To think that any one who designs a town, building, theme park or attraction should have to spend the day navigating it in a wheelchair?

[Flufferblub]

Needed a wheelchair on some days since my early 30s, and the experience has been eye opening. Some spaces seem well designed such as airports, but others it feels like disabled people are a complete after thought. Even in new places that have just been built in the past few years. You can understand in historic towns and places, but if some where has been designed and built in the 21st century, you'd think that they'd put a button to open the disabled toilet door.

The people who design and run these places need to spend a day getting around in a wheelchair. Design it with wheelchairs in mind first, and everyone else will be alright. Who doesn't like a ramp and automatic doors any way?

You can guarantee they shelled our a fucktonne to a mates "disability" consultancy that employs no one with any disabilities.

At least that's what a local hospital did with their £10 million refit. Leaving doors too narrow for a wheelchair, not that you'd have found out as the only entrance was a revolving door that wouldn't stop.

That's awful!

My colleague tells me that as a disability awareness exercise they did this at our Australian office and it was eye opening and the driver for lots of adjustments being implemented.
There's enough talk of User Experience it should be a no-brainer

How unsurprising. There’s already a YABU vote. 🙄

It’s infuriating how little thought goes in to accommodating people who are less than 5ft, let alone people who use wheelchairs. It’s an able bodied man’s world all right.

Edited because pressed post too soon accidentally.

Couldn’t be more unreasonable! An excellent idea. Just back from a holiday where there was a massive delay due to the right equipment not being available to help a passenger in a wheelchair leave the plane. An absolute joke, that poor person just waiting. It’s appalling how accessibility hasn’t improved.

Can anyone who has voted YABU please explain themselves?

Although I had a similar thought above, it could have been a case of fat fingers. I really hope so.

You can change your vote

Yanbu op. New buildings should absolutely be accessible

I never forgotten the disabled toilet down three steps and the disabled lift up seven......mum luckily short time in a wheelchair was an eye opener. Also the disabled parking on a slope...I'd got mum out of the car to watch the wheelchair which had its brakes on slide away from me....I was supporting mum and couldn't leave her at that stage... luckily kind young man saw the wheelchair sliding down the slope so came to our rescue. Then there was the step out of the disabled car parking area. Yanbu op and wish it done as standard.

I am so with you on this. It is absolutely appalling how little thought is given to wheelchair users.

I personally feel they should consider employing people specifically for this on their team. It's too important to leave it to one person to do it as a side project.

I suggested this in a new office build project and was told it would be offensive to people who actually need wheelchairs.

Yes I do feel it's perhaps better to get someone who is actually a wheelchair user to assess this.

My mum is a wheelchair user, she can walk but with immense pain. Family party last week at a venue specifically picked due to wheelchair access, park in the car park and not a single dropped kerb to get her chair to the door...managed to get her to stand so I could get the chair up. Later she needed the toilet which is fine except the disabled toilet didn't fit her chair in so up again she gets, by that point she was exhausted.

We were in a major city recently and staying in a newer hotel in a new area (should be all disabled friendly), disabled rooms through 3 non automatic doors. We went to get transport to the city and the dropped kerbs were so high that she would have broken her chair or tipped when she went down them🤦‍♀️ if I'm with her it's ok but I can't help but feel for wheelchair users out themselves.

I was passing a very modern bank yesterday, and came to a rescue of a mum with a pushchair as the doors only opened one way. You would think a door would be easy to get right... every other shop in the parade and electronic sliding doors. The bank had changed theirs...

I agree.

A minor point in the grand scheme of things, but I was always a bit that the mirror in the accessible toilet in my office building could only be used while standing up.

It did double as the ladies toilet for that area (male dominated building so few women used it but still showed that no-one had thought about it).

The fact is that accessible buildings help everyone, they don't suddenly inconvenience other users.

Our very new office building would be impossible for a wheelchair user and I’ve thought this often! I genuinely don’t know what the architect was thinking.

The only way onto each secured floor is to swipe your card approx 2.5m away from the door handle, which gives you about 3 seconds to open it before it locks again - it’s sufficiently quick that I miss it fairly often. The glass door is large, heavy and only opens one way.

Its not offensive to suggest training for designers (and everyone else) which includes experiencing some of the practical difficulties. Its also a mistake to assume that Mary in the wheelchair on the fourth floor is the de facto expert on all matters wheelchair related - needs vary widely between users.

IME many companies advising on disability are owned and run by people with disabilities and a good one will offer decent training as well as advice across a range of disabilities.

They will also point out that wheelchair users are just one cohort and that even if you cater for most wheelchair users you may still be blocking access to buildings and services to those with other, much commoner, disabilities.

Yes, yes, yes & fucking YES! I use a mobility scooter which I realise isn't quite the same as needing a wheelchair, however it's opened my eyes as to your struggles, wow!

I've got stuck between two rails of coats in Fat Face which is a regular occurrence in many shops and have frequently had to give up & leave my scooter by the till so I can look around - something obviously wheelchair users can’t do!

I also regularly have to go right along some streets, much, much further than intended just to find two dropped curbs opposite each other (rare) so I can cross the flipping road on a street that doesn't have crossings which is quite a few. Especially in my town centre.

There's a huge number of shops in my town and the two major cities near me, which a wheelchair couldn't even get into. They either wouldn't be able to manoeuvre within the shop or there's multiple steps up to the door with no ramp. I understand in some old buildings that there's no possible way of making them accessible which is fair enough. However with most, there's just no excuse and I'm amazed it's even tolerated in 2023.

The problem with building stuff - buildings, streets, etc - is that it’s very hard and expensive to do anything about it once it’s built. And it’s hard to (physically) user test by actually trying to move a wheelchair around something until it’s actually built.

So what you get are a whole range of obvious additions and workarounds to overcome (that might be putting it strongly - make less awful may be closer) the problems that emerge when real people with access needs try to use it.

You could run various simulations on the digital models beforehand, but you’d be very much limited by the extent to which he model is able to anticipate the experiences of real users.

The other problem with towns is that they’re not really designed holistically. Individual bits of them are designed entirely independently (and with diverse aims) and the experiences of navigating across all these different bits of design can be terrible. Even if all the individual bits are well thought through for accessibility, the architects may have taken a range of approaches that turn out to be horribly incompatible when the urban landscape is considered overall.

And the there’s the issue of maintenance, which can mean that something previously reasonably accessible becomes much less so before it reaches the threshold where anyone realises it needs maintenance.

That isn't just a problem for wheelchair users. Anyone using a walking aid will struggle to do that as it tends to require two hands free and enough physical strength to pull the door one handed within seconds of flashing the badge.

We have a similar set up in one of our offices and I've had to call for help on occasion because the time to open after swiping is just too short.

So true. I was once involved in a project group for the design of a new build hospital unit. The group included the architects as well as the NHS project team. I spoke up about the need to ensure that the build included the correct structure to accommodate ceiling track hoists for disabled patients (which was agreed as part of the design). I was shushed and told "we're discussing the structural design of the building at this meeting - hoists are in the fitting out which will be discussed further down the line". Anyone who has ever fitted/had a ceiling track hoist fitted will absolutely know that it's what supports it above the ceiling which is important - so absolutely a structural issue! There is no hope when they are designing a hospital with clueless architects/project leads.
And I am also told that access is often based on small standard wheelchairs in design plans - so no accounting for large electric chairs or supportive chairs with footrests - who struggled to manoeuvre in the turning circles allocated in the 'compliant' plans.

YANBU but YABU because other disabilities need to be accommodated too.

My son is a wheelchair user and we are on holiday in a town in Devon. Goodbpoknts are that Haven wheelchair accessible caravan is 100% accessible. He can wash, sleep and help with chores/ get food etc independently.
However there isn't enough disabled parking so a couple of times we've had to stop the car in a car park in the way to get him out before parking in a normal space. No signage to find disabled entrances to places leading to walking round buildings. Shops that he cannot access.
Until you've lived it you don't know the everyday challenges.