Sue Salthouse wrote

My beef was that at Australian Parliament House on the ACOSS Advocacy for Action (fantastic) day on 15 Sept, I was directed to an Accessible toilet in the labyrinth only to find the sliding door was stuck at 50% opening, and of course people in nearby offices had not a clue who to contact, or how to even lodge an 'out of order' note to maintenance!!

Sue Salthouse

Inaccessible/Unacceptable

This blog site called Inaccessible/Unaccessible has been developed by the Physical Disability Council of Australia (or PDCA for short) as a complimentary resource for those who experience access issues every day of their lives through discrimination, lack of thought, bad or non existent planning and design, and more....

Our reasons:

Under the Disability Discrimination Act (1992) an Access to Premises Standard is being developed in the same way that the DDA Transport Standard was developed.

The draft Standard will sit under the Act and also be the standard used by the Australian Building Codes Board (ABCB), ensuring consistency and certainty.

The problem:

We don't know what the ABCB is presenting to the federal government, even though there were people with disabilities involved in the consultation process and in the working group.

We need to ensure that our needs as people with disability are covered in the draft, such as:

• access to every floor of a building via a safe and appropriate lift
• adequate space in hallways and corridors (such as turning space and passing space)
• accessible toilets wherever there is a bank of toilets
• carparking
• access into buildings
• and more.........

What we want from you:

1. We want to hear your stories of how inaccessible Australia has impacted on your life.
2. We want to hear if this has affected you financially in any way (such as limiting where you can work, if it costs you more then it should to get to your place of work because it is the only place accessible, where you holiday, where you can go for relaxation, where you have to shop and more....
3. We want to hear how you have been discriminated against (in relation to access)

Finally we want you to share your experiences of inaccessible Australia with us and with other 'bloggers' who tune in to this site.

What we will do is collect the information to support our position - which is:

'people with disabilities have the same rights as Australians without disability to access the community. There should be no access barriers that prevent us from participating.'

Come on Australians - speak up about your lack of inclusion!