What price would you pay for your rights? For disabled people, the price is often dignity. That disabled people are routinely shut out of Britain’s transport, shops, sports arenas and toilets is not new, but this year there’s already been a number of high-profile cases.
Days after the supreme court ruled that bus drivers should ask pushchairs to make space for wheelchairs, a disabled passenger, Kirsty Shepherd, was refused entry on a bus, while the Premier League could face legal action for football clubs’ failures to provide minimum levels of access for disabled supporters. This came after the award-winning Paralympic athlete Anne Wafula Strike spoke out about being forced to wet herself on a train because there was no accessible toilet. Elsewhere, the BBC’s security correspondent, Frank Gardner, reported being left on a plane at Gatwick when special assistance staff failed to turn up, and Samantha Renke, an actor with brittle bone disease, who recently starred in the Maltesers adverts launched at the Paralympics, said she “feared for my health” when the disabled area she reserved on a train was filled with bags.
It’s difficult to hear of disabled people forced to wet themselves in public in 21st-century Britain and think progress is being made, although it is. Each instance of a disabled person enduring their travel inequality was rightly greeted with outrage, with the rail minister, Paul Maynard, now pushing rail firms to improve access. Before the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act, when disabled people had no basic rights in law, stories like this wouldn’t have even made the headlines.
Still, forgive me for not celebrating. I have nothing but respect for Wafula Strike and others like her for their bravery in talking publicly. But whether it’s disabled people speaking of being left dirty because social care cuts mean they have no help to shower, or sitting in soaked underwear on inaccessible public transport, I loathe the fact that anyone has to. It’s bad enough that any of us should have to feel humiliation in our daily lives without having to relive it publicly for anything to change. This feels particularly close to the bone when it affects a group who are still largely culturally perceived as unfortunate, vulnerable and pitiable.
Disabled people are expected to put up with a level of indignity that few others are. Look at something as seemingly minor as accessible toilets. Even if one is available, odds are it won’t have the equipment many would need to use it. I’ve spoken to disabled people who’ve had to lay on dirty public toilet floors because adult-sized changing tables or hoists were not provided. Others, like Laura Moore in Worthing, West Sussex, told me that on a recent trip to the cinema she was advised by staff to travel more than three miles to a “nearby” council-owned toilet for the hoist her seven-year-old son needed. I can hardly imagine many other groups of people being told to drive three miles when they need the toilet.
What’s galling is that equality laws aren’t being enforced. It is not difficult to address this. Councils could refuse to grant or renew licences to restaurants, pubs and clubs unless they provide basic access. And new tribunal fees and cuts to legal aid could be reversed to make it easier for disabled people to object.
Disabled people in this country have fought for decades for our civil rights but, as the House of Lords report into the Equality Act concluded last year, the government shoulders the ultimate responsibility. And it’s failing. Real change will only come when those with power fundamentally shift their mindset: inequality for disabled people is not inevitable.
