'Access' needs to mean more than just wheelchair access

[donkeyderby]

As I am sure some of you know, when you have a child with severe learning disabilities, or severe autism, so many activities and places can be inaccessible, despite the presence of ramps, disabled loos and hearing loops etc.

I am struck by the difficulties my friends and fellow parent-carers have keeping their severely autistic children safe anywhere. We have recently been on a holiday in a centre especially adapted for disabled people. For wheelchair users, it was great - more hoists than you could shake a stick at - but it was a nightmare for some of the parents whose children are runners with no sense of danger - exits everywhere, straight onto a road and no way of locking the doors from the inside, unsafe light fittings, kitchens with no gates, no stair gates anywhere. I really felt for them because they couldn't relax for a single minute.

It's the same with parks, most holiday homes/caravan parks, leisure centres, cinemas and almost anywhere really, unless it is specifically designed for severely autistic people (where are these places?) or they have constant 1:1's round the clock. Why, for instance, are there more and more wheelchair accessible caravans, but apparently no fences allowed round caravans in most parks?

I would like the concept of 'access' to be officially extended to include this group of children and adults and for every area to have a centre that is truly accessible for them, i.e., completely safe with key pads on the doors, safe fittings, strong furniture etc.

Do the NAS do any work on this? Does anyone know of organisations who work on autism-friendly designs/features in buildings?

Marne, there has to be a question about why a disabled toilet has a hand-dryer at all. I guess it goes to the point the OP is making.

DS1 was scared of hand dryers when he was younger. He wouldn't use the toilet at mainstream school because he was so scared of the hand dryer in the boys toilet. The disabled loo didn't have one but he wasn't allowed to use the disabled toilet!! Despite being the only disabled child in the school

Mad huh?

It's when I knew his special school was right for him- he went into the loo when we were looking around and used it

He loves hand dryers now.

Katymac why?

The upstairs was to be a community room (for the church choir or whatever to be hired out) & the downstairs was for the children

But as the upstairs couldn't have a lift (couldn't afford it) or those extra wide stairs (took up too much space so there wasn't enough for the children) so we couldn't do it

I accept it wasn't ideal - but it was possible that we might have found the money for the lift in a year or so but, what can you do?

Our local council has put fences around all its play areas now (maybe one of the councillors has a sideline selling fencing ).

Or maybe they are finally cottoning on!

oh I see, so sounds like the planning people were right.

Well, no nursery for anyone & no community room for anyone, can't see how anyone benefited tbh

Where as we could have had an accessible (in several ways) nursery for 30 children (I normally have a large number of children with additional needs) & a community room that by now (2 years later) we should have afforded the lift

I really agree that disabled access is important - but now no-one has anything

yes but I can see that the planners would have wanted the whole building accesible.
(anyway will leave now)

I too can see that planners wanted the whole building to be accessible to people with mobility issues, but if they are rigid about this, why are they not as rigid about access and safety features for other disabled people? It's because it isn't on the agenda.

donkeyderby, yup. I can guarantee the building isn't accessible for 90% of disabled people already, but if one wheelchair user can't reach one floor/room, no-one can have that service? Madness. I have many friends and colleagues who are wheelchair users and they are absolutely fine with having access to most of a building (as long as it's got the key features) without needing to be able to get into every single corner of it.

sorry I disagree that is madness.

yes BUT if you are going to set up a new business or design a new building shouldn't all people be able to access every areas?
Why allow exclusion to be in-built? Why shouldn't they be able to access every earea?

Actually that's interesting amber

So wheelchair users have to have access to every corner of a building. But it doesn't matter if public spaces are completely inaccessible to those with LD's or autism. DS1 cannot access the cinema, the theatre, local restaurants, swimming -except 2 hours a week disabled session- there's nowhere for him to get changed with a carer of a different gender the rest of the time and so on and so forth. But that doesn't register with LA's?

I actually am fairly certain it would be impossible for ds1 to be able to access all those things all the time without it affecting other people, but he should perhaps be able to access them some of the time - so maybe 2 hours a week swimming is OK- cinema I'd be happy with once a month, theatre maybe special occasional sessions. Not sure about restaurants etc- that may never be possible.

The situation described by Katymac sounds unfortunate. What has happened to the building KM? Is it just left rotting? There must be lots of old buildings where free access isn't possible - for example church towers etc!

Could you have got away with having the upstairs as staff quarters until you could have afforded to put in a lift? DS1's old nursery had an upstairs that would have been inaccessible for the reasons you describe but it was only used for staff.

Some areas are inaccessible to ds2 because he cannot cope with the environment, IMHO physical barriers are far easier to overcome than social or emotional barriers or attitude changes, (not sure if that makes sense but i know what i mean).

threads like this remind me why I rarely post on sn anymore.
you complain about needing more access, then say that it is madness to be told that a building has to have full WC access.
shouldn't we be asking for full acess for everyone

anonandlikeit, the laws on access only say that it has to be proportional. Making every building accessible for every disability would make it too expensive to build any building anywhere, since (for autism) the 'gold standard' would be to have a building that is at least 30% bigger than it would normally be - so that our sensory and stimming and personal-space needs are respected. That's just one of several hundred disabilities to cater for. As Saintlydamemrsturnip says, if we include one disability often we're excluding others.

An example? People with dementia have a right to access buildings and services. It's a disability. 'Gold standard' says that they should have cupboards where you can see the contents as that helps them to find things. People with arthritis may need cupboards that are really easy to open. But if you do that for children with autism, you might end up with them overfocusing and panicking that they can't get out all the things, so their 'gold standard' may well be to have lockable cupboards that are plain. (I say 'may well be', because we haven't yet formulated the national standards for buildings access for autism).

If we focus solely on wheelchair users being the only disability that gets full access and controls whether the building happens or not, we're often forgetting about people with other mobility or disability needs: many people using zimmer frames say that some standard disabled ramps actually make their lives harder and make access more challenging.

I have mobility issues myself, and sensory issues. I'm not a wheelchair user, but I have balance problems and problems opening doors and finding my way round buildings etc. I'd like to be able to access a main service easily, and talk to people privately and appropriately if I need to, and go to a loo in a dignified and safe way. But I don't need to get into every room in the building to be able to do that. I only need what is proportional and respectful.

That's the reasoning.

If a planner has refused to build something solely because of problems with wheelchair access to the whole building, I think that is the wrong balance and they haven't understood the law correctly. But that's a general comment not a specific one on a specific site - I haven't seen the site.

But we have to start somewhere & insisting on lifts to all floors & ramps instead or as well as steps & hand rails etc certainly is a starting point surely, at least you are makeing that building accessible then to at least one group of disabled people & YES we should work on everything else too.

Playing devil's advocate here (if that's the right expression for it), why start with one of the less common disabilities?

Wheelchair users absolutely should be able to access good basic services safely and respectfully everywhere. Totally agree. But that I think isn't the question being raised here. The question is I think whether every disability should be able to access every service....and failing that, why can't we concentrate on wheelchair users/those with mobility issues first?

Looking at the stats for disability (not a complete list) these are the proportions (on government estimates) for any 1500 people with a disability:

Reading difficulties 698
Severe Hearing loss 174
Severe Sight loss 116
Learning difficulties 87
Dyspraxia 66
ADHD 60
Speech 58
Mental Illness 58
Autism Spectrum 55
Wheelchair users 44
Epilepsy 26
M.E/CFS 15
Tourettes 15
Crohns Disease 9
Cerebral Palsy 7
Multiple Sclerosis 5
Down's Syndrome 3

Most services have inaccessible reading materials, an inaccessible website, plan nothing at all for most of these disabilities and don't even consider them in the planning process. Dignity and respect and access aren't even on the agenda for them. If we really had to focus just on including one group and starting from there, why would it be wheelchair users?

That's an honest question that the Government is now re-asking itself,too. It's why we're forming new working parties to look at how we do actually balance out people's needs in a sensible way.

Not so we can exclude people, but so we can offer equal respect to the greatest number without bankrupting things and making everything impossible.

That might make sense. Or I might be having an autistic spectrum moment. One can never tell...

But because we are not at the stage that we (the gov, the planners) have decided how we can make building accessible to all, I don't see how we can knowingly exclude some by building physical barriers to access - these are usually the easiest & cheapest to overcome. Does that make sense?

Also by only making half of a building accessible (physically) you are removing flexibility for all - a clear example of this:
The building used for playscheme by disabled children, all the ground floor is accessible, disabled toilets, ASD/LD friendly. When the room was vandalised, the playscheme switched to the upstairs identical room. The building has no lift so the children with mobility impairments were not able to use the service & the parents lost their respite.
The inclusion of a lift in the building would of meant the service remained accessible to all.

Having a child with physical impairment (CP) & a part time w/chair user as well as ASD & LD I can see what you mean BUT i really don't see how by excluding the physically disabled it helps the others?

Proportionally, though, the amount of time that a building is out of use because of fire/vandalism/flood has to be factored in against the number of disabled people who are excluded by those very same adaptations.

Wheelchair access is the most expensive of the adaptations we currently make. It is a major disability, but the cost of access is huge. If we spend almost 100% of our budget and our focus on access for every part of every building for wheelchair users/those with major mobility impairment, we've potentially nothing left to allow the other people to access anything at all.

It's a huge huge balancing-act.

Brand new buildings do have to be very accessible for wheelchairs, so that's already a given. But the rest of the disabled population are often left outside with nowt. That in itself creates an unfairness.

I can't access supermarkets very often because of the sensory processing problems I have, nor use home delivery services with dignity because of the autism-related panic I have if they deliver the wrong things or deliver things too close to the sell by date etc. But wheelchair users can often get round the stores with no problems at all.

Yet...they can't reach the top shelves. It's ok for supermarkets to offer a service where they can get to a lot of things, then might need some help. No-one said "sorry folks - none of you can have any shopping if the wheelchair user can't reach the rice pops by themselves, as it's unfair".

So is it fair that all the access money went on helping wheelchair users and I'm struggling to buy food?

That sort of dilemma is a genuine question, genuinely difficult to answer. I think a lot of disabled people do suffer because almost 100% of the budget goes on wheelchair stuff. We haven't got the balance right.

This is just me thinking. Glad to hear other points of view, as there's a lot to think about and my brain can't always cope with thinking about multiple needs all at once very fast.

oh I get the thread now....
it isn't about making places accesible to all It is cherry picking who it should be accesible to.

That's not how I read it, no. It's about how we balance the different needs of equally disabled people?

I also agree

This May we ahve refused a trip with the SN rugby club / MS rugby clkub becuase last year I spent the entire time chasing ds1 as he jumped out the non lockable caravan windows

And a trip to Folly Farm becamse a nigthmare when ds3 disappeared for quite a long time (over 30 minutes easily), and I honestly thought he was gone for good. He was huddled happily behind a fruit machine. fifty supposedly- alertted security guards must ahve seen him about and not batted an eyelid.

2shoes if teh thread was about not wanting full access for WC users I would be angry but yes its about access for all I think.

Yup, I'd love there to be full access for everyone of every disability, and the work I do tries to get as close to that as we can possibly get.

But so far it's not had that right balance of thought about how many people are disadvantaged if we do X or if we don't do Y. And so often we champion the rights of wheelchair users but forget to champion the equal rights of the other massive majority of disabled people. Caring about the majority doesn't mean we don't care about wheelchair users, it's just that sometimes their stuff rules absolutely everyone's choices, and the question is how fair it is to insist on them having 100% access if most other disabled people are struggling for any access at all.

There's only so much money, especially in a recession. If we make buildings too expensive to build, they just won't build them, then no-one gets anything at all. That's sort of fair, but in a totally unfair way

"proportionally" i am sure you are right BUT we are talking about real people & real lives with real impact - very hard to quantify & put a figure on & not something I would pretend to know about.

A genuine question Amber - What changes to a supermarket would you make to make it accessible for YOU? I am genuinely interested as ds2 also struggles with supermarkets but actually the things designed to help w/chair users also help him even when he is not in his w/chair - wider isles for example & wider checkouts = less crowding.