Leisure and retail high street businesses attract the majority of complaints about disabled people’s rights to access.
On the eve of the first anniversary of new laws to make buildings more user-friendly to Britain’s disabled people, the Disability Rights Commission has revealed that one-in-two complaints relate to the leisure and retail sectors which include pubs, shops, restaurants, cinemas, theatres, gyms, sports facilities and hotels.
Responding to the findings, Disability Rights Commission (DRC) chairman Bert Massie, said: “We’ve got a very simple message for those high street businesses that are dragging their feet. The DRC will vigorously pursue offenders through the courts.
“We are already taking legal action against two major leisure and retail providers and have a hit-list of several others to follow.
“Laws to make business and services more user-friendly for disabled people have been on the statute book for ten years and there really is nowhere to hide anymore. To be doing very little for your disabled customers is no longer an option.”
The DRC Helpline has received 1,500 complaints about access since October last year, with the most common problem faced by disabled people in the leisure industry being the lack of accessible toilets in pubs, clubs and restaurants.
Other often-cited issues included steps to entrances where no ramp was provided, the lack of disabled people’s parking, poor changing room facilities for disabled people and poor staff attitudes.
The DRC recently supported Greg Jackson in the first physical access case to result in legal action against the retailer, Debenhams.
The leisure industry is about to be the subject of another legal case supported by the DRC, against Spirit Group Limited. Spirit Group acquired Scottish and Newcastle breweries in 2003 and currently owns 2,400 pubs nationwide and employs 45,000 staff. The case concerns the lack of an accessible toilet at The Shirley Inn in Croydon.
Bert Massie continued: “Disabled people are rarely seen in pubs, shops, restaurants and clubs. The reason? Too many high streets still appear to have a sign up that says ‘disabled people are not welcome here’. The result is the social segregation of disabled people from everyone else on a grand scale.”
However, overall the picture is less gloomy. The DRC has investigated more than 40 cases across many business sectors where disabled people were receiving a poor service in the past year.
Eighty per cent of these were resolved positively with, for example, ramps installed, accessible toilets built, entrances widened, disabled parking bays introduced, and in some cases disabled people receiving financial compensation.
The DRC has also been working successfully with a number of large businesses in the leisure sector who have already made significant improvements, including Intercontinental Hotels (IHG), owners of the Holiday Inn chain in the UK, which has allocated £12.8 million toward improving accessibility
Of the approximately 230 IHG-owned hotels in the UK, the vast majority are now user-friendly to disabled people. Improvements include accessible bedrooms which are well-lit, wider doors, lower level toilets and handrails, and provision of ‘access kits’ which contain, among other things, vibrating pagers, induction loops, portable door chimes, evacuation chairs and larger print menus.
The DRC has also been working with the major brewer, Youngs, which has entered into a formal agreement with the DRC to make their pubs more user-friendly to disabled people. As part of the agreement, Youngs have recently carried out access audits in all their pubs to identify any physical features that may create barriers for disabled people and has agreed to remove these as soon as possible.
The new physical access duties were introduced on October 1 last year and are under Part 3 of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1995. A disabled person has the right to sue through the County Court if reasonable changes have not been made to the premises of any business or service open to the general public. Changes can include providing alternatives to steps for wheelchair users, better lighting for visually impaired customers and plain English signage.