Canterbury Access Group
Disabled people, friends and allies
Welcome to the Canterbury Access Group.
We are a group of Disabled people, along with friends and allies, working in a voluntary capacity for better access across our beautiful city and district.
We work with businesses, leisure facilities, green and blue spaces, community groups and local government to boost understanding of access needs, and aim to create lasting change so we can enjoy Canterbury with the same equity of access as non-Disabled people.
What does disability look like?
The image we have of disability is often of a wheelchair-user.
Wheelchair-users are the poster people of disability. That’s the logo – an illustration of a white wheelchair-using stick person on a blue background.
But disability is much bigger than this. It covers a whole host of impairments and chronic health conditions. Many older people are Disabled. People with diseases such as cancer are also often Disabled.
When we are Disabled, we talk about impairments in quite wide groups. Physical impairments, learning disabilities, sensory disabilities such as visual impairment or hearing impairment, and Neurodiversity, such as autism, ADHD or any of the Dys- conditions such as dyslexia or dyspraxia.
We don’t always think kindly about just how wide a category disability is.
Have you ever wanted to challenge somebody waltzing into an accessible toilet, totally unaware that there is a stoma bag under their clothes? Or have you ever looked at a misbehaving child and blamed the parents, rather than understanding that perhaps the child is neurodiverse (or ‘neurospicy’ as one neurospicy friend rather wonderfully has it) and overwhelmed by their environment?
Disabilities may be visible, or hidden. They may be obvious, or not at all obvious.
A whopping fifth of the population is Disabled. That’s 14 million people.
We are the biggest minority. And quite a lot of the time, the most overlooked in terms of our needs.
An important thing to remember is that if you are not Disabled yet, you are pre-Disabled. If you don’t die young and healthy, it’s highly likely that you will become Disabled at some point in life. Taking an interest in access, and in the social model of disability, will directly benefit you.
The Equality Act
Asking for equity of access isn’t just a nice thing, it’s a legal thing. In 2010, the Equality Act superseded the Disability Discrimination Act, which had been in place for 15 years, and in essence it says that businesses, service providers, and education providers must make “reasonable adjustments” for Disabled people.
As the Marlowe’s pantomime cast would say: “It’s the LAAWWW!”
How to speak about disability
Not everyone will agree on everything but there is general agreement on some basic guidelines.
Learn more at gov.uk
Local access guide
Euan's Guide is a national database written by and for Disabled people. We would encourage people when they are out and about to take notes about the places they visit in the city, and add them to Euan’s place. We are not going to start an access database, as this one does the job very well.
Click to go to Euan's Guide
Join or contact us
Canterbury Access Group meets in person every three months. If you would like to tell us about any access issues you have locally or if you would like to join us, email
Canterburyaccessgroup@gmail.com
Newsletter
Sign up for our newsletter, which we will send out on an ad hoc basis to let you know about our work and meetings.
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You can unsubscribe at any time by contacting us on Canterburyaccessgroup@gmail.com with REMOVE in the subject line.
The social model of disability
There are different ways of looking at disability. Traditionally, Disabled people have been seen in need of fixing. Many people have the view that if only our bodies would work, we could get around a bit better. We call this the medical model of disability.
There is a better way of looking at disability. It’s not our bodies that are the problem. It is the lack of adaptations in the built environment, and in attitudes towards us, that actively disable us. If the stuff around us is changed so that everybody can use it, we can have a lot more access and a lot more equality. We call this way of looking at things the social model of disability.
A very obvious example would be to look at a wheelchair-user trying to access a building with steps. It’s not the fact that the person uses a wheelchair that is the problem, but that there is no ramp or lift. Change the stairs for a ramp or lift and everybody can access the building.
The social model of disability applies to physical adaptations, but also to attitudes and ways of thinking.
An easy way of making things easier for Disabled people isn’t to assume what we need. We all have different needs. A good way of finding out what we need is to simply ask, and then try your best to take action.