Travellers World

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

Tag: radar-key

  • The accessible toilet that wasn’t

    There is a particular sinking feeling that every wheelchair user and every carer knows. You have found the accessible toilet. You have got there in time. And the door will not open, or it opens onto a mop bucket, a stack of high chairs and a broken parasol.

    It happens constantly, and it happens for a small number of very repeatable reasons.

    The five ways it goes wrong

    1. It is being used as a cupboard

    The most common failure by a distance. The accessible toilet is the biggest room with the fewest daily users, so it quietly becomes storage. This is worth mentioning to a manager every single time, politely and without heat. Half of them are genuinely embarrassed and clear it out.

    2. It is locked and nobody knows who has the key

    Many accessible toilets are on the National Key Scheme, which means they use a standard RADAR key. Carry your own — you can buy one from Amazon, Disability Rights UK or a local council for a few pounds, and it is the single best value item in our bag. When a venue has its own key instead of a standard one, you are at the mercy of whoever is on shift.

    3. The emergency cord is tied up

    The red cord should reach the floor. It is there so that someone who has fallen can pull it. It gets knotted up out of the way because staff are tired of it being pulled by mistake. Untie it. Every time. It takes four seconds and it is genuinely a safety issue.

    4. The grab rails are on the wrong side

    Transfers are usually one-sided. A toilet with a rail only on the left is unusable for someone who transfers to the right, no matter how big the room is. There is nothing to be done about this on the day, which is why we ask about it in advance.

    5. It exists, but you cannot use it

    A standard accessible toilet assumes you can transfer yourself, or with one person’s help. If you need a hoist and a changing bench, a standard accessible loo does not help at all. That is what Changing Places toilets are for — larger rooms with a hoist, an adult-sized bench and space for two carers. There are now several thousand across the UK, and new large public buildings in England have been required to include them for a few years. The Changing Places website has a map, and we plan long days around it.

    What we do

    We find the toilet first, before the coffee, before the exhibition, before anything. It sounds joyless and it is not — it is the opposite. Knowing where it is, and that it works, is what lets you relax and actually enjoy the day.

    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.

  • The kit we never travel without

    Every trip we take, the same small pile of things comes with us. None of it is exciting. All of it has saved a day at some point.

    A RADAR key

    The standard key for locked accessible toilets across the UK. A few pounds from Disability Rights UK, Amazon or your council, and it opens tens of thousands of doors. If you buy one thing off this list, buy this. We carry two, because we have lost one in the past and that causes problems.

    A basic puncture kit and a decent pump

    If the chair has pneumatic tyres, this is not optional. We found these on Amazon. A flat tyre two miles from the car is a completely different problem to a flat tyre you can fix on a bench. Slime or a similar sealant in the tubes as well, if the chair allows it.

    A folding travel ramp

    A lightweight suitcase ramp handles the single step that stands between you and a shop, a pub or a cottage. It will not solve a flight of stairs and it is not meant to. It solves the small, stupid, extremely common obstacle.

    A laminated card for the airline

    Handling instructions for the chair, plus our phone numbers, cable-tied on before every flight. Baggage handlers are not trying to break your chair; they often simply do not know how it comes apart.

    Spare charger, spare cable, spare battery

    For the chair and for the phone. The phone matters more than people think, because it is the thing you use to call the taxi, find the accessible entrance and ring the station when nobody has turned up. We swear by our power banks, I have a dozen or so, but my Anker Powerbank is the one I trust and use the most.

    A tape measure

    Slightly obsessive, genuinely useful. We know the chair’s width to the centimetre, and being able to measure a doorway settles an argument with a hopeful receptionist in about ten seconds.

    Written confirmation of everything

    The accessible room booking, the assistance reference, the parking arrangement — printed, not just on the phone. Screens go flat and signal disappears exactly when you need to prove something.

    And the unglamorous one

    Extra time. Not a thing you can pack, but the most valuable item on the list. Nearly every bad day we have had came from a tight connection, a rushed transfer or a plan with no slack in it. We build in an hour we do not need, and most days we do not need it. The days we do, it is the only thing that saves the trip.

    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.