Sir, – I have a 17-year-old daughter who uses a wheelchair and that experience has opened my eyes wide to the inequality that exists in Irish society, an inequality that seems largely to be invisible to the majority.
As most of us return to participating actively in our society, it seems timely to address the barriers that prevent people with disabilities from doing the same.
Having received a voucher for a clothes shop in Temple Bar in Dublin at Christmas, my daughter set off to spend it with friends.
They waited at our local bus stop to make the short journey to town. The bus slowed, the driver opened the door and shouted at the girls that “There was a buggy on board” and drove on past. They got the next bus.
:fill(white):background_color(white)/static.themebuilder.aws.arc.pub/irishtimes/1647534191476.png)
When they arrived at the clothing store, there was a step at the entrance so she couldn’t enter; when they asked if there was another way in or a lift, the shop assistant explained that there was a lift but that it was upstairs, so they could not enter.
Downhearted, they headed for a nearby coffee shop which they could enter but unfortunately the disabled access toilet was too small and my daughter couldn’t use it, so they abandoned their trip and came home.
Every day the built environment and the complacency that keeps it inaccessible create insurmountable barriers for wheelchair users.
I’m not just basing this on our family’s experience, I witness it daily in my twitter feed. Wheelchair users talk about feeling “worn down” by the struggle of entrance steps and a lack of parking bays and accessible toilets.
A father of another young girl who uses a wheelchair has taken to listing the many Dart stations and train stations without working lifts each day.
And I was particularly struck by a tweet from a music journalist a while ago that went, “Last one on the train at Heuston. Not a staff member or ramp in sight. Doors have been closed again. Guess I live here now.”
Ireland is about 10 years behind other countries like Sweden in terms of accessibility. This is something easily remedied if the will to do it were there. Universal design makes perfect sense, it caters for everybody from babies in the buggies to elderly people with mobility issues.
It is a cost-neutral solution, and yet new playgrounds go up without a sunken roundabout, ATMs are placed too high for wheelchair users to reach and disabled parking bays are badly planned.
Being able to see the level of exclusion at play, I often wonder why there isn’t outcry or the same level of organised campaigns for change around the exclusion and discrimination of people with disabilities that there has been around race and gender, for example.
I often wonder is that because there have been so few representatives with a disability in politics, or is it that the narrative of the charitable model of disability has yet to be replaced by a rights-based model, or is it simply that the barriers that need addressing are being effective in keeping people with disabilities at home.
Whatever the reason, at this time, while the current narrative is about what we have learned during Covid, when we finally have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and when Ireland’s equality laws are up for review, it is incumbent on those of us that see how it is to shout loudly and clearly, once again, for equality. – Is mise,
SUSAN DENNEHY,
Cabra,
Dublin 7.