Kirsten’s solo journey to Malaga and back

Kirsten Hearn, a blind colleague of mine, rang me one day to ask me for some advice for travelling to Spain via France on the train. She was going to travel solo to Malaga – no guide dog!

I’ve been to Spain but I cannot say I know much but I did give as much help as I can on access of French SNCF and son John to translate certain useful French phrases she might set to memory.

I’ve been following her adventures on twitter (http://twitter.com/kirstenhearn) and now she has written some of it in her blog. (http://kirstenhearn.wordpress.com/)

I read -

Sorry to be bearer of bad news , the text begins it goes on to tell me of the untimely death of Rowen Jade, a friend and colleague.

I put the phone away and pick up my knitting. I wont believe it. I cant believe it. It must be a misunderstanding.

I put my knitting down and pick up the phone. I listen again to the text. I spell out the name to make sure it is who I think it is. And its true. Rowen is dead!

Yes, I am sorry to be that bearer of bad news, Kirsten. But I debated telling you or having you find out some other way. Should I have left it?

But I am sure that Rowen would know somehow you did it. Bravo Kirsten!

Kisten Hearn, photo taken at Rowen Jade's funeral

Malaysia: Interview with Florence Leong, One World Hotel, Petaling Jaya

I said I chose to stay the One World Hotel and while I was there, I thought I’d ask some questions and Florence Leong, the Assistant  Director of Communications, was kind enough to have coffee with me and answer some questions.

Florence Leong

My first question was on the policy of the hotel on their disabled guests with its one accessible room. Florence said they do not have a policy as such – the hotel caters mostly to business clients with a small percentage of leisure travelers and the availability of the accessible room is on request basis.

Having an accessible room is part of the because of a legal requirements for four star above rating by the Ministry of Tourism in Malaysia – along with leisure facilities (the hotel has a swimming pool, a spa and tennis courts) and a signature restaurant.

They do not promote the fact that they have an accessible room. They have not really looked into the possibilities.

“I have read an article that included older customers as important source for the hotel industry but as One World Hotel is only in its 3rd year of operations, we have yet to build up that market sector. we are quite new and we are still building up our business,” Florence told me. They do not belong to a chain but is part of Bandar Utama City Sdn Bhd and considered as a business hotel.

“We have not had much demand from disabled customers,” she said. “How would you know if they do not know about the existence of the availability of the room?” I asked. We have regular updates from our front line staff and reception she informed me.

We went on to discuss about the accessible room, with it s roll in shower, which is  comfortably spacious but that I was concerned about the marble type floor which made the floor very slippery especially when it is wet. But the staff was efficient enough to turn up with a floor mat which they laid on the bathroom and they changed it when I asked them to. I asked Florence about the possibility of having an anti slip flooring, and from there, we moved onto accessible hotel rooms.

hotel bathroom with floor mat

She asked me for tips to improve the accessibility and I told her that the accessible toilets in the hotel were badly designed which virtually rendered them inaccessible by the wrong positioning of grab bars.

Apart from access for guests with mobility impairments/needs we also spoke of the need for colour contrasts for people with visual impairments and the need for them to install hearing loops for guests with hearing impairments.

It was a pleasant conversation with Florence and I am sure her disability awareness improved but I am not convinced disabled guests went up in her priority list.

Mary Chen, of the Challenges Magazine, told me that people are always asking her for figures of disabled travellers and that this type of data is difficult to come by. And until the hotel service industry thinks they have a potential for more business, I do not think that accessible hotel rooms will be any more than a token gesture.

Malaysia: Preparation before the trip

I was born and bred in Malaysia so I do know the terrain. In my previous trips, I had gone before with my family (ex and kids) but had not considered the need for an electric wheelchair before.

However nowadays, my upper body strength is much reduced as has my mobility so this trip needed some careful planning.

In the next few blog entries, I plan to write about some of the preparation/considerations/research needed before the trip if a disabled /reduced mobility traveller wishes to go to Malaysia.

First of all, why visit Malaysia?

The people are warm and friendly, the equatorial landscape is very green and luxurious . The mixture of all the different cultures cheek by jowl makes Malaysia a compelling experience. The food from the exchange of cultures surpasses any to be found anywhere else on earth. And it has all the amenities of modern life without the being sanitised as its neighbour, Singapore.

There are many reasons why one should visit Malaysia but until it improves its access for disabled visitors, visiting the country remains a challenge. For those who want to rise to the challenge, here are a few considerations-

Accommodation

Most people start with Kuala Lumpur – the capital. This is where your plane lands at KLIA (Kuala Lumpur International Airport). KLIA is a great airport – I ve always found it to be efficient and the staff to be accommodating and helpful. Getting out of the airport is another matter – this I will write about under transport.

I chose to make Kuala Lumpur or the connecting suburb, Petaling Jaya (PJ) as my base. Most of my friends and family live there and there are many hotels which are most likely to have wheelchair accessible rooms to choose from.

Part of Kuala Lumpur skyline

My own decision to go to PJ is also based on the fact that I did not want to be in downtown congested KL. But for those who want to be close to tourist spots, there are the 4**** hotels around Bukit Bintang (KL shopping and entertainment district ) – these hotels will have at least one wheelchair accessible room. I was reliably told that to obtain the 4 **** rating, the hotel would had to have at least one wheelchair accessible room. I must admit that I really like the look of eco friendly, courtyard boutique Peranakan themed Anggun Kuala Lumpur. It said it had “disabled- and senior citizen-friendly rooms” on its website. That might be so but the surrounding city scape is not so wheelchair friendly. If I was a tourist and my intentions are to sample the high life of KL – Bukit Bintang is the place to aim for. But Petaling Jaya is not that far away and taxis are quite plentiful.

So, first question in deciding where to stay is : the main purpose of your visit and what are your resources?

Unless someone informs me to the contrary, I would say that there is very little budget type  accommodation that is cheap and accessible such as hostels etc and the like in Malaysia.

I needed a good location where friends and relatives can get to me easily. The whole area can be a motorist nightmare with traffic jams all the time especially during a downpour (which can happen every afternoon). I needed an accessible hotel attached to a mall with easily reached restaurants and shops. I did not fancy humping up and down pavements on my own.  I asked friends and relatives to do some research for me. I should mention that Mary Chen (Editor of “Challenges Magazine“) and Peter Tan gave me some suggestions. Peter kindly checked out the accessible room at the Boulevard Hotel, Mid Valley Megamall for me. So the search narrowed down to Boulevard Hotel and the One World Hotel, 1 Utama Mall. These are both hotels attached conveniently to a big mall.

My needs: a base from which I can independently negotiate my self propelled wheelchair and go to shops, restaurants and other amenities without having to stay within the hotel all the time. This would have to be a place where friends and family can come join me for dinner for the evening without battling over traffic.

It was location which won – apparently Megamall can have incredible traffic snarl ups.

Transport

Transport or lack of accessible transport was a determining factor in the type of wheelchair I took to Malaysia and the support I needed in getting around.

First of all, there is no reliable accessible public transport in Malaysia. And no accessible taxis. One reason why I did not take my electric wheelchair. I understand the light rail transit(LTR)  is accessible but it is only along certain routes but you have to get there first.

KL Traffic

I was also told about Persatuan Mobiliti which has some vans which are accessible for wheelchair users (with hydraulic lifts and wheelchair restraints) and if there is availability, can be booked for use by non Malaysian residents. I do not think this is very practical for main mode of transport for a visitor. Besides it will definitely be unable to move out of the city.

I find taxis the easiest form of transport but you would still have to avoid the busy areas because taxi drivers will not go where they think they will be stuck in traffic. But to travel out of KL for trips there are taxis which will give you a tour price. We took one of those to Melaka about 2 hours drive from KL south, a city with heritage and a certain colonial past, Portuguese, Dutch and British. It cost us about MYR250/US$75/ GBP £51 each with the taxi to ourselves  for the whole day with lunch included. Taxis can be booked from the hotel from the concierge. We also had a taxi booked to take us to Teluk Intan.

Environmental access

Storm drain

I know some wheelchair users are really good at manoeuvring their wheelchairs but I am not. Negotiating Malaysia buildings and pavements/sidewalks is a real challenge even with a strong and experienced wheelchair pusher. Curb cuts are random and few and far between. Malaysia passed its Uniform Building Bylaws and amended it in 1990 making it compulsory for buildings to provide access to enable disabled persons to get into, out of and within the buildings. The accessibility is still very haphazard. One of the reasons is the prevalence of monsoon drains built to allow water to flow away fast in the flash floods when there is a torrential downpour.

However, in the smaller towns, you can go along on the streets reasonably safely with a wheelchair.

Many buildings have lifts when there are stairs especially in the shopping centres. I did have a surprise in Sungai Wang Plaza when we could’nt use a lift because there was a pole in the middle of the lift, apparently it was to stop shoppers from taking shopping carts into the lifts rendering them unusable for wheelchair users.

Accessible Toilets

Finding accessible toilets is always an issue for wheelchair users. And even the designated accessible toilet may not be so accessible. But in most malls and modern shopping centres, hotels, they do have toilet which are bigger with hand rails. I did find an accessible toilet with handrails next to the sink instead of the toilet which made transfer very hazardous especially when more often or not, toilets are wet in Malaysia.

what design is this?

It might sound very daunting but with the right support, a trip or stopover in Malaysia is well worth the trip. I will be writing about some of the places I did go and visit but I ‘ll leave this for the next blog instalment.

Photos of my trip this time is at Connect Culture flickr account , (Malaysia set /, Kuala Lumpur set, and Melaka set.)

Transit at Dubai Airport

I was going to write this later because I did not ‘transit’ at Dubai Airport till my flight back. But I read this article at the Disability Awareness in Action website on negative attitudes towards disabled people in Dubai and it helped to  explain some of the attitudes of the staff – or should it?

On the journey back to UK at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, I was advised not to get my wheelchair out at Dubai Airport on transit  because there might be a strong chance that it would go missing. Its happened to me before when I was in Bangkok so I took the advice.

However, this means using one of the airport own wheelchairs. At Dubai, it appears that each assistance staff member have assigned wheelchairs – the man who wheeled me to the transit lounge was most disconcerted when I wanted to stay in the wheelchair and not transfer to a lounge chair. I told him I needed it to use the bathroom etc since there was a 3 hour wait. He said he couldn’t do his job unless he got the chair back!

It didn’t take me long to see that the small transit lounge had a lot of passengers going through it and there were insufficient wheelchairs to go around. Passengers get deposited there and there were constant call out of names where passengers were ‘carted’ away again either by buggies or wheelchairs. It felt worst than being at a hospital waiting room. The woman in charge was perfunctory and she seems to consider passengers as parcels to be dispatched.

I spoke to some of the other passengers there, two women from South Africa and one from Australia,  and they said they were stressed by how they have been handled and disappointed by the process. They had been told how great the airline was by their friends and this was the first time they used the airline but they would not do so in future.

People at a Dubai airport customer services counter

My non disabled friends highly recommend the Emirates as well but I do not think the Emirates have taken on customer satisfaction for their disabled customers.  It is a beautiful airport but their transit lounge was cramped and not doing justice to the rest of an international airport. The staff, not the cabin crew, but ground staff could do with some disability awareness training. I think they seem to imply that all their ‘special assistance’ passengers are only  in need of the occasional assistance – they do not seem to understand what to do with disabled passengers who really cannot walk  at all.

The big question is ‘Will I use the Emirates again?” I might because Birmingham is a good airport for me location wise and only if I have somebody with me who can make sure I don’t get left behind. Now that I ve use them once I might be better able to cope with the system. But I cannot say I would recommend them as the first choice for an airline provider. Should I have complained and if I should, who to?

David Cameron and his speech on tourism

Prime Minister David Cameron has delivered a speech in central London on the challenges and opportunities that tourism presents. He calls London “the most internationally visited city in the world”.

He said, “Domestic and overseas visitors put an estimated £115bn a year into the UK. Foreign visitors’ spending could almost double from £16bn to £31bn by 2020, according to Visit Britain.”

He has pledged to make Britain one of the top five tourist destinations in the world. Mr Cameron said the income generated from the £115 billion-a-year tourism sector was “fundamental” to rebuilding the UK’s economy.

Of course he did not mention inclusive tourism but as the shadow culture secretary Ben Bradshaw said: “If David Cameron wishes to further improve Britain’s offering for tourists, perhaps he should come up with some constructive policy measures, rather than weak gags about losing to Germany at football.”

What about having policy measures for inclusive tourism, David Cameron? How accessible do you think London is? Are you increasing the number of accessible hotel rooms? And I am not even thinking of 2012 – I do not think that there is an adequate provision of accessible accommodation for domestic tourists let alone foreign tourists.

Read his full speech at the No 10 Website. The BBC report is at the BBC news website.

David Cameron

One night in Dubai

Dubai Airport

I took the decision to have break the journey by staying overnight at Dubai rather than continuing to Kuala Lumpur on the same day – mostly to rest.

Getting a taxi to the hotel was easy and the hotel, Le Meridien, was chosen by John, my son. It is certainly sumptuous. There are 4 swimming pools and 8 restaurants. The impression was slightly marred by a rather noisy and drunk British wedding party.

Most of the hotel is accessible – no hoist on any of the pools, at least one of the bars had steps and some of the restaurants, many ramps around.  The hotel room was spacious including the bathroom. My room had its own patio but there was no level access.

Le Meridien Hotel Dubai

One of my intentions was to go and see the new tallest building but I was too fatigued by the heat and the journey to go. The kids went though and they said it was a very easy trip.
I needed the rest and we had to get going by 5 am to catch the next leg of the trip to Kuala Lumpur.

Flying with the Emirates!

After much deliberation, I decided to visit family and friends and go home to Malaysia this summer. I managed to persuade my son and his girlfriend to accompany me and be my ‘personal assistants’. To be truthful, I did not look forward to the long flights and having to negotiate airports – my mobility is much reduced from the last time I embarked on a long flight. (to the US).

This is the first blog on the whole journey. (Written with intermittent internet connection and jet lag)

There was a reason for choosing Birmingham International Airport for going to Malaysia. Not least because it was a hub for the Emirates and I know they have stopovers in Dubai which is halfway to Kuala Lumpur.

I had rung the Emirates twice telling them what ‘special’ assistance I needed and both times they reassured me they had it all in hand and that I was not to worry. Imagine my surprise when I got to the check in that they had me down as a ‘runner’ (a term which means a person can walk and negotiate to the seat on the plane) and not a ‘carry on’ (someone who needs what is known as an aisle /cabin chair and be lifted to the given seat.). I was castigated for not having given the right information and send off to a woman to fill in some kind of online form, who told me I should have given them more notice and asked me all sorts of intrusive questions: was my condition medical or as a cause of an accident, did I take any medication, what was the nature of my condition? The Birmingham Airport assistance staff said that they would never have asked or required such information and expressed their surprise.

When we finally satisfied the woman I did not have anything contagious, we boarded and found that our seats were right at the back and they had to move me virtually the length of the plane. Upon question, cabin crew said that that happens often but they had no communication with ground crew to put carry on passengers to the front of the plane!

I found cabin crew to be obliging but maybe over stretched, the plane was fully packed. Our seats for the flight out to Dubai were uncomfortable even by economy standards and my neighbour at the back had a faulty tray which tipped a whole cup of hot scalding tea on him! I am glad to be able to say that the flight to KL was much more comfortable but I have no idea why!

Dubai Airport was all shiny and new and the staff was efficient enough but they do not bring your own wheelchair to the door and therefore you have more transfers than you need: to get into the aisle chair, from aisle chair to airport chair and then finally to your own wheelchair.

New European Award for Accessible Cities

Now I wonder if this is just for big cities or will a small city like Coventry (where I live) qualify?

From ENAT (European Network for Accessible Tourism):
A new European Award for Accessible Cities has been launched by the European Commission, aiming to promote accessibility for people with disabilities in four areas:

* the built environment and public spaces,
* transport and related infrastructures,
* information and communication, including Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), and
* public facilities and services.

The four finalists of the European competition will be invited to attend the award ceremony that will take place in Brussels on 2 and 3 December 2010 at the European Day of People with Disabilities conference. The winner of the European competition will receive the ‘European Award for Accessible Cities 2011′ and will feature prominently in activities to promote accessibility at European level during 2011.

In addition, a special ‘European Champion for Accessible Cities’ award will be made to recognise the work of a network of cities or initiatives.

Accessibility is a broad concept that addresses the removal and prevention of barriers that cause problems for persons with disabilities in using products, services and infrastructures on equal terms as those without disabilities.

Accessibility to the built infrastructure, transport, services and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is essential for people with disabilities to be able to exercise their rights and participate fully in society. This includes the right to education, to engage in work, citizens rights related to voting, access to documents, and freedom of movement as well as access to leisure and cultural facilities (libraries, museums, theatres, cultural centres, concert halls, hotels, restaurants, etc.) Accessibility is also a fundamental part of the social sustainability of the urban environment.

Personalisation agenda, budget cuts and EU traveller’s rights

Inclusive travel was in my back burner for the past few weeks. It takes time to digest the possible impact of the changes the coalition government is making to every disabled person’s life – to my life.

The newly elected chair of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Work and Pensions, Anne Begg, spoke for many of us when she said this in Disability Now:

“We don’t know what they mean by welfare reform because all that has been announced so far is cuts. And cuts to welfare is not welfare reform.”

There is also the impending Personalisation agenda roll out in Adult Social Care – supposedly to give more choice and control – what impact will this have on inclusive travel? Service users have more choice in deciding what they do with the care package they have. Actually Personalisation is now to mean inclusive services – you can choose and be creative about the money you have in your care package. And that is, if you are left with any money after all the cuts!
And no, I do not understand the impact this has, if any, on the travel industry for disabled, carers and the older community. But you don’t think of spending money on travel if you are worried about losing your benefits – the Disability Living Allowance (under attack right now) is not even a benefit!

However today I was given this press release – Transport: Commission launches campaign to inform passengers about their rights
Passengers will enjoy easier access to information about their rights when travelling by rail or air thanks to a Europe-wide publicity campaign in 23 languages launched by the European Commission today.

Posters reminding people of their rights will be displayed in airports and train stations in all Member States starting today in time for the beginning of the holiday season. Travellers will also be able to consult free leaflets and a specially designed website in all of the European Union’s official languages.

But lastly, some good news – finally EU legislation now says that:

Under EU legislation people with disabilities and/or reduced mobility are protected from being discriminated against during reservation and boarding. They are also entitled to receive assistance at airports (on departure, on arrival and in transit) and on board airplanes. In order to facilitate the provision of assistance, it is recommended to pre-notify your needs.

Incidents such as where wheelchair travellers were not allowed to board should not happen any more! This was so worrying for many wheelchair users are independent travellers.

Working in Partnership

I am at the moment attending a ‘Driving On’ course lead by Coventry and Warwickshire Co-operative Development Agency  to enable entrepreneurs to develop their personal effectiveness and develop innovative social enterprises which serve their community.The training programme is accredited by Coventry University.

One reason why I was there is to evaluate Connect Culture and decide on new directions. So it is very good to be asked by Maria Zedda of Wideaware, following on our successful work together for the Ten Most Accessible Entertainment Venues in West London , to be included in their new commission with the British Library’s Business & IP Centre to ensure high standards of diversity and disability inclusion for the Business and IP Centre.

How exciting!

At the same time, I have been working hard at the Council of Disabled People, Warwickshire and Coventry, helping out as a Executive Committee member (Trustee). I am in the process of developing a shared wiki on accessible venues in Coventry. It makes sense to work local as well since I live here. Watch this space!