This article is part of a Herald Sport special on disabled facilities in Scottish football, shining a light on the progress that has been made, the work that still needs to be done, the help that is available to clubs and the barriers to accessibility that disabled fans face.
Celtic being ‘a club open to all’ is more than just a catchy, feelgood slogan. For Alexis Dobbin, it’s her mission.
Investment in facilities for disabled fans at football stadiums is always welcome, and Celtic have invested heavily in this area, as they strive to live up to their motto.
Praised last year by ‘Accessiball’ - a UEFA backed organisation who campaign for greater disability access and inclusivity in football – for their commitment to making Celtic Park accessible to all supporters, the club have poured significant sums into removing barriers for their disabled fans.
Whether this has been the opening of the country’s first ‘Changing Places’ toilets, bathrooms specially equipped to be accessible for those with more severe impairments, or the creation of the ‘View 67’ raised platform, each initiative has been driven not only by a desire to help as many Celtic supporters get the most from their matchday, but has been driven by those fans themselves.
For Dobbin, the club’s Disability Access Officer, the weight of getting it right is one she doesn’t carry lightly, as she explained how vital it is to listen to disabled supporters and find out what it is they actually want and need from the Celtic Park experience, rather than just giving them facilities the able-bodied may think they should have.
“We're playing Newcastle next week and they're desperate to get back.
“A lot of it's to do with the social side of it, just to get back amongst people, back amongst their friends. Like any other fan, they like the interaction that brings, the camaraderie. It's a community for them. There might be older people among them and that is the only time they leave the house that week, to come to the game, or it’s the only time they're maybe meeting and seeing other people.
“So, what our mission has to be is to facilitate these fans being able to access the same sort of experience that anyone else going to a game would enjoy.
“One of the first things I learned when I took on this role in 2018 was that when you're disabled, it's not so much that you're disabled, it's the world that's got barriers up. So, the stairs, lack of access, that's the barrier rather than the disability.
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"So, we meet regularly with the Celtic Disabled Supporters Association, the CDSA. I'm sometimes in daily contact throughout the season. They do the parking on a match day, we've got match day wheelchair parking, and the CDSA actually took that on before I even took on the role and that's worked really well.
“It means that they've got a kind of responsibility that they are in charge of all that and they link in with the club doing that on a match day. They've been brilliant in taking that on. We also linked in with the CDSA for the Changing Places facility.
“We've got a really good relationship with Accessiball, and we had them up last year to have a meeting with an accessible fans’ forum where [Chief Financial Officer] Chris McKay and other members of the board were in attendance.
“And listen, it was a difficult day in some ways. We really faced some serious questions. But that's how it needs to be. You need to know the negatives. It can't all just be what we're doing right. We need to know what we're not doing right as well, so we can try to improve it.
“We maybe haven't answered everything that everybody wanted, but having them there it showed that the club were committed to one, meeting with the fans, and two, making sure that we are dedicated to trying to continue the work we're doing. And we acknowledge that there is a lot of work still to be done.”
One of the things Dobbin has found is that having a choice of experience is also important to many disabled fans, such as where in the stadium they might like to sit.
“I’ll give you a good example of that, and why it’s so important to know what the fans are thinking,” she said.
"When I came in, my first thought was, well, we have an elevated platform in place, so you're thinking we need more elevated spaces. Then the more you got to know the different supporters and their preferences, a lot of them would prefer to be at the pitch side, and in cup games for example where it doesn’t maybe always sell out straight away, they would buy those tickets before they would buy tickets for the elevated platform. And it surprised me how many do prefer it.
“I have been reminded by a few of our supporters, you still need to allow that choice. It’s so important. Don't just automatically presume that we all want to be in a different area, you know?”
Navigating the needs of so many individual supporters though isn’t easy, and Dobbin would love to see an equivalent organisation in Scotland to the likes of Level Playing Field, a primarily English charity that not only supports and pushes clubs right throughout the football pyramid to improve their offerings for disabled people, but offers help and advice for the Disability Liason Officers who are charged with doing so.
"I think personally it would be a huge help,” she said.
“I think it would be massive. I'm in the both the English group of DLOs and the Scottish one, and I notice when speaking to other DLOs or when you go to any sort of conference or training events, the one thing that they mentioned is that sometimes, accessibility can be a tick box exercise for some clubs.
“Not in a bad way, necessarily, but they’ve maybe got limited finances. They just don't have the finances to do everything, so they'll prioritise the standard supporter over accessibility and they'll do the bare minimum when it comes to accessibility, unfortunately.
“You wouldn't want clubs going into financial difficulty because of it, but I think having a Level Playing Field or some sort of organisation like that in Scotland would make a massive difference.
“It would also give both the supporters and the DLOs someone to go to and speak to if you needed advice, because that's why we all meet up and chat as much as we do, because we've only got each other up here to talk to and to try and gauge what are you doing or what we could do differently.
“You're trying to gauge everything based on what other clubs are doing and what other people are doing because we don't have any sort of official body up here."
There is a sense of pride and satisfaction then in the work that Celtic have done so far to help their disabled fans, but also a restlessness to continually rise and meet their expectations, which for Dobbin, boil down to a desire to be free to support their team, just like anyone else.
“The club have really, really backed me,” she said.
“Initially it was Peter Lawwell, and then obviously currently now it's Michael [Nicholson, CEO] and Chris.
“I'm not just saying this, they've been absolutely brilliant. And the majority of stuff that I would go to the board with, they've been really, really good and they've tried to do, within reason, as much as they can.
“I think it's a compliment to the club and a compliment to any club that supporters want to come and think it's a safe environment to come.
“We've got the sensory facility, the Lion’s View, that is fully funded and operated through the club’s charitable arm, the Celtic FC Foundation.
“We've got sensory packs which one of our GlobalCelts [brand ambassadors] Martin Newman was kind enough to donate to the club, and they've got a tangle toy, stress ball, a Celtic fidget spinner, so they're all Celtic branded.
“We've now got two BSL interpreters at all home games working and we do an initiative with deaf supporters where the PR team kindly give me a limited number of tickets for each game.
“The BSL interpreters, they meet them at the sports bar. So again, they're mixing in with the standard fan, doing whatever everybody else would do, and the interpreters then sit with them before the game, go into the game with them, sit with them in case there's any problems. And we donate the tickets, and that's proved to be really, really popular.
“But as I said, there is work to be done. I would like to get more easy access seating for our ambulant disabled supporters. I'd like to see that increase because there's a massive demand for that now for various reasons.
“We're trying to cover every base to make it possible for as many people as we can to get to games, and to have a great experience.”
