The core part of My Way Access and the main reason it exists, is to highlight areas which are accessible and inaccessible for people with disabilities. This is so that people can make informed decisions of where to visit in new locations. It is also to give businesses and tourist sites an idea on how to improve their facilities and service to cater for people with disabilities.
Naturally, there are circumstances when facilities cannot be improved for various differences, such as age of building and if or not it is a listed building. Under these incidents, it is accepted that improvements, which can be made, will be limited.
One of the areas which frustrates me the most and other people with disabilities is when there are new large capital project builds, which do not meet the needs of everyone who may come to use them.
In these cases, there are no excuses for the facilities not to be accessible for everyone in the public. A lot of the cases, they just about meet the legal requirements of what is acceptable now a days in the Disability Discrimination Act. Even this Act is vague enough, but that is an argument for another day, but to just scrape this level angers me.
I have seen with my own eyes when this happens and the amount of lobbying and work towards getting these ‘problems’ resolved can be long and tiring for everyone involved. It leads to anger, frustration and resentment for everyone. No one likes shouting and being the constant voice of complaint.
I am the Chairperson of the Omagh Access Forum, which is a lobbying group for disability organizations in Omagh to highlight and work together to getting accessibility issues resolved. I am also a member of the Fermanagh and Omagh District Council’s Disability Advisory Group. The vase amount of the time used by both these groups, is lobbying and fixing problems which could easily be avoided if there was a shake up on how planning was done in the future.
One way this could be resolved is for everyone to work in building the right future together. It is my belief and the belief of many people with disabilities that when there are large building projects under consideration, especially when it is governmental, there should be a forum at the design stage, which includes people with disabilities to provide their input. It’s only when you speak to the people it affects and listen to their concerns and advice, that future pitfalls are avoided. Pitfalls such as further work to correct the errors, bad press and future capital spent on the project.
So let’s work together to build the right future for everyone.