My trip to York - Navigating Accessibility
My trip to York - Navigating Accessibility
My first getaway in months.
You can listen to the main articles in this newsletter (read by myself).
Hello everyone,
Some housekeeping before we start: The Alt Text functionality of photos in Substack seems to be broken. So, I put the alt text for this newsletter edition in the caption of the photo and informed Substack support.
We visited York and the National Railway Museum for a couple of days. Highly recommended! York is beautiful, and we had some relaxing days. This was my first little holiday since I got ill in September.
We stayed in a nice hotel directly at York Station called "The Principal". It is a very historic old hotel, quite beautiful actually. The room was well accessible. It may not have the most appealing interior, very dark and very grey, but the accessibility was good.
No grab rails
The problem I had was the toilet in the lobby, which I wanted to use on departure day. This shows that accessibility really needs someone who understands what that actually means.
The toilet room itself was too small for an accessible toilet to start with. Then, the bins blocked the space. The toilet itself had no grab rails, which is a basic feature of an accessible toilet. No space and no grab rails made the toilet unusable for me.
So I gave up and asked the staff if they had another accessible toilet somewhere. They basically came back and handed me the key to my room. We had already checked out, so I was able to use my room again to use the toilet.
This hotel has many events and quite nice restaurants and cafe areas. But yeah, the accessible toilet is, in fact, not accessible. And these things happen all the time.
Hurt by baby changing tables
Do you want to know another pet peeve of mine? Baby changing tables in the accessible toilet are installed in a way that they come down as soon as someone enters the room.
I hurt my head two times at airports because the changing table opened as soon as I entered the room, and it landed on my head. And on top of that, unfortunately, there are some people who open the baby changing table and leave it open when they leave the room.
That means the whole table is blocking the entrance to the toilet, and wheelchair users struggle to put it back up again without the danger of getting this thing on their heads. So whenever you're planning an accessible toilet or a baby change, please plan it wisely and follow the standards; otherwise, it loses its purpose.
And wheelchair users have children, too. So make the baby change accessible, but that doesn't mean it has to be in the accessible toilet.
Additional edition for paid subscribers
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Some interesting links
I don't know how and what I will drive in the future. I would love to change to an electric vehicle, but the charging infrastructure in the UK is so inaccessible at the moment. According to this article, the US doesn't look any better. The problems are pretty similar.
The Guardian looks into "The sudden rise of AuDHD: what is behind the rocketing rates of this life-changing diagnosis?". Maybe it's not so sudden after all.
There was this outrage about the school photographer in Scotland who erased disabled children out of a photo last week and let parents choose if they wanted a photo with or without disabled people in it. Frances Ryan's column is worth reading; she rightly says this isn't just about school photos. This is about how welcome disabled people are in public.
Something to read
Living Streets has published a report on bus stops with cycle tracks; it highlights the barriers they create for disabled people and gives some ideas on how to improve accessibility.
Something to watch
I'm not a huge fan of aviation boarding ramps (but yes, they're still better than stair climbers), and these videos (video 1 and video 2) brilliantly show why. Aisle chairs are not for longer-distance transfers like from the terminal over the tarmac to the plane. They're uncomfortable to sit on and provide little stability and no independence, especially when strapped in. And rain is awful with boarding ramps, too.
[Video description: A woman is wrapped in cellophane on an aisle chair, with a sleeping cushion around her neck and her hood up. She is later pushed with this aisle chair in the rain up a steep and very narrow boarding ramp to the plane].
Something to listen to
Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson is one of Britain’s most successful athletes and maybe the most famous disabled railway user. In the "Desperately Seeking Wisdom" podcast, she discusses ableism and her experience when travelling by public transport.
Some final words
Do what you say you will do. (Hugh Blane)
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Who is writing this newsletter?
I’m Christiane Link, and I improve the customer experience in aviation, transport, and travel. I worked as a journalist for over two decades and travelled extensively for business and leisure. I’m a wheelchair user. If you want to read more from me, follow me on LinkedIn, Twitter, Bluesky or Mastodon. You can also reply to this email if you want to contact me.
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