Is this discrimination from Wembley Stadium?

[pieandmashliquornotgravy]

Background - my DD needs a wheelchair if more than a few minutes walking. My 12 year old DGD wants to go to Summertime Ball. DGD would not be able to push wheelchair for any sort of distance, so I would need to go too.

Tickets on sale yesterday. My DD was on hold for 90 minutes yesterday for disabled access tickets. When she finally got through she was told she could only have one extra seat with wheelchair seat.

Able bodied people can buy up to 6 tickets. Wheelchair users 2.

This means a person needing a wheelchair can never take her children to this family event.

Is this discrimination or are we expecting too much?

This would also be a problem if someone requires 2 carers to be with them.

@Floralnomad it doesn't have to be like this because other places can accommodate. With regards to Disneyland, this would be a problem with a group of three, but not quite so much with two adults and two children as nobody misses out.

For big events it's the whole family missing out through to inequality.

I also hope that most people who really need the accessible seating would be fair and only use what is needed.

I have been to Wembley with my DH who is disabled, but not in a wheelchair. It wasn't managed very well in my opinion. DH was in a long queue of disabled people waiting for a lift and security were telling the carers accompanying wheelchair users that they couldn't travel in the lift with them because the queue was too long. The carers were kicking up saying they needed to push the wheelchairs out of the lift at the other end. Security expected the carers to run upstairs ready to meet the lift .

There are 610 seats allocated to the disabled and their carers out of a total of 90,000. Which is the real problem.

Or Flora, they could solve the problem by having a bigger disabled area. Of course it doesn't have to be like this.

Its not discrimination against a protected characteristic (disability) as they have made efforts to accommodate disabled people.

However, the venue and the promoter could do more to be inclusive or perhaps do more than one event. Its clear there is a capacity issue and they are balancing their limited disability space between allowing more disabled people or more people with a smaller number of disabled people. Its not beyond the realm of possibility we could see posts here from people saying that they couldn't bring a disabled relative to an event and when they looked at the disabled area, saw many people taking up space that disabled people could use.

I think you could be asking the venue and promoter why there is so little disabled space at the event (if its a structural issue then its the owner, layout of seating then promoter).

You could also be tweeting the artists who are due to perform asking why they are performing at events with such limited disabled space.

I just think I'm more realistic , most stadiums have fixed seating and disabled areas and they make the rules to make it fair .

Website states 310 disabled.

When I booked tickets for a concert at Wembley I was able to buy 2 in the wheelchair area and 2 in the section next to it. I think the only reason you couldn't is because the rest of the tickets were already sold out. If there had been tickets available you could have bought 6 tickets like anyone else

Yanbu op. The situation is ridiculous. Your daughter, who happens to be disabled, wants to attend an event with her daughter. This is something other people take for granted and all she needs is a reasonable adjustment (i.e. being able to take someone to assist her) to enable her to do the same thing everyone else can. However due to the restrictions on ticketing (restrictions chosen and put in place by them) your daughter is unable to do that.

Therefore they are discriminating against your daughter and failing to make reasonable adjustments to allow her to attend the event.

I would complain. I would make a really big fuss because it's not fair and it's not lawful.

Actually that last bit's only true if disabled people cannot sit with their families which is a service everyone else can obtain.

Is there a reason why your 12 year old cannot push the wheelchair?

@AndNowItIsSeven it is too heavy.

Could you request that a member of staff pushes the wheelchair to her seat so that DD and DGD can attend together? Maybe you could take them to the door and hand them over.

My dd and I are both disabled, although not in wheelchairs. Quite often we cannot attend events as there is nobody we can ask to accompany us. I did take her to a west end show alone once and the staff were fantastic about conveying us to and from our seats.

Probably too late to do anything now. If 80,000 seats sold in 90 minutes I'm sure the 315 accessible will be gone by now.

The reason I ask op is because I have only had my electric chair two years. Before that my then nine year old would push me at avents she just took her time and 9 times out of 10 people offered to help.
Has she had a go pushing at all?

She has but it is too heavy. Ok in a shopping centre where it's a smooth ride. I find it hard enough, especially with kerbs etc.

310 accessable seats does seem a paltry number for an 80,000 venue and I can see why your daughter wants to go with her daughter, but ....

Your granddaughter managed to get into the accessable seats and absolutely rightly those in the accessible seats are allowed what Wembley describe as a Personal Assistant with them to attend to their needs. If she is sitting in this area by virtue of the fact that she is a wheelchair user's personal assistant, she should be able to meet that person's needs, of which pushing the chair is one. At a lot of venues/events, the person with the disabilty's personal assistant isn't charged a fee, is this the case for the Summertime ball?

I don't know if Wembley charge or not, but GD did not get a seat because DD knew it wouldn't work so did not buy anything.

But equally that still means if she cannot be her mum's carer then they are excluded as a family. What about her 6 year old son, who isn't interested in this event but may be interested in another event. EXCLUDED!

I used to work in a call centre selling tickets for Wembley! It's what everyone else said about able bodied people taking up wheelchair spaces

Also, we used to have so many people buying these when they weren't in wheel chairs because they thought it was a good way to get to the front. How they thought they'd get away with it I dont know

Personally I think there should be common sense approach. If you buy accessible seating you have to have named ID for the event to prove you are entitled to it.

The problem here is if you then can't make it you lose out, but that's a risk you may need to take for accessible seating.

I would have thought they could at least offer an ordinary ticket for the 3rd person, OP could then get DD and DGD seated and sit nearby in a non disabled area but close enough to assist if needed. If non disabled people can buy 6 tickets then I don't see why they can't offer six tickets to disabled people but not all in the disabled area.

@grannytomine because after 90 minutes on hold all general seating had been sold so they said there was nothing they could do.

Oh I see, I thought they wouldn't sell you an ordinary seat as it was the disabled line. That is miserable.