Much of the above is very familiar to me. Yes, I’ve also had changing rooms being used as storage - Next on Fenchurch Street, for example - countless shops not remotely set up to permit wheelchair access around the shop if you can even get into the shop in the first place, as well as those who aren’t prepared to serve you at the door if you can’t physically get your chair in.
Countless people trying to talk to my husband or son instead of me because I’m in my wheelchair. Or just insisting on looking around me for a carer rather than deal with me direct - passenger assistance at Zurich and Manchester airports, for example - or people assuming that since I’m traveling alone in a wheelchair they can just pick my luggage up and move it around without asking or try to move me because I’m place inconveniently for their needs by actually occupying the wheelchair space. And good luck with that because my power chair weighs 95kg before I even get into it.
Being invited to attend a conference somewhere interesting, only to find that they never in a million years expected any attendee to be disabled and weren’t able to accommodate me after all. I did suggest that if they designed the events to be accessible it would save them and any potential disabled guests embarrassment in the future, but I doubt they’ll change anything.
Attending an industry conference and wanting to talk to vendors at the stands in the hall, only to have them pointedly look over my head and ignore me when I tried to attract their attention as presumably a woman in a wheelchair has less purchasing authority and budget than her equivalent able-bodied colleague. Not just one stand at that event, either. All but 2 refused to acknowledge my existence. Their loss, and I’m sure they didn’t enjoy me giving feedback to their head office.
Random people being abusive in the street and elsewhere because they assume I can neither understand nor respond. Oh, and the bloke who punched me in shoulder as he walked past me because he could. And who got away with it because it was on a pedestrian street with market stalls and I couldn’t go after him in my chair over the cobbles. And as it is it took a long time to get the police I reported it to to understand that if he only punched a stranger in a wheelchair and nobody else, that’s a hate crime and needs to be reported as such.
So many battles to access the wheelchair space on buses vs people with buggies and shopping trollies. And the stress of trying to travel around an unfamiliar area and knowing that you can’t rely on there being consistent application of dropped kerbs to ensure you can follow the route that should be practicable.
And of course the very general fact that if you want to travel as a wheelchair user, the chances are that the journey will take you 33% longer because your route options are limited or you have to be places far earlier to access assistance. And that some hotels call hotel rooms accessible when they aren’t in the least - the Ibis at Heathrow, for example - but because they put a bar by the toilet it somehow qualifies, even if you can get your wheelchair in the room, or down the side of the bed, or through the gap between the bed and the wardrobe so you can reach the bathroom in the first place.
And this is just related to my wheelchair use. I could write another post entirely about the struggles with my less visible disabilities.