Access all Areas

Access all areas
Anton McNulty
Since a car accident in 1981 left him paralysed from the waist down, Tom Chambers has let his life campaigning for the rights of disabled people. While there has been welcome changes a lot more can be done.
IF there’s one phrase that makes Tom Chambers want to pull his hair out, it is; ‘state of the art’. It is used to describe every facility in new developments the length and breadth of the country and is frequently linked with disabled facilities.
For over twenty years, Newport man Tom Chambers has crusaded for the considerations of wheelchair bound people to be taken into account to help make everyday tasks more accessible. Every day, people restricted to wheelchairs face hardships and difficulties when dealing with basic daily tasks. Whether it be posting a letter, going to the shops or crossing a street, there are always obstacles and barriers in their way.
Under the Barcelona Declaration of 1995, local authorities are obliged to promote disability awareness and ensure the rights of disabled people, and establish structures of ongoing consultation between people with disabilities and their representatives. While in theory this is to be welcomed, according to Tom in practice there is little consultation and many of the so-called ‘state of the art’ disabled facilities are flawed. Only last week, he was at a function in a new hotel in Mayo and was left in an embarrassing situation when the disabled toilets were too small for the door to be closed behind him, leaving him without any privacy.
Last year, in his home town of Newport, a project costing Û100,000 was spent on disability access on the streets. It was described as a state of the art ramp and unique to the county in facilitating the disabled. He feels it was anything but state of the art and is not suitable for wheelchairs. He told the council it would not work but they chose to take the word of their engineers, rather than consult the intended service user something which Tom feels is the core to the problem.
“When I heard it was state of the art, I felt like pulling the hair out of my head,” explained Tom. “To describe it as unique to the country in facilitating the disabled is an awful insult to people with disabilities. The chap who was put in charge was a horticulturist for Mayo County Council and he got this job and was acting as engineer, planner and builder. I said to him that the plans were not right, but he went to the engineers who said it complied with the building regulations. Under the building regulations for steep ramps, they are obliged to bring hand rails down twelve inches past the wall, these ones are stopped about twelve inches short. The Û100,000 was supposed to improve the facilities and it has not so far. Even women with prams are trying to use it and they see how inaccessible it can be. But it is things like that that keeps me going.”
There is no doubt in Tom’s mind that a lot of the problems lie with the Town and County Councils and the poor planning they put into dealing with disabled facilities. If he complains he feels he is pushed from pillar to post and believes they are not taking the issue seriously. He explained that an action group was set up Mayo Co. Council, called ‘Access for All’ and the committee did not have one disabled person on it. “I have been involved in this for twenty years and working on it everyday and still do not know everything, so how do these people know everything,” he said angrily.
While the money is being spent, much of it is wasted on inadequate planning and poor construction. What may look like a good job may not suit the demands of a wheelchair user and what Tom would like to see is a designated team to carry out theses jobs. He believes that from talking to other disability campaigners, there will be people running in elections very soon unless the procedures for disability accessibility is improved.
“The Council say we are doing good work and they are spending so much money on improvements. I think the money’s wasted. They are within sitting around asking how this or that street is? If a street needs to be done they’ll send a few men down Monday morning and they send down the men and they are not trained. If they are serious about improving access on the streets they really want to get a specific team in the town and train them in disability issues. Currently they go out and do the work to the best of their knowledge but nobody actually tells them what to do. The work is done and is not half done. They don’t ask us about it until after it is done and who is the true expert but the person who will be using it.”
While new buildings are obliged to facilitate for wheelchair accessibility, a number of houses and buildings are complying to this. However, a new bill called the Building Control Bill 2005 is being passed through the Oireachtas which complies all buildings to be legally bound to obtain a Disability Access Certificate. Tom believes this is a positive step forward in forcing developers not to cut corners when dealing with disability access.
Toms life changed utterly in March 1981, when after returning to Dublin from Drogheda he was involved in a car accident which broke his spinal cord and left him paralysed from the waist down. He was 35 years old and brought to the spinal unit of Dœn Laoghaire hospital. While he was never told he would never walk again, he knew after the first few weeks it did not look good. Being confined to a wheelchair may be the death nail for some people but it never put Tom down. He felt lucky to have travelled around England and Europe, and there were people in hospital with worse injuries than he had. He remembers a young rugby player called Gus Barrett who was only 20 years old and could not even move his hand. However, no matter how accepting he was of his fate, he admitted being afraid of going home after nine months in hospital.
“I was nine months in the hospital and if anything went wrong there was a nurse there to do something for you. I was afraid to come out, tough and all as you feel, I was afraid of hitting things. I felt safe inside and I never thought of coming out. They prepare you to get out but they don’t prepare you for being out there. I thought everything would go wrong when I went out,” he explained.
After being released he came back to Newport and was looked after by his brother and sister, but felt like a burden on them. It was not until he got a car that he felt he retrieved some semblance of independence. However, he soon realised that he was not totally independent and had to plan his every move around the lack of wheelchair accessibility. It was not until ten years after the accident while recovering from a hip injury that he realised there should be more done for wheelchair users.
“I was confined to bed at the time and I thought to myself how much Newport had improved in the last ten years since the accident. It took off from then because I realised nothing had been done about it. I started lobbying further afield then and I felt I could be doing a bit. I set up a disability group and wrote to the papers. Now I get lots of people ringing me up asking if I could have a look at a few things to make them more accessible and I know then one is getting somewhere,” he revealed.
A keen footballer in his younger days, he captained Mulranny to the 1964 minor league title, something he will never forget. He does not attend many football matches because of the terrible facilities and was critical of McHale Park in Castlebar and even Croke Park. Following the success of the Special Olympics in 2003, there was great hope the awareness of disability would be raised by the ordinary person. While there was an initial upsurge in interest, Tom feels that momentum was never continued.
“People are saying it is changing attitudes, there was great talk and great ideas when the Special Olympics was here but it seems to be drifting away. I am disappointed because I thought it would change.When some members of the Luxembourg team were staying in Newport and there was one wheelchair athlete who had to stay with me because there was nowhere to stay in Newport. I don’t know what would have happened if I did not have a spare bed. I thought things like that would open their eyes but it did not.”
Christopher Reeve, who died in 2004, spent million of dollars on research in the hope of walking again. Tom believes that while he may never walk again he hopes that in the future they will eventually get a cure but until then he will continue to campaign for the rights of disabled people.