Saturday the 17th of January marks the first ever Disabled Access Day in the UK. The aim of the day is to encourage disabled people and their families and friends to visit somewhere they have never been before on 17 January, such as a coffee shop, sports centre, cinema or a tourist attraction.
A array of museums, galleries and other tourist attractions are taking part – some offering free or discounted events and presumably boosting their numbers of staff for the day – and you can get a complimentary hand crafted coffee in Caffè Nero. It gives businesses a chance to show of their accessibility and disabled people a nudge to try something new and promote access by sharing pictures and stories of their day.
We have to admit that we have had some misgivings regarding the premise of the day. When we first heard about it we thought it was a bad idea – lip service of the worst kind. We we’re worried that the day might not become more than an opportunity to pat accessible venues on the back and pick up a free coffee at Nero, without really thinking about the problems there still are. But chief among our misgivings was the fact that we think that every day should be disabled access day. Or, failing that, no day should. We worried that suggesting to certain businesses that they need only provide access for one day a year is not a great statement and could be detrimental in the long run. Does emphasising disabled access for one day a week mean that people can ignore it for 364 days a year (365 in leap years!)?
There a slight similarities to an comment Morgan Freeman once made when he was being interviewed and he was asked what he thought about Black History Month. “Ridiculous” he replied before asking “which month is White History Month?” Something similar could be happening when we celebrate disabled access for one day. We wouldn’t have a day to celebrate able bodied people being able to leave the house because nobody thinks it’s an issue. And we don’t think that disabled people doing so should be either. A disabled person visiting a new cafe should not be an extraordinary event.
However, despite these misgivings we’ve come round to it and are still supporting Disabled Access Day, for two main reasons. Firstly, the day is about promoting good access in a positive way. Our ethos is always to maintain a positive approach to improving accessibility. Where venues are doing well we applaud them and promote their efforts and where they’re not we aim to highlight it in a positive way by telling them how they can improve. Even though the devil in us wants to cause a scene by turning up en masse at an inaccessible venue on Disabled Access Day, that’s not really what we’re about – whilst wanting access to improve, we want to promote places that can be accessed, not those that can’t. We believe this approach is more effective – we know from experience how difficult it is to get stubborn restaurant owners to listen to your complaints and boycotting inaccessible venues is not an option because since you couldn’t go there in the first place it would be a very ineffective boycott.
Secondly, by all going somewhere on one day we can mobilise the disabled pound and show businesses what they’re missing. Disabled Access Day is a way to demonstrate the commercial power that the 11.6 million disabled people in the UK and their carers, friends and family, represent for big and small companies. There is a chance to create a strong impression by talking and tweeting about disabled access all at one time and show people who may not understand just how important disabled access is. if we can show venues what access can do for them and disabled people we think they’re more likely to act.
This day is a chance to mobilise people at one time and get every one of those 11.6 million people out somewhere on one day. That would be a pretty extraordinary message on Disabled Access Day. That’s why, despite not being entirely in agreement on everything to do with it, we’re backing Disabled Access Day this Saturday.
Visiting new places, checking out their accessibility and adding them to our ever growing list of stylish venues on the Blue Badge Style website is what we do (we now have over 900 different venues). We suggest everyone should take the time this Saturday to visit one or more of the more accessible venues that we’ve rated – one of the 2.5 to 3 BBS Tick venues (of which there are many). But we really don’t think that anyone should feel that they can’t try out going to new places unless it’s Disabled Access Day, especially not when we’ve provided accessibility information on so many amazing places to visit. We hope that this Saturday can mobilise the disabled pound but we hope that nobody sees it as a one off event. Be like us and live every day like it’s Disabled Access Day!