18th June 2014 Parliament
I went to The Houses of Parliament for a TrailBlazers event. It was about high street and shopping centre accessibility. I arrived in the room and thought "oh shit! Access!" because there were so many wheelchairs nobody could move! MP's need to understand about access in Houses of Parliament because we have The Equality Act 2010. I know that it is a listed building but I know many disabled people who go there for disability rights campaigning so why was the access not better?
I felt empowered when I spoke but they said try and speak to the local council. I know that today didn't work the way I had hoped because councils don't want to spend money on wheelchair access. I hoped that these people at the event would have the power to make a difference but they they sent me back to speak to my local councils! Surely this is an MP's job, not mine to go back and do it for myself! I had hoped for more from the MP's and that they would listen and make changes from the inside, from the The Houses of Parliament. Why are they not taking some responsibility?
Disabled people asked questions but I wanted MP's to listen to all our experiences. The questions we read were sent in advance but they still didn't seem to have answers. I travelled all the way from Halifax today to help but left feeling disappointed because I felt like I didn't have the chance to share my personal insight to help the MP's find a better way to improve disabled people's shopping experience.
I hope that MP's in the future will make more time to listen and will support disabled people to make a change from The Houses of Parliament and not sending us back to where we are from and ask us to do it ourselves. MP's have power, please help us by using it!
Thank you for organising this day TrialBlazers, it was great to have spoken in The Houses of Parliament and I hope to do it again very soon!
P.S. This has been translated from BSL and AAC to English
