Awful travel experience- not sure what I can do?

axwy62

The legal department from the Ferry company are now involved, and things may finally be moving forward.

The cynical me thinks everything will be fine for our next crossing on this ship (not til next May because there's a replacement on the route over the winter) and possibly even the one after that, then we'll be back to square one again but at least they've now admitted that they do have to accomodate me by the accessible lift in everything but exceptional circumstances such as that lift breaking down.

I shall hopefully report further progess in due course, but it may not be until next year.

sarah50

Hi @awxy62 first of all I would like to say I am blown away by your. awesome attitude to get what your entitled to. Secondly reading of your experience has made me really angry on your behalf. There have been a couple of reports on the national news regarding similar problems wheelchair users have had on trains, so there may be some interest from them if you choose to go in that direction. Best of luck ?

cracker

We have here  a Federal mandate which requires workplaces, transportation and public buildings give "reasonable accommodation for those with disabilities; They in the process of amending facilities and transportation to be all wheel chair accessible. And a discriminatory attitude is part of the law.

Do you have something like this in the UK?

Kudos for pursuing this. 

axwy62

sarah50 said:

Hi @awxy62 first of all I would like to say I am blown away by your. awesome attitude to get what your entitled to. Secondly reading of your experience has made me really angry on your behalf. There have been a couple of reports on the national news regarding similar problems wheelchair users have had on trains, so there may be some interest from them if you choose to go in that direction. Best of luck ?

Thank you for your support. There is some local media interest which might be picked up nationally, however I would prefer to resolve the issue more or less amicably as we really have no choice but to continue using this particular operator.

axwy62

cracker said:

We have here  a Federal mandate which requires workplaces, transportation and public buildings give "reasonable accommodation for those with disabilities; They in the process of amending facilities and transportation to be all wheel chair accessible. And a discriminatory attitude is part of the law.

Do you have something like this in the UK?

Kudos for pursuing this. 

Thank you for your support.
We do have an Equality Act which applies in most circumstances, but not unfortunately to ferry companies. The only think I can rely on at the moment is an EU regulation which makes it compulsory for the ferry company to accomodate me unless doing so would be unsafe, e.g. they couldn't get me to a life boat in an emergency or something like that. I'm proceeding on the basis that making access involve, at best, a very heated argument with the loading crew amounts to refusing to carry me at all.