less able guests. It’s a bit like saying that the hotel room is accessible except that the bed’s a bunk bed. Trying to haul yourself around is no small task. It’s not an easy alternative to a normal unadapted hotel bathroom.
Perhaps, when planning the disabled room the hoteliers thought that less able customers would be fine with baths and would be travelling with somebody who would help them get in and out. Well, that’s not good enough for me thank you very much. I don’t want somebody I’m on holiday with to have to do that – it’s not fair on them and it’s not fair on me. Washing is something you’d rather do in privacy as long as you can.
Some people may need assistance but for the many people who don’t – who just need a wheel in shower or wet room – these ‘accessible’ hotel baths are falsely advertised. They’re another half measure in accessibility and suggest that the hotel staff are just making things up off the cuff. It implies that these hotels are thinking of the less able as homogeneous, mindless patients rather than actual people.
No matter how many hand rails they have, baths are not the answer for disabled hotel rooms, that’s why we only count hotel rooms with wheel in showers as being truly accessible.
It’s another example of a broader theme of venues telling you that they’re accessible, or even advertising their accessibility, when they are not. It strikes us as being a lazy and ill-planned way of doing things on the part of these hotels. That’s why we’re putting it on the BBS Bonfire.
If you dis/agree then please get in touch. Or if you have your own grievance to tell us about here’s a last chance to put it into our envelope. It’s a sort of an anti time capsule – a list of all the things we don’t want to remember in the future!