I'm a trained risk assessor and the Union Health and Safety Rep for our building. The more I see of this 'DDA' stuff (Disability & Discrimination Act), the more I want to a) piss myself laughing at its inadequacies, b) slap the designers upside the head several times with a DDA Compliancy handbook (hardback for preference) and c) make every architect and designer spend a month in a wheelchair AND on crutches before they so much as put pencil to paper (or finger to mouse...).

The stupidity of our building amazes me. We have one floor where the only bathroom stall big enough for wheelchair users is down a dogleg corridor that is narrow for able bodied people. The door opens outwards only so far, as the sinks are in the way. Once out of the cubicle, the door must be shut before you can reach the hand dryer, requiring a 180degree turn in a confined space and then in reverse to get out.

The button to open the disabled entrance door is about 10 ft away from the door. If you're on crutches, you have to let go a crutch, hit the button (too low for an elbow, too high for a knee), pick up the crutch, hobble to the door and get there just as it closes. They fixed that one after I jammed it with a crutch.

The underground car park has spaces for disabled drivers but no signs to tell you where the disabled access to the building is - it's actually a goods lift and as such, is not labelled as a disabled access. You need a key from reception to use it. How do you get to reception located on the ground floor of the building? You wheel/hobble up the ramp that every other car is driving down, or you hobble up the stairs.

Our foyer has a reception desk which used to be in the centre until the foyer was redesigned 4 years ago. It's now to one side of it, immediately opposite a set of doors to the outside. These doors are locked closed in winter because the receptionists feel the cold. There is another set of doors a few yards further down, but they are inadequate for the number of people who work there (32 floors with an average of 80 people per floor, not including visitors). Consequently they use the disabled access doors and wonder why they break every 3 weeks in winter.

Visiting the Union HQ with a friend who was wheelchair bound after an accident, we found that the fire escape had a well designed ramp leading from it to safety on the outside... on the inside, there were two hefty steps up to the emergency exit. The lift, big enough to fit a wheelchair and little else, had call buttons that were too high for the wheelchair user to reach and doors that closed fairly rapidly before he'd got his leg (which was sticking out in front - really bad break) in properly.

Just because a building is DDA compliant, doesn't mean it's useable. Whoever makes these laws should think twice about the people who will be using them. I refer you again to point c) above.

LTS