IMAGINE: if
(1) public establishments - banks, restaurants, grocery stores -
could live up to their frequent promise to `assure you of our best
service at all times';
(2) if the you in (1) above included older people with locomotor problems,
even people with some manner of disability - locomotor/vision/hearing;
(3) that all the people mentioned in (2) above had access to all
facilities - electronic machines, toilets, ... - available to `normal'
people;
(4) and if all this could be achieved by an email which would
get people with the expertise to take one look at the establishment
and tell you just what needs to be done.
Guess what! this is and has been possible in Chennai for many years. The
Disability Rights Alliance is a group of people who have been freely
offering such advice for years - without even charging for travel costs incurred - and it has been a case of pearls before swine. People say `sure, this has got to be done' but have done nothing! Like `taking a horse to water, but ...'. I should stop maligning animals unnecessarily, when only man is vile!
I guess the problem is that DRA doesn't throw in a few ramps and disabled
friendly toilets for free! Anyone heard of CSR?
Anyway, the offer is still there: interested people have only got to look
up DRA with Google's help and send that email!
The cause for this rant is that I have been having problems with both banks I have had an account with for years and have spent the last two days in their parking lots in the Chennai mid-May sun. Here is a photograph of the Adyar branch of one of those banks which explains why I was at their Mylapore branch yesterday - which branch had the inevitable `only one step'! When will people realise that anything at least as large as one is inaccessible for a wheelchair user? Why should ALL branches of ALL Banks be inaccessible?
is
(1) public establishments - banks, restaurants, grocery stores -
could live up to their frequent promise to `assure you of our best
service at all times';
(2) if the you in (1) above included older people with locomotor problems,
even people with some manner of disability - locomotor/vision/hearing;
(3) that all the people mentioned in (2) above had access to all
facilities - electronic machines, toilets, ... - available to `normal'
people;
(4) and if all this could be achieved by an email which would
get people with the expertise to take one look at the establishment
and tell you just what needs to be done.
Guess what! this is and has been possible in Chennai for many years. The
Disability Rights Alliance is a group of people who have been freely
offering such advice for years - without even charging for travel costs incurred - and it has been a case of pearls before swine. People say `sure, this has got to be done' but have done nothing! Like `taking a horse to water, but ...'. I should stop maligning animals unnecessarily, when only man is vile!
I guess the problem is that DRA doesn't throw in a few ramps and disabled
friendly toilets for free! Anyone heard of CSR?
Anyway, the offer is still there: interested people have only got to look
up DRA with Google's help and send that email!
The cause for this rant is that I have been having problems with both banks I have had an account with for years and have spent the last two days in their parking lots in the Chennai mid-May sun. Here is a photograph of the Adyar branch of one of those banks which explains why I was at their Mylapore branch yesterday - which branch had the inevitable `only one step'! When will people realise that anything at least as large as one is inaccessible for a wheelchair user? Why should ALL branches of ALL Banks be inaccessible?
is