Archive article of the week: Access few areas

This week, halfway through the Special Olympics, a very interesting editorial appeared in the Irish Times, in which a journalist wondered where Muhammad Ali - one of the sporting event's keynote guests and himself a possessor of a physical disability - might stay, should he wish to travel and see more of the hosting country. Upon investigation, it transpired that even hotels, restaurants and public transport vehicles that proudly claimed to be 'wheelchair accessible' in travel guidebooks and on their stickered front windows, frequently, in practice, absolutely weren't.

Hot Press explored a similar hypothetical two years ago, when we investigated the supposed 'accessibility' of record shops in the capital city - and found comparable results, where what 'wheelchair accessible' typically meant in practice was limited accessibility at best, involving service lifts, too-narrow aisles, asking for assistance and loss of privacy and independence for the shopper; and where mooted changes - addition of ramps, lifts etc - were spoken of by (well-meaning) shop managers as being 'down to our international office' and 'out of our hands'.

It's poignant now, two years later, to see how little has changed for wheelchair users: not only in the Dublin record shops we visited (still largely lift and ramp-free) but, as the Times writer indicated, across the board in in this country. Read: