Toilets are one of the biggest nightmares for disabled people.
Even if you can get in, other people might as well.
The worst view from the loo I’ve had is the horrified face of the poor woman who thought the loo was free and walked in on me. I thought the door was locked but I hadn’t moved the handle far enough and it was open. She’ll take longer to recover than me as dignity begins to be a bit of a luxury when your legs don’t work.
But she will also be feeling guilty that she was found out as an able person trying to use a loo dedicated to disabled people.
Except they’re not really…..
Most “accessible” toilets are combined with baby changing facilities so the place is often littered with big bins and tables folded into the wall – sometimes at just the right height to catch your head as you try to wheel next to the loo!
Many disabled toilets are accessed by using a special key, a “Radar” key. Nothing to do with tracking planes in WW2 by the way….. They’re available to anyone who forks out about £8 online. It’s supposed to keep the non-disabled users out. In fact it keeps ME out if I’ve forgotten my key. God knows what they think people are going to get up to but the only time I’ve seen one possibly being misused was in St Pancras station when a young lad emerged after 20 minutes with wet hair……I was too desperate by then to question him.
Here are the loo stories of some disabled people in Access Thanet:
Mandy has motor neurone disease, uses a rollator and has balance problems.
“Everything I ever do is geared towards knowing if there is an accessible loo!
It’s truly exhausting.
Before even suggesting a trip my family and friends always try to check out the loo situation.
Even online sites like *Trip Advisor* either don’t mention the loo situation or misrepresent it. They say accessible but they mean ground floor and not much else.
Frequently the venues don’t answer the phone or reply to an email enquiry. That means we all don’t go – often a table of eight customers lost….
Whether it’s a holiday location or just a lunch venue – if I can’t check it out I don’t go.”
Janie is has a powered wheelchair and has MS.
“Accessible toilets are often packed with high chairs or mysterious boxes. You have to ask for them to be moved. And some managers are reluctant to listen!
Often, if there is a mirror (which frequently there is not) it is set too high for wheelchair users to see themselves. Same for soap dispensers.
Public ones are often dirty, toilet paper on floor, poo in toilets – not cleaned. This includes hospital ones!
If you have to share with baby changing then detritus abounds, overflowing bins, mucky floors urghhhh! I have to wheel through it”
Hannah’s son uses a powered wheelchair’
“The range of so called ‘accessible’ loos is bizarre. There’s one at Margate hospital where the door won’t shut if you have a powered wheelchair! Then there are others with a proper full turning circle and transfer options from either side of the loo. They should get an award!”
My loo story: I’m proud to say I can now just about use a normal loo if there’s something not too flimsy to grab if I lose my balance. Bars on either side of the loo are ideal; having to lean on the toilet seat less ideal and VERY unhygienic. It’s much more complicated with winter clothes. Do you need detail?
And always carry tissues. Some humorous designers put the hand dryer on the other side of the room from the washbasin. What are you supposed to do? Grab your sticks to get there? Wet stick handles and water on the floor. And sticks slip on wet tiles ….
The Captain Digby pub in Kingsgate has an almost perfect loo – everything the right height, hand dryer I can reach etc – but a tiled floor I nearly met face to face as my sticks slipped on the only wet patch.
We can thank Selwyn Goldsmith, inventor of dropped kerbs, and himself disabled, for inventing accessible toilets in the 1950s after the last polio epidemic – thanks Selwyn! But where is his equivalent today?
Buildings are supposed to make “reasonable adjustments” for disabilities, including accessible toilets. But as far as I can see, it’s not being policed or enforced. I see no standard accessible loos, no acknowledged obligation to provide them by public facilities like restaurants. Even new, totally refurbished venues are being allowed to open with toilets in the basement. And nobody wants to hear: “well we’re just across the road from the public toilets”, when you’re out for dinner with friends.
Motorway cafes are often good for loos and many have ones for the severely disabled who need hoists etc.
But why can’t our town centres provide a better welcome for the wheelies in need of a wee? We may have to create a vigilante force and start making citizens arrests. Who’s with me?
Even as an able bodied person I avoid places that have no loos. I never use a disabled loo and hate places which have ONE disabled loo for everyone, usually with the door opening straight out into the cafe! We need more proper toilets everywhere, safe and clean for all women as we need them for more reasons than men.
We need more toilets around the coast which are open over the winter months. To not have any public toilets between Broadstairs and Margate along the coast outside of the summer season is appalling given that we market the area as an all year round tourist destination.
We are a society which is ageing which means there will be more disabled people with various impairments.
The hospitality sector is a relatively low entry industry, requiring relatively low levels of capital and skills.
Planning consents are not especially onerous and therefore old sometimes unsuitable buildings are pressed into service with the results seen here.
In the change from manufacturing to a service based economy,the proliferation of the service sector is the most noticeable phenomenon.
I always think the condition and suitability of the toilets in a restaurant or cafe is a good guide as to how we’ll run and customer focussed a premises really is.
We could regulate matters a little more rigorously but there will be many in the hospitality sector who will complain in apocalyptic terms that is unfair to ‘burden’ them with such an imposition.
Wheel users will “burden” them with boycott! Name and shame!
Yet YOU Christine refused to name the entertainment venue which recently gave you less than satisfactory disability access. Double standards or what?!
I got a urine bottle to pee in when out and about in the car it has both male and female adaptors, well useful.
Just wondering if it could be useful to disabled people and wheelchair users as it’s very easy to use, I just bung a cover over me, no one sees.
Can’t see it could be used for big jobs mind 🤔
I can see I need to write about even more horrifying detail….
Thanks for telling it as it is Christine. There are many different interpretations of “accessible” loo and “disabled” loo. Not to mention “available” loo. Very low seats, no grab rails, the list is endless. Keep complaining!
Thanks Laura! One day we’ll be listened to!