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.