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 | You and Yours聽- Transcript 大象传媒 Radio 4 |
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| TX: 25.07.03 - DISABLED ACCESS - NICK WALKER'S PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE |
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PRESENTER: WINIFRED ROBINSON ROBINSON And now after a week of features which have explored just how accessible Britain is to disabled people, here's a more personal perspective from the journalist Nick Walker. WALKER If ignorance of the law is no defence then knowledge of the law is perhaps the greatest. So know this. First of October 2004 and the Disability Discrimination Act, lain semi-dormant on the statute for eight years, wakes to life. The disabled face discrimination and prejudice in every walk of life, even language can fail us, even my name no longer fits. I take my wheelchair down my local shopping street and I pass three inaccessible restaurants, two inaccessible bookshops and an inaccessible internet caf茅. I live with a progressive disability. I was diagnosed when I was 24 and fired from a new job five months later, two days after I told my boss of my condition. They made a mistake - we all do. And that was a long time ago before the Disability Discrimination Act certainly. This week when I visited Sketch Restaurant in Mayfair I sat in my wheelchair at the very apex of the pyramid. Sketch was truly the life of sensation rather than thought, that the romantic in every one of us craves. Perhaps this is why nobody thought of the needs of the disabled, nor the requirements of the law. Inclusion in this most exclusive world required compromise. Being carried down the stairs was a compromise, our table was a compromise, we ate at the cheaper dining room - 拢80 a head rather than double that. I could not have been more deliciously and stylishly compromised. I'm a reasonable man. The Disability Discrimination Act requires only reasonableness. Reasonableness - Lord Denning said - is the view of the man on the Clapham omnibus. It could further be described as the compromise achieved between two passengers on the Clapham omnibus as they decide who best merits the last seat. And the question of reasonableness moves on to whether somebody with a disability can get on to the bus in the first place or into the restaurant or on to the hospital waiting list. It's time for business to do what people with disabilities have been doing for years. It's time to get on with it. Business may whine but all audits agree - the cost to the state of disability exclusion, the cost to us all, will easily overbalance the cost of implementing the DDA. If business can chase the pink pound, it can chase cripple cash. Fifty six billion pounds, according to the general household survey in 1996 and rising. You will have to get over your fear of ramps. You're going to see more of them and more of us. As medical advance continues you will see more wheelchairs on the streets, not fewer. This is the 21st Century. If Gucci can make teething rings, Sketch can provide a stylish solution to a set of 10 rather ordinary Georgian stairs. This is not Sir Gilbert Scott's St. Pancras staircase, stairs I would chain my wheelchair to, rather than let a single step be altered. This is, after all, my architectural heritage too. Get on with it. Get out your diaries - 1st October 2004 - a generation after the Sex Discrimination Act and the Race Relations Act - it's already later than you think. ROBINSON Nick Walker. Back to the You and Yours homepage The 大象传媒 is not responsible for external websites |
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