#structural disableism

[enbycrip]

Your ongoing reminder that small local coffee shops, restaurants and other venues are frequently less accessible than large chain ones.

Yes, there is absolutely a structural issue to this; large chains have the ready finances to build new locations, whereas small businesses very rarely do, and in many places accessibility in existing shop fronts is horrific.

But this leads into the fact that small businesses, while they do absolutely often have narrow profit margins, also make choices based on what they see their customers valuing. And they do not see abled people valuing accessibility.

If you have a physically inaccessible venue you like to visit, please *ask* them about accessibility. Mention that you are choosing not to spend time and money there with friends due to their inaccessibility.

Certain councils in the UK apparently *do* offer grants to help small businesses increase their accessibility, though the information I could find about it online was spotty at best.

If they specifically identify cost as why they are not providing an accessible bathroom or a ramp into their store or venue, it’s always worth volunteering your time to help set up a crowdfunding campaign. Remind them that small businesses live and die based on their local community, and that by inviting the community to help them become more accessible to more of the community they are increasing their engagement with them and showing who they value.

Abled people having these conversations with other abled people and volunteering to take on some of the work of increasing accessibility is praxis.

[enbycrip]

If you have any local business you enjoy visiting, please let them know that an *incredibly* helpful thing they can do to increase their accessibility at almost no cost is to put their accessibility information on their website and post it outside their venue under their menu.

There are many guides online that would help them put together a guide in about half an hour. Ask them to do that, put a copy where it is easy for staff to access when asked (hard copy or digital) and post it on their website and outside. If they want to be incredible they would pay a disabled consultant to do an accessibility assessment, but even a free-from-an-online guide version is still incredibly valuable.

Even if their venue is totally inaccessible, and the cost to rectify that *far* beyond their means, doing this still increases their accessibility enormously.

Businesses posting this information where it is easy to find, and giving their staff the tools to give accurate information swiftly and easily on the phone, would save so many disabled people an enormous amount of time and energy.

If you own or work at such a business, please ask about doing this. Abled people having these conversations with other abled people and volunteering to take on some of the work is a piece of praxis that helps in multiple ways.

[enbycrip]

ID: a tweet by Catch These Words 9 May

“Technology has changed all of our lives in profound ways. As a blind person it has opened up opportunities I'd have never had access to before. I can access printed content by taking a photo of it on my phone and running it through some software. I can read ebooks with ease, browse the news, order groceries, and access audio described films.

But even as all of these things have become available to me, the Web, and technology in general, feels like it gets less and less accessible by the day. Websites become overly complex and filled with ads which I can't easily pass by with my screen reader. I want to buy a ticket at a train station, or purchase products at the supermarket, but I can't find any staff and all of the machines are touchscreens without any accessibility features. I'm moving house and everywhere I look is fitted with cookers, washing machines, and microwaves that are touchscreens and impossible to access. I can't buy a printer or a coffee maker without having to dedicate huge amounts of time to figuring out if I'll be able to access it. I may have to call my bank and explain that the latest update to their app does not work with VoiceOver.

It's a never-ending cycle of wondering if this new development in tech will change my life in an incredible way, or be yet another door slammed in my face. Designers don't think about disabled people. If they do they are determined to make a product specifically for us, completely misunderstanding the barriers we face. They aren't considering the reality that we want and need access to the products everyone else is using. Trying to make these products and services accessible at the end of the design process doesn't work, and so they decide accessibility is just too difficult. They don't consider the truth that if they'd made it accessible from the start, it wouldn't be nearly so complex.

This is the reality of disability in 2023. We live in a world that has the wealth and tech to make so many things accessible to so many people, but the willingness isn't there.”

Yup.

You need to build accessibility into everything - from products to events to government initiatives- from the start or you’ll decide it’s too costly and too complicated, without considering how any other aspect would be if you tried to build it in in the final stages.

The amount of money councils and corporations spend on “consultations” with disabled people that go nowhere because of this could easily be used to employ us and include accessibility from the beginning, working from lived experience.