Access Champion

  Influencing Access.  I feel it's important to highlight how using your voice can have positive change. Many may ignore, but some will listen and they deserve praise.   When I was an Access Champion for the disability charity, Leonard Cheshire, I'd assess access into buildings and write to the company with my feedback. I really enjoyed it as I feel I made a real difference.      Some I remember are:  The Oxfam shop on Bold Street, Liverpool.  I noticed the entrance in was up a diagonal angled step, making it awkward for a wheelchair user to get in. I suggested that they put in a bell so that those with mobility issues can use to call for assistance... and they did! However, after vandals kept knocking the bells off, it seems this accessibility feature is not viable and I have been asked to look into other ideas. It's great that Oxfam want to become more accessible in their shops! I founded a very small charity, and when we had a meeting at Cadbury World (great access here)

Rejection hurts, whether it's from a person, a health treatment not working or not achieving a goal.  In August 2021, I applied for a role surveying disabled access. The company scopes out and is targeted towards disabled people. The website is good to use, the video promoting the role is repetitive in the phrasing, but is very positive, saying how they actively seek out disabled people.   I made enquiries and filled out the application form.   I waited with excitement to hear back, and waited.  I am not a patient woman, so after a few weeks, I asked if they had received my application.   I was told, with such flat enthusiasm, that they'd have a look in a week or so and be in touch.      Over a month passed and still no news. Perhaps I should've taken the modern-day hint, no news is bad news.   I didn't.  I enquired.  The woman said they hired those who were 'highly influential', but I can contact her when I am 'more established' on social media?! I find

Fantastically Great Women at the Liverpool Playhouse Theatre.   I was so excited to hear about this production, but when I made enquiries about the audio description, I was told there was none. Appalled, I wrote to the producer to ask why a show about   women's inequality is happy to discriminate against blind/visually impaired people. I received   an email to say that they had arranged for an audio describer to narrate one of the shows!   Delighted, I shared this across social media to the blind/visually impaired local groups.  Fantastically great women followed Jade, an 11 year old girl who was on a school trip to a museum. Her class leave without her! How could they forget her? Feeling alone and scared as the tannoy announced the museum will close soon, Jade sneaks into the back, which is out of bounds.  There are mannequins of Amelia Earhart, the first female pilot, Jane Austen, who refused to write under a man's name, Marie Curie, whose radiotherapy cancer treatment is sti