With lockdown beginning to ease more people are feeling confident about going out and about. People started going to restaurants, picnics and of course the cinemas are reopening.
While a lot of people are feeling anxiety about going out and about again in crowds, the disabled community are getting back to normal where they do not feel anxiety about going out but feel anxiety about not being able to get in.
Last night was the first proper night out me and my wife had had for over a year. We treated our nephews and nieces to the cinema (to go and see Cruella which I highly recommend).
We went to Cineworld in Loughborough. Never been here before, normally we would go to Vue Cinema in Leicester but my nephew is studying at Loughborough University so we thought a change would be nice.
All was going well until we entered screen seven.
Screen seven is one of the smaller screens and it quickly became apparent that it was completely unsuitable for anyone who sees it in a designated disabled wheelchair bay.
The front row was so close to the screen that you could not see the whole screen.
Staff were very good, we went back to reception and advised of the situation and the people behind the counter actually asked me to write this article because they’ve had an issue from day one with the screen and disabled customers. Yet it seems nothing is being done by Cineworld corporate.
The screen is completely unsuitable for wheelchairs and the screen, in its current guise, should not be used for people with disabilities.
We then went to heavenly deserts across the road from the cinema, who actually advertise a wheelchair sticker in the window only to find out they don’t have a ramp into the desert parlour and therefore it is completely inaccessible for anyone in a wheelchair.
It seems that organisations who have closed down over the past year still have not learnt their lesson that the disabled pound is worth billions to the economy and for their businesses and this could’ve been a real learning curve for every organisation who could’ve made simple adjustments to make everyone’s life a little bit easier.
But here is the problem if it doesn’t affect the majority, the minority have no chance.
Take a look at what happened with Covid; disabled people who have wanted to work from home for several years and were told by every organisation they couldn’t do so, businesses explained it was impossible to work from home, or we didn’t have the right facilities for people to work from home. It was only when everyone had to work from home adjustments were made because the majority were affected not the minority.
Ability Access 