Handout: Scenario Two (a): Highlighting Accessibility Issues

You are playing the role of someone who uses a wheelchair and employed by the local government and stationed at a local service office.

The Situation

You got this job three months ago all offices were housed in park homes. One park home was utilized for bathroom facilities, but had no accessible entrance at all. As a result, you could not access the bathroom when you were at work. After a couple of weeks, you raised this as an issue at work.

In response, 6 weeks ago your duty station was changed to one that has an accessible bathroom. However, this has not improved the situation, in fact it has made matters a lot worse, because you use a wheelchair, you are assisted by a helper to wheel you to work. However, on rainy days the road leading to the office is so muddy that you cannot get to work, the office is further from your home and with your helper it now takes nearly 2 hours to get to work and home again each day. Your helper is not happy with the big change and sometimes arrives late to collect you and when it is wet he sometimes does not come at all. You have not told you supervisor this because you don’t want to seem like a problem.

Tomorrow you will have the first proper one-to-one meeting with your supervisor, so today, as it is raining again, you decide to go and get some advice from the new consulting group who help to facilitate employment for people with disabilities.