Access Denied
By Moraene Roberts
I am very fortunate in that I have three great (grown up) kids and a couple of good friends who help me to get out of my house to do my shopping.
It is no easy task to push around a sixteen-stone woman in a wheelchair, but they do it for me and I am very grateful. Small wonder, then, that I get so angry when I see their efforts made greater by the way that so many facilities are laid out.
Disability access is an oxymoron as far as most local shops and many pubs and eateries are concerned. One look at my daughter’s flushed and exhausted face shows the effort it takes for her to push my wheelchair around the obstacle course created by the desire to stack stock high on the shelves and also put it in containers in every isle in order to undercut the prices of rivals. This was the reason given to me when I challenged a senior member of staff at Morrisons on Stamford Hill Road. ‘We do it because we need to keep the costs down’, he said. They do keep them down – but at whose expense?
When the local Safeway was taken over by Morrisons I expected lower prices – as advertised – and was not disappointed. I was very pleasantly surprised to discover that there was a line of trolleys of differing sizes adapted for wheelchair use outside, as well as an electric scooter with basket attached plugged in just inside the doors. To me, a scooter meant independence. I would not need anyone to push me around the store, so I eagerly signed on to be able to use the scooter.
A couple of days later I took a cab across the road to do my shopping on my own – it was a real adventure. What I had not accounted for were the numerous round and triangular baskets that had been placed in front of almost every display of shelves or the freestanding stock piled high at the end of the shelves, narrowing every aisle and reducing the turning circle needed due to the length of the machine. As a result, shopping became a slalom – a zigzag challenge that was just about achievable if the store was almost empty. Unfortunately for me, it was seething with customers, all pushing trolleys or pushchairs, some with baskets balanced on top and others with an accompanying group of siblings.
Unsurprisingly, none of the other customers were thrilled to find me blocking their way. Twice there was a standoff, aggressive people refusing to back up to let me through and I unable to back up to let them through. Once, I got just plain stuck. It would have been funny if not for the insults, embarrassment and feeling of complete helplessness that left me distressed and suffering the effects of raised blood pressure and asthma. After struggling halfway around the store I gave up, cashed in, and went home – never to attempt to use the scooter again. Why bother to provide a facility for disabled people then make it virtually impossible for them to use it?
I have since returned with my wheelchair, accompanied by whichever member of my family or friends was willing to give up their time to take me out, only to experience similar problems and to hear my ‘pushers’ one by one complain about the difficulties of swinging the wheelchair with attached trolley around blocked aisles. The narrowness of the aisles makes one friend very nervous when scraping past oncoming trolleys and making precarious attempts to overtake others. One day I mentioned this to a woman in the queue to pay and she said, ‘Try doing it with a double buggy. I pay my neighbour’s daughter to baby-sit so I can get it done and get home sane.’ I looked backwards and saw on my daughter’s face a wistful look that told me she wished she could sometimes afford a ‘mum-sitter’ and do my shopping without me. One answer would be to always have two people with me – one to push me, and one to push the trolley. That is rarely possible when relying on loved ones rather than carers: they have their own lives to live, too. I could take a taxi to shops further away, but I can’t afford to do that often.
It is not just Morrisons that frustrates the hell out of wheelchair users. Netto, at Stamford Hill, had bull-bars that fed the customers through like cattle, with an L- bend that a I, with a wheelchair, could not manoeuvre through so I stopped shopping there. If you think I am just an old moaner, or that I exaggerate the difficulties, try taking a trip to most of the shops and restaurants along Stoke Newington High Street or to Dalston (pushing an occupied wheelchair of course). Too many shops just ignore the needs of wheelchair users – and pram pushers too.
Peacocks in Dalston is a perfect example: rails so close together that going between them is like hacking through a jungle of sleeves, often having to be pulled humiliatingly backwards when the gap between the shelves and the pillars is insufficient to continue. Most annoying is the carpet of clothes and shoes, crammed onto rails and shelves so tightly that a large amount of it ends up on the floor and under my wheels. When I complained to a staff member she looked at my rather voluptuous (well, fat) body and suggested that I get a ‘slimmer wheelchair’. For general information, it is a standard-sized chair.
This magazine recently had a New Year get-together/party at a local pub, and we hit the same problem. Due to a televised football match, the ground floor was so packed that I was amazed that anyone could breathe let alone get to the bar, and the party was held upstairs. I had a message that it could be a problem but hoped that the stairs would be few or staggered. They were, in fact, numerous and steep. So I met with a couple of people in the little porch by the door and then went to lunch with my son. Owners of older buildings like that one are often restricted in how much they can alter, but the builders of new premises have no such excuse. The shopping mall at Dalston recently underwent a huge amount of work when Matalan was built on, but opportunities were definitely missed. When providing a lift, who decided that there should be just one lift? Did no one anticipate that there would be times when it was out of order, or wonder how a wheelchair assistant would get a trolley full of shopping and the person they are pushing down the ramp to the mini-cab rank? And please, don’t get me started on the subject of the scarcity or filthy condition of the disability toilets without a Radar key lock that everyone uses – because that is an article in itself.
Ironically, it is a fact that in an area of high unemployment with many families relying on benefits and lots of the employed struggling on low pay, some people with disabilities have higher disposable incomes than other, more able-bodied folk. This was quickly noted by betting offices, and it is shocking to note that they were so fast and farsighted in providing ramps and other disability facilities, yet many supermarkets and such still pay lip service to access for the disabled. Just providing a ramp or a scooter is not enough. It is no good getting into a shop that you can’t get around. |
