Disabled People Face Discrimination On Public Transport, Finds Survey
A poll found that nearly half of people with disabilities suffer discrimination on buses and trains by passengers who object to giving up seats or being inconvenienced.
Alice Maynard, chairman of the disability charity Scope, said in some cases the abuse was so severe that victims felt unable to leave their homes.
Miss Maynard, herself a wheelchair user, said she regularly faces verbal attacks from able-bodied passengers while boarding trains.
She said she and her personal assistant are sworn at on a weekly basis by commuters angered by having to vacate seats reserved for disabled passengers.
Miss Maynard said: “I think it is getting worse. It happens once or twice a week — aggression, swearing.
“I think it is increasing because of the pressures on people: the overcrowding on trains and the general economic climate.
“If I reminded myself about everything that has been said, I would shut myself inside.”
A Scope survey revealed that 47 per cent of disabled people faced some form of discrimination while travelling on public transport. Of these, 15 per cent said they faced “high-level” abuse.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission claims that public transport is one of the “hot spots for violence and harassment targeted at disabled people”.
It will set out the scale of the discrimination in a report to be published this autumn.
Same Difference 
It’s not just in London, it’s not just on public transport – I am regularly shoved, pushed, tripped, queue-jumped and tutted at by some of the rudest ignorant people on the planet – expected to change my course of direction and/or speed when it’s obviously easier for a swiftly-moving able-bodied person to do so – much easier than it is for a snail-like, totally knackered and hideously sore girl with a walking stick – someone who loses momentum quickly and takes a while to get going again from a stop!
Why should I have to use a shopmobility scooter I can’t control, or get a wheelchair with which I can access far fewer places????
Never mind the fact I’m in a poky first floor flat with no lift, having no where to store such equipment………….
My disabled family members (and our family who are our carers) continually endure these frustrations.
It is in fact worse when the three of us disabled are out together; I’ve often lost it – shouted at people for not watching where they’re going, skittling my Mum over when she’s been on foot and in a scooter one time, some cowbag flung her handbag over her shoulder, smashed my Mum in the side of the head and without a second look or so much as a by-your-leave she sauntered off!
That darstardly thing of not being at eye level with the homo-erectus.
I shouted after her “how would you like me to whack YOUR MUM in the head with MY HANDBAG???!!”
She shrugged her shoulder and walked off – I was livid and avoided town, again, for over a month that time.
It’s a nightmare with the scooters when people walking in front stop suddenly, without moving to the side, to talk to people they see that they know – the scooter does not stop directly after releasing the paddle and the amount of people Mum’s caught on the back of the leg is too numerous and goes back too long ago for me to recount! They have a go at my Mum for what I don’t know – I’ve screamed at people before – “If you were driving you wouldn’t stop suddenly without looking in your rear-view, why does that not apply to pedestrians??????” No-one yet has had an answer for that!
I MUST TAKE THIS OPPORTUNITY HOWEVER TO SAY THANK YOU;
TO ALL THE STRANGERS THAT EVER CARED ENOUGH
TO STOP AND HOLD A DOOR OPEN FOR ME
TO LET ME PASS
TO EXCHANGE A FRIENDLY WORD AND OFFER HELP
YOU ARE FEW BUT YOU ARE VERY MUCH APPRECIATED AND I SEND YOU LOVE AND HAPPINESS!
The only way the IGNORANT, RUDE and (ungrateful of the fact they’re) able-bodied people I am talking about will appreciate what we and our families have to deal with on a daily basis, would be if they end up disabled themselves – as I’ve said before, it would be un-Christian of me to wish that, but they make it really hard somedays to be a GOOD Christian!!!!!!!!!
Hmmffffhhh…………….
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