Travellers World

Travelling with a wheelchair — the good, the bad and the not-a-chance

Category: How we rate

  • “Accessible” is not a yes or no answer

    When we started writing places up, we tried a star rating. Five stars for accessible, one star for not. We gave up on it within a month, because it was useless.

    A museum with a perfect step-free entrance, a lift to every floor, and no accessible toilet in the building is not a three-star experience. It is a place you can visit for ninety minutes and then have to leave. A hotel with a magnificent accessible bathroom and two steps at the front door is not four out of five. It is zero, because you cannot get to the bathroom.

    Access is not a score out of five. It is a chain, and it is only as strong as the weakest link in it.

    So we do two things instead

    First, a blunt overall verdict, in plain words:

    • Good access — we got around without a fight.
    • Mixed — doable, but with caveats you want to know about first.
    • Poor access — hard work. Only with help and planning.
    • Not accessible — we could not get in, or could not use it.

    Second, a checklist, because the verdict alone does not tell you whether the specific thing you need is there. We check the step-free entrance, doorway widths, lifts, the accessible toilet, the accessible room and bathroom, blue badge parking, getting there at all, and whether the staff knew what they were doing.

    Why “staff knew what they were doing” is on the list

    Because it is the single most reliable predictor of how a day goes, and it appears on almost nobody else’s checklist.

    Good architecture with bad staff is a bad day: the ramp exists but nobody knows where the key is. Mediocre architecture with good staff is often a fine day, because someone competent finds a way round the problem before you have to ask. We would rather go somewhere slightly awkward with people who have thought about it than somewhere beautifully built by people who have not.

    What our ratings are not

    They are not an audit. We are not access consultants and we do not arrive with a tape measure. They are a record of what two people found on one particular day, with one particular wheelchair and one particular set of needs.

    Access also changes. Buildings get refurbished, good managers move on, the accessible toilet becomes a store cupboard. So please treat everything here as a strong starting point and a list of questions to ask — not as a guarantee. Check before you travel. We do too.

  • What good staff do differently

    We have been helped by hundreds of people over the years — on platforms, at gates, in hotel lobbies, at the bottom of unexpected flights of stairs. Almost all of them meant well. A smaller number were genuinely good at it, and the difference between meaning well and being good at it is enormous.

    Here is what the good ones do. It is a short list, and none of it is difficult.

    They talk to Bev

    Not to Steve, about Bev, while Bev is sitting right there. This is the one that comes up most and it is the easiest to fix. If the question is about the person in the chair, ask the person in the chair.

    They ask before they touch the chair

    A wheelchair is not a piece of furniture in a corridor. It is part of somebody’s personal space. Grabbing the handles and setting off is startling at best and frightening at worst. “Would you like a push?” takes two seconds.

    They say what they do not know

    “I’m not sure, let me find out” is a brilliant answer. “Yes, it’s fully accessible” from someone who has never looked is how you end up stuck. We would far rather wait three minutes for a real answer than act on a confident wrong one.

    They know where the equipment is

    The ramp, the key, the lift override, the person who is trained on the stairlift. Good venues make sure more than one person on each shift knows. Bad venues have one man called Dave, and Dave is on his break.

    They do not make it a performance

    Loud announcements, a small crowd, a lot of fuss about how marvellous everyone is being. We appreciate the help enormously. We would just like to receive it the way anyone else receives a service — quietly, competently, and without becoming the entertainment.

    They follow through

    The single best thing anybody ever does for us is the boring bit at the end: radioing ahead, ringing the next station, telling the restaurant we are coming, writing it in the book. The help that arrives is good. The help that is arranged for the next stage of the journey is what makes a trip work.

    If you work somewhere the public visits and you have read this far — thank you. That list is genuinely all of it.

  • How to complain so something actually changes

    We complain badly, as a community. We either say nothing — too tired, too embarrassed, just want to get home — or we explode on social media, feel briefly better, and change nothing. After years of practice we have landed on a method that actually gets results, and it is boring, which is why it works.

    At the time: collect, don’t argue

    When the assistance doesn’t come or the “accessible” room has a bath in it, the person in front of you is almost never the person who caused it, and arguing with them costs energy you need for the actual journey. Instead, collect:

    • Names. First names are fine. “Craig at the assistance desk” is worth a paragraph of description.
    • Times, to the minute. Your phone’s photo timestamps do this for you.
    • Photographs — the steps, the blocked bay, the room as you found it.
    • What was promised, in writing, from the booking confirmation.

    Then, and this matters, ask one calm question: “What can you do for us right now?” Sometimes the answer fixes the day. Either way, their answer goes in the complaint too.

    Afterwards: one page, three parts

    Written complaints get read when they are short. Ours are one page: what was promised (with the booking reference), what happened (times, names, facts, no adjectives), and what we want. That last part is the one people skip, and it is the whole point. “A refund of the assistance-failed leg, and confirmation of what has changed so it doesn’t happen to the next person” gives them something to say yes to. “This was disgraceful” gives them something to apologise for, and apologies are free.

    Where to escalate

    If the company’s answer is inadequate, there is usually a next rung, and companies respond differently once you are on it. For trains it is the Rail Ombudsman; for flights, the airline’s ADR scheme or the Civil Aviation Authority; for hotels and restaurants, the credit card chargeback route can concentrate minds; and failures of a promised reasonable adjustment can be an Equality Act matter, which is worth naming, calmly, in exactly one sentence. You will rarely need the rung after that. Mostly, naming the rung is enough.

    And say it here

    The complaint fixes it for you. The write-up fixes it for the next family. It is half of why this site exists — the other half being the places that got it right, who deserve the custom the bad ones lose.

    Your turn: if you have experiences of your own — the places that got it right, and the ones that got it badly wrong — tell us in the comments below. Every report helps the next traveller.