Campaign for access to public transport for everyone

A2BForAll have launched their campaign to get fair treatment for all on public transport, in particular to get more access to public transport for disabled people. It has launched with a big presence in newspapers and on TV fronted by Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson and backed by Unity Law and the Disability Alliance.

Channel 4 News is doing a series of videos highlighting the problems that disabled people have in accessing public transport, starting with an excellent film last night, shown here.

You can read the story on the Channel 4 News website: How Paralympian Tanni had to crawl from train and No Go Britain: ‘Using public transport can be horrific’. Tanni’s story has also been covered by the Daily Mail, The Telegraph and the Evening Standard. Unfortunately many of the comments left at the Daily Mail website show an astonishing lack of understanding or sympathy and show that there might be quite a long way to go to get full public support.

Tanni appeared on ITV Daybreak this morning, which you can also view here.

Other stuff

I have written several times here on this blog about my own clashes with public transport. The most recent blog post is Travelling in a wheelchair – or failing to. A related blog post that I wrote about getting hold of a wheelchair Legs, wheels and money. You might also be interested in my experience trying to get my powerchair into one taxi. (Spoiler: I couldn’t.) My Taxi Adventure.

How can you help?

First - sign the petition: Fight discrimination against disabled passengers on UK public transport and fill in the A2BForAll disability survey.

Please find A2BForAll on Facebook and Twitter and like / follow them. If you have experiences of your own to add to the others then please let them know through those social networks. Channel 4 News have their own Facebook page, No Go Britain where you can send your stories to them too.

Another group called Transport For All campaigns for access to public transport within London, and you can also find them on twitter @transportforall.

Please look out for the campaign on the TV and elsewhere, and share any articles you find with others through email, social media or word of mouth. Keep an eye on this blog as I have no doubt that there will be more to come here.

Steven Sumpter, or Latentexistence to his virtual friends, is thirty-something who is married, has a cat, lives in a broken body and is stuck in bed a lot. Steven likes messing around on computers, gaming, and ranting about politics in written form. He also occasionally writes for The Pod Delusion and Where's The Benefit?

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