Thursday, 5th March 2009
When access is an excess
Cerrie Burnell is 29 years old; she has one daughter, and has a dream job on television, presenting the Do And Discover and The Bedtime Hour shows for toddlers on CBeebies.
Ms Burnell read Acting in Manchester, continued training in Brazil, and appeared in Comedy Lab, the Bill, Holby City, and EastEnders, The Bill and Comedy Lab, and has also worked as a teaching assistant in a school for children with different needs. With an impressive CV such as this, one would have expected the parents of children who watch the show to deluge the BBC with letters of approval. Yet, this has not happened, because in the typical close-minded and capricious “we know what’s good for our children” that exists in Malta too, some parents wrote to say that Ms Burnell ought not to have been the Chosen One.
You see, Ms Burnell happens to have been born with one of her arms ending just above the elbow. So a clutch of misinformed, bigoted parents wrote that she would “scare” children.
Discrimination and intolerance raised their ugly heads so much that some of the posts on the CBeebies website had to be removed because they were the nadir of malevolence and spite. Instead of the parents admitting that they were not mature enough to talk to their children about disability, they passed the buck to the BBC’s, alleging an attempt at ‘token’ political correctness and outmoded positive discrimination towards minorities.
According to the warped reasoning of these people, one’s capability top do a good job, then, depends upon appearance; people who have different needs are to be relegated to backstage and backroom jobs... and hey, ought this blanket statement not to include anyone who has disabilities that are not visible... and, while we’re at it, anyone who is not Caucasian?
Are we going to allow “access” to buildings, to jobs, to anything that the rest of us take for granted, to people who have different needs, only if and when it suits us, or we feel like it – or, more pointedly, to show that we do allow access at that particular instance?
A similar thing happened to my friend Roberta recently, when she wanted to see a particular film. Just for the record, Roberta uses a wheelchair. Now, it’s already bad enough that some pavements are hard to negotiate. It is impossible to browse through the merchandise in some shops, because the aisles are far too narrow for wheelchairs to negotiate. Eating out at some restaurants is out of the question, too.
Roberta thought that an outing to the cinema – despite a negative experience she had already had before – would be fine. After all, she had called the cinema beforehand, and was reassured that it would be as near enough a piece of cake as would not matter. Right? Wrong. Roberta asked for a position where she could watch the film without being in the way of those who might wish to leave the cinema while it was running. The person who took the call said that it would not be a problem. On the evening in question, the usher was stumped – she went to conger with another person, who told Roberta that the passageway was “too narrow” to accommodate a wheelchair, and therefore, it would be necessary for her to get out of it and make her way to a seat. My friend was “invited” to see this for herself.
This was not merely a pathetic attempt at customer care – it was an insult Roberta would cheerily have watched the film from just inside the door of the cinema; after all, there were only three more people ready to see it, and she could easily have shifted herself out of the way should they have wanted to use the door. But – according to Health and Safety regulations – this could not be done.
Ironically, the aforesaid regulations were observed to the letter – but what about the Rights of Access for Persons with Disabilities? The manager tried to placate Roberta by asking her to leave her details so that “if” the film, perchance, was going to ruin in another cinema in the complex, she would be informed.... as it happened, she had just struck unlucky because all the other halls were accessible to people who use wheelchairs. I long for the day when all the Cerries and Robertas of the world do not need this type of article to highlight the sheer discourtesy, lack of empathy, and stroppiness extant around us.
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Comments
We need more people like you that are so aware on this subject. As I already said, everyone should help to make sure that we all have equal rights!
Thanks for everything!
Keep it up.