Here's what I wrote about my experience of trying to vote in the PCC elections - the first election since I moved here, and thus my first visit to this polling station.
There was a fair amount of outrage on Twitter, and a supportive comment on Becca's blog, and I began to feel that at least it wasn't just me that found this unacceptable. I forgot to mention that the building wasn't actually visible from the road (as a wheelchair user, anyway. Dave could see it, but Dave is better than six feet tall). The only polling station signs were on the pedestrian gate (the one that had one of those 'you can't bring a bicycle through here' zigzag things) and on the car park gate, which faced the church at the dead end of that street.
Then there was a comment on Becca's blog which seemed basically to say that anyone who finds something inaccessible should be causing a massive fuss and demanding it be fixed, and there are so many inaccessible places because those disabled by lack of access don't protest enough.
I didn't like this. At all. I have to admit, I thought some very unkind thoughts about the writer of this comment - I'm probably a bit oversensitive, because I got a lot of these unthinking, glib 'it's easy to fix! just do <totally obvious thing you tried to start with> and it'll be fine!' when I was trying to find help with my DLA appeal via Twitter, and being bombarded with them at an already insanity-inducingly stressful time, I started telling people not to be such smug bastards and blocking them.
I restrained myself and replied. I think I did OK - I tried to be respectful and reasonable whilst still being myself and expressing the way it made me feel and the assumptions that seemed to me to underlying that kind of smug dismissal of someone else's serious problem as a trivial matter. I didn't swear, which given the kind of rage overreaction I have to things like this, is a minor but significant acheivement in itself :D
This is my reply:
I think there are a few underlying inferences that are quite startling.David, thank you for your outrage. Helps to know that other people find this as disgusting as I do.
Witsend.... I recently tried to see my MP about something else. His office is down a cobbled lane, up two *huge* steps and there's no ramp. All that happened when I complained was a huge list of defensive comments about how it's 'too expensive' and a listed building. I tried to be constructive, and suggested two things - a doorbell, and a ramp. One about ten quid, the other about £150. Could well be expensed - legitimately, unlike some other things - and was told it's a nuisance and too difficult. MPs care less than Joe Public, and it's hard to tell if he cares at all.
Loudly protesting my rights does nothing but get me assaulted by 'security' staff. It really really is not as simple as 'make a loud noise', and we have lives to live in the midst of all this crap the not-yet-disableds pile into our lives with merry abandon. That doesn't mean I don't do what I can about the discrimination I encounter, just that I pick my battles very carefully.
I've got to say, I've had a lot of people tell me lately 'oh, you should make a fuss, it's against the law, just shout louder', etc, and I actually have to fight myself not to reply with cursing and venom. It's overly simplistic and doesn't take into account that I have less energy to spend, each activity costs me more energy and I have significantly more activities to do than a not-yet-disabled person just to survive.
It glosses over the reality that laws not enforced are meaningless, and any law that requires a member of a marginalised group to obtain definite proof and a lawyer to enforce, won't be enforced. It ignores that one quarter hour bus ride can throw up enough potential fights for my rights to keep me busy for about three years. That is not hyperbole - it really isn't. Local Govt Ombudsman about pavements and drop kerbs - 18months, if you're lucky. Bus company about drivers who grab my chair and heave me about - endless, basically, as is a complaint that the passageway past the driver is too narrow and too sharp a turn - they're not going to replace all their brand-new buses, not for anything, and disability is very low priority. Assault complaints about members of the public who toss their kids into my lap when they're tired of holding them - this has happened - again, endless, even when resulting in dislocated hip and subluxed knee. This is before the bus even sets off.
I'm not trying to be unkind, but please don't assume that a glib slogan is in any way relevant to the complexity and overwhelming demands life as a disabled person is for me. That kind of minimising puts the blame on me - if I shouted louder, tried harder, fought longer, it'd all go away.
The first is, of course, that it is the responsibility of disabled people - individually as they encounter barriers and collectively over time - to solve access problems. Just think about it for a moment. That seems to me like telling black slaves in the American Deep South to just stop acting so subservient and sort their own problems out. This isn't a problem with me, the disabled individual - this is a problem with society, from its physical structures, to its social codes and expectations, and its implicit and explicit attitudes about the equality, humanity and worth of human beings who are disabled. It would be unthinkable for older, rich white non-disabled men to be on the receiving end of attitudes, behaviours, policies, social conventions which impacted them this way. It is literally incomprehensible, and that is because society automatically regards this group as important, regardless of personal actions or contributions to the whole.
That's the second big problem. The idea that disabled people are of no value. That it's really OK to fail to consider us - to deliberately exclude us - because we're not worth it, like real people are. I literally cannot find the words to express my horror at this. This concept of disabled people as 'other' is, in my opinion, responsible for every last instance of discrimination, hate crime, or inaccessibility that happens. No-one would do this to themselves - it's done because we are _not_ them, and they assume they will never be one of us. They're wrong, but sadly if something happens to correct their thinking on this, it's by definition too late - because by then they've become 'other', just like us.
The third one is the one that makes me angry, and feels like a personal slur. It's the assumption that I am, of course, too stupid and incapable to have thought of this very simple and obvious action which will *of course* solve my problem entirely. That I have made no attempt to think about the situation - that I am incapable of thinking about it - and cannot possibly have made any attempt to resolve it.
I cannot be alone in finding this both far too common and highly insulting.
And, sadly, impossible to communicate with any accuracy to the not-yet-disabled.
Anyway, I will be complaining to my local council - especially as the local library and Town Hall are both very accessible, available, easy to locate and have ample parking, and provide a vastly better alternative. I will also be taking up my ongoing argument with them over the state of the pavements and drop kerbs, and the fact that disabled access is consistently at the very bottom of the priority list, no matter what activity of the Council is under consideration (I'd like to point out that I don't consider Social Services to be part of the Council - and they have been utterly brilliant; friendly, social-model-aware, engaging and empowering, as well as willing and eager to listen to suggestions and complaints).
I'll let you know when (if) I hear that the tigers are finished with my letter. *sob*.
I tried four different routes - there isn't a wheelie accessible route. In the end I threw my chair off two six-inch-plus kerbs (only one of which I knew about beforehand), killed half a dozen inconsiderately abandoned wheelie bins, got stuck in a main road along the road-side of parked cars three, four? times, was foiled by one set of stairs and then finally found the stupid bloody place.
Only, the pedestrian entrance was in the wall, with a railing panel at the kerb about 2' away - ie, not room to turn my chair and get in. I had to go in via the car entrance, nearly got run over twice by idiots, had to go over four of those small sharp yellow and black speed bumps and glaring cynically at the wheelchair symbol on the entrance sign, wheeled around the building.
Found the entrance - two big steps, of course and a too short, and therefore too steep, wobbly temporary ramp, up to narrow, only one side open double doors. It was truly frightening. I only attempted it because I was mostly frozen after lengthy attempts to find a wheelchair accessible route and really needed to get indoors.
Once inside, weird twisty route, a random row of chairs totally blocking the centre of the room except for a gap barely as wide as my chair which six totally disinterested polling staff gawped at me negotiating.
I pointed out polling stations should be accessible to everyone and got no response. I'd have called it a blank look except they'd all been gaping since I appeared. No wheelie-level booth, so no privacy. No pen. No surface to lean on. And the ballot box on a table so I couldn't reach to put my vote in. More gawping, no help.
Left, battled back home, cursing vehemently at pretty much everything including a church owned wheelie bin left over the only drop kerb in sight - thanks, tolerant, loving, inclusive religious types - and almost crying with fear that I was being forced to trash my £2k powerchair that I cannot manage without and have absolutely no way of replacing.
Democracy, my ass. Apparently what makes one a citizen is functioning legs.