Your Letters - September 2010

No Wall in China

The fact that Cathy Reay didn’t see disabled people while on holiday in China and experienced problems finding suitable toilets (“Chinese Takeaway” Disability Now, August 2010) may have been because she went to areas that weren’t frequented by tourists.

My company took a small group holiday for disabled people to China in October 2009, including seven people in wheelchairs, and we stayed in both Beijing and Xian. All transport, hotel rooms, restaurants and venues were pre-researched for accessibility.

We went to a rehab centre for the disabled and inter­acted with them as well as seeing many of the major attractions, including the Great Wall, Tiananmen Square and the Terracotta Warriors, among others. We found all the attractions could be accessed by wheelchair, with ramps or lifts and accessible toilets.

There were Western-style toilets in all facilities as well as squat toilets, and we saw lots of disabled people in the cities, walking with crutches or in three-wheeled motorized scooters, going about their daily business. Indeed, on occasion, we had to decline help from the Chinese who tried to assist us.
Jean Burdett, by email

TV doesn't get it - and nor do we

I wish to set the record straight about profound deafness being portrayed as a non-disability.

The four-part BBC drama The Silence (12-15 July) featured a deaf girl, Amelia, who was told by her policeman uncle: “Amelia, you’re only deaf, not disabled.”

I find such remarks, unchallenged, irresponsible and disrespectful to all those going through the trials and tribulations of invisible and stressful sensory loss.

People with acquired deafness and many hard-of-hearing people have to adjust from a world of hearing to learning sign language and lipreading.

All TV networks need to ensure they don’t mislead or undermine those making the best of things under a disability.  
Jimmy Craw

I was pleased to see BBC2’s programme called Are You Having a Laugh? (25 June) showing just how much attitudes towards Deaf and disabled people have changed for the better on the small screen over the past 30 years or so. It also showed how competent all the individuals featured on the programme were at presenting themselves on the box.

The comedian Laurence Clark made an important point when he said that although there has been increasing representation of Deaf and disabled people in soaps, to reflect the demographics of society more realistically, soaps should have four or five Deaf/disabled people in each one!

So why hasn’t the BBC implemented that ratio in its use of presenters? At this moment it employs only five disabled presenters (excluding the specialist programme See Hear) out of 20,000 staff! I’ve been badgering Sir Michael Lyons, the BBC’s chair, for the past 15 months to increase the number of Deaf and disabled presenters on BBC programmes, to no effect. Talk about paying to be insulted: I think it’s time I refused to pay my licence fee. BBC, you’re a disgrace. You’ll show us but won’t employ us! Anybody agree?
Roger Cliffe-Thompson, by email

Call for level floors in pubs gets flat response

Sunil Peck’s article on Scotland’s amendment to its licensing laws (“Scots toast new pub access law”, Disability Now, August 2010) ends by pointing out that without a similar change in the law south of the border, disabled people in England and Wales will have to stick to the accessible pub they’re used to. I hope English and Welsh people aren’t so complacent.

Part 3 of the Disability Discrimination Act, which deals with access to goods and services, has been out since 1999. The deadline (ha!) for sorting out access problems was five years later. And we’re still waiting.

The fault is ours. Unless we challenge inaccessible pubs, shops and hotels to do something about their lack of reason­able access, nothing will change.  
Jonathan Toye, West Norfolk Disability information Service (WNDiS), King’s Lynn

As a wheelchair-user who visits towns and cities all over England, I’m always frustrated by the lack of information provided by restaurants and bars about access to their premises.

This isn’t a gripe about the lack of access, but about the failure to provide adequate advice on the outside of buildings, especially when institutions may have gone to great lengths in fitting, say, accessible toilets.

I’ve been working on an online pubs and restaurant guide called Open Door Shropshire for Shropshire Council, which has meant talking to businesses about this problem. It’s quite interesting that when you ask them why they’ve gone to so much effort, for example, making the venue accessible from the rear without advertising the fact on the front, the usual response is that they hadn’t realised they needed to. I’ve often had to encourage them to put a plaque on the street front, pointing out, say, that there’s rear access for disabled users.

Tourist centres may hold this information but aren’t often open in the evening, and most people aren’t so organised as to plan their eating in advance.

I developed Open Door Shropshire after finding that access information provided in the restaurant reviews in our local paper was invariably wrong. Two of my favourite pubs in Shrewsbury, for example, were said to be inaccessible because of the age of the buildings and the steps at the front when both are completely accessible, and with accessible facilities.

Do readers know if there has been any national effort to force restaurants to give access information on the menus they display outside their premises? The sort of information we need is whether there is level access, accessible or ground floor toilets, large-print menus etc. If food and drink outlets adopted this simple approach, it would save me and others a lot of expensive time.
Anne Johnson, by email