♫...Come and take a swim with me...♫

During our recent spurt of summer, having spent 3 days splayed helplessly on the sofa, I decided I wanted to go for a swim in the open air to cool down a bit. Being probably the only lesbian in London to have never been for a swim in the ladies' pond on Hampstead Heath I decided that it would be the perfect place to cool off.

Obviously my next step was too Google "Kenwood ladies' pond disabled access". I got nothing. Zip. Zero. Nada. The best result was a list of all the pools in Camden: It had details of the pond on the same page as the details for Holborn Oasis and the Oasis blurb mentioned the access at that pool.

So I was still none the wiser about access at Kenwood. Next I did a Google image search for the pond to see if I could see what the access was like. I could see it had a deck with ladders into/out of the water. I can't do ladders. I could see I'd be able to get in OK - you've got gravity on your side - but I didn't really fancy my chances of getting out again; the freeboard was just too great.

Still being hot and still wanting to cool down I decided to just go there and have a look at what the access was: Maybe the freeboard wasn't as big as it looked in the pictures and I could manage? What if the ladder was at an angle so I could shuffle up the steps rather than an unmanageable vertical ladder?

After looking at this map I decided the most sensible place to park my car would be on Millfield Lane in Highgate.

Foolishly I assumed there would be maps of the heath on signs around the place that I could use to then find the way from the car to the pond. Yes, I know I've lived in north London for 9 years, but I don't know the heath like the back of my hand. I never go there. Manual wheelchairs and steep hills aren't a fun combination. But I do drive past the heath all the time so I've noticed the signs at all the entrances and assumed most of them had maps on them. I assumed wrong.

"Never mind," I thought. "Google 'Hampstead Heath map' on your phone."

No signal up there. I'd recommend people go up there with the map pre-loaded on their phone for reference. If you're on Orange anyway.

So I went wandering. Despite the abysmal gravel paths and hills so step I genuinely didn't know if I could make it to the top: I actually enjoyed myself. It was beautiful wandering around in all the sunshine.

I did eventually find the ladies' pond after 2 hours of meandering. At 8:15pm. It closed at 8:30. By the time I'd pushed the last few metres over horrific paving and gotten changed I would've literally had no more than 60 seconds in the water. But instead of just going back to my car I did go all the way to the pond to scope out access for future reference so it wasn't a completely wasted journey.

Having spent about an hour scrutinising photos to try and work out whether or not I could manage to get out of the water I couldn't believe the first thing I saw when I rounded the corner to see the deck: A hoist.

Making things physically accessible is massively important. But something can never be truly accessible unless you provide information about access. I'd wager most disabled women have never considered going for a dip there because there's no access information published on the web so they assumed there were no adjustments.

That's why I'm writing this post. Not because it's an interesting topic that I think will engage readers, nor because I'm seeking catharsis through writing out the thoughts in my head. This post is simply about information for the next woman who Googles "Kenwood ladies' pond disabled access".

Of course, access isn't just about getting into and out of the water. You have to start with getting to the pond. As you can see on this map, there's only one path you can take to get to the ladies' pond (14). Whether you're coming from the north or south you have to take the path I've painted pink:

The quality of the paving is truly abysmal:

They're just two rather arbitrary shots taken along the path. I kept getting people coming up behind me asking if I needed help. The terrain is so uneven that you couldn't accept help if you wanted to because within seconds your front wheels would catch on something sticking up, the person would continue pushing forwards, and you would get tipped out of your chair and onto the floor; chin first. You just have to make your own way very slowly and carefully.

Should you make it to the pond without ending up in an ambulance the access improves greatly. As you can see in the photo of the hoist: The area around the pond itself is concrete which is perfectly easy to push across. There's an accessible toilet, but unfortunately there's nothing to sit on in there to get changed. There is seating outside for getting changed, but I would imagine that for people needing to remove catheter bags and so on while getting changed that that then poses the problem that there's also no toilet by the seating!

I went back the day after my exploratory mission and this time actually got to swim. Being an unheated pond it's not suitable for people whose conditions are exacerbated by coldness. You can check the water temperature before you leave the house on the City of London website. It was a boiling hot day and people with osteogenesis imperfecta are prone to overheating. So for me getting into a pond that was 18°C was lovely.

There's no water shallow enough to stand in so don't do what I foolishly did and wait until you're in the water before putting your hat and goggles on. I ended up jumping back onto the hoist seat for a sec to free up my hands for putting them on.

Something else I didn't consider with not being an open water swimmer was goggle fog. In a pool modern goggles don't fog too badly. But in a pond there's a difference of about 20°C between the temperature of your face and the temperature of the water. Not having any anti-fog stuff meant that I had to stop every few strokes to de-mist because I couldn't see where I was going. Lesson learned for next time.

Goggle fog did give me the impression that it's not an overly accessible experience for people with visual impairments. Leaves and other pondy scum stuff loiters around the edge so you want to avoid that. You need to dodge buoys and at one point I had to give way to a couple of ducks. I can imagine that finding yourself fighting with an angry duck you didn't see coming isn't fun. Obviously being a pond rather than a pool there are no high contrast markings on the bottom to guide. Apparently they do sometimes have a lane rope out that you can swim along, but the banks of the pond don't look that easy for a tapper to stand on. And as I said before: You probably don't want to be getting too close to the edge unless you want to be picking pond weeds out of your ears.

Being a pond rather than a pool; the water is full of stuff. You find yourself swimming with ducks and fish, which means that also in there is duck poop and fish poop. While you're treading water to de-fog your goggles you'll get weedy things wrapped around your ankle. So it's quite remarkable that upon getting out of the water you feel cleaner than you do when you get out of a swimming pool. And it's not just a matter of perception: Cleansing my face and then looking at the cotton wool I noticed that less dirt came away than when cleansing my face after a swim in a chlorinated pool.

As someone that reacts badly to chlorine being able to swim in a body of water that isn't full of bleach was a real plus. I can swim in a pool once a week at most or the chlorine is just too much for my knackered sinuses. It was lovely to be able to swim without having to suffer streaming eyes and nose afterwards.

Given how not gross I felt I decided to wait until I got home before having a shower rather than having to fuss with figuring out a plan for how to manage potentially inaccessible showers. Apparently they have both indoor and outdoor showers but there's a step up to the indoor ones. I didn't find out whether or not they have a shower chair to sit on to use the outdoor showers: Obviously you can't sit in your wheelchair in the shower.

Will I go back again? Almost certainly. Obviously I'm not batshit enough to be swimming in there in January (it's open 365 days a year) but it was an enjoyable way to cool down on a hot day. I just hope the Corporation of London tarmac that bloody path before I get tipped out of my wheelchair, land on my chin and break my face.

How I spent March 26th

Based on the TUC's access info I'd planned to meet a bunch of other WtBers in Savoy Street for 11am. This was supposed to be the gathering point for disabled people to have a "safe space" at the front of the march. I have brittle bones and I was with 2 people whose joints dislocate easily so the notion of a "safe" space where we wouldn't get smacked around was pretty important for us to protest, you know, safely.

Apparently no-one hit the TUC with a clue stick. The gathering point in Savoy Street wasn't actually at the front of the march. That would've been much too sensible. They had us gather in Savoy Street and then walk through the crowd to get to the front of the march:

The pink cross on the map shows where we gathered and the turquoise line shows how far we had to walk through a sea of people to get to that "safety". Moving through large crowds as a wheelchair user is not easy at the best of times. You're at arse height to everyone else and people don't tend to look down when they move around so they walk into you, trip over you and generally leave you feeling pretty bruised. Add banners, flags and other things that feel like weapons when people hit you with them and it's even worse.

So that the TUC had us gather some distance away and then walk through the crowd where we got a bit battered was a serious common sense fail. Between the lack of logic and getting smacked around I started off the march really quite pissed off.

This was us gathering in Savoy Street looking cheerful prior to our adventure through the crowd:

This was my view of people's backs as we were making our way through the crowd:

And it's worth noting that I took this photo at a point while walking through the crowd when I had enough room around me to actually do so! I spent a lot of the time using my arms to protect my face from people's backpacks and such.

Eventually we did make it to the "special" spot:

Jack as taken by his wife Emsy

Thankfully once we'd made it through the crowd and the march set off there were no more such access fail dramas. As a result I began to really enjoy myself. The following 3 photos were taken by Emsy during the march:

>

We made it into Hyde Park at about 1pm (after what seemed like quite a long human traffic jam at Hyde Park Corner). Most of us quickly nipped to the loo and then headed off to Soho Square for the UK Uncut comedy at 2. I didn't want to stick around in Hyde Park for the rally mainly because Mr "I'm in favour of cutting disability benefits" Miliband was speaking. I feared my anger at him would cause me to regress a few evolutionary steps and start flinging faeces.

I've always been disabled, but until about 5 years ago I was perfectly "healthy"; I was free from illness. For many people there's a massive overlap between "illness" and "impairment", but there's also some differences too. So I've always had a rubbish skeleton but before I acquired a plethora of illnesses unrelated to my mobility impairment I used to do that working-for-a-living thing.

I used to be a stand-up comic. Yes, I'm aware of the irony of a wheelchair-using stand-up.

On Friday evening while I was in the supermarket shopping for more T-shirts to iron the WtB logo onto a thought occurred to me: "It's comedy against the cuts. I'm doing all this stuff about the cuts to disability benefits and I have a background in comedy; I should be speaking." So I emailed the organisers and asked if I could do a short set. The reply I got back was "the line up's pretty full, but we'll try and fit you in." But in the end (and with a little help from the lovely Johann) I ended up on the bill.

This photo by Chris Coltrane who compered the gig shows what the crowd looked like from where the acts were (and makes me happy that I ironed the WtB logo onto the back of my T-shirt):

That's Josie Long performing. She opened the show. The crowd had gotten much, much, bigger by the time I went on. This CiF piece estimates there were nearly 1000 people watching the show. I wouldn't have thought there were quite that many, but there were certainly a couple of hundred.

Against all the odds I had a brilliant gig. Look, people were smiling and laughing!

Photo by Noa Bodner

If you look you can even see Mark Thomas laughing along in that pic. I'm actually quite proud of that as he is, basically, the industry standard to which all political comedy gets compared.

I say "against all the odds" because by rights I really should have died on my arse. It's 3 and a half years since I last gigged due to becoming too ill to carry on with the comedy thang. Usually if you take a break from comedy for 3 and a half weeks you come back to find your timing's a little off and your rhythm's a bit out. And I wasn't doing tried and tested material, I was doing stuff that I'd written 12 hours earlier because I only had the idea to ask to go on about 18 hours before I ended up on "stage". I shouldn't have been "in shape" enough to deal with a heckler and turn around a joke that was a bit of a dud. OK, the heckler was very nice and friendly but it's still an interruption to your rhythm and you need to regain control and come out on top with a laugh.

Somehow it was all OK. Sure, it wasn't my best gig ever but given everything going against me it went so much better than I could ever possibly have dreamed of.

In the past I used to mix up jokes about disability issues and other stuff because if I'd only talked about disability I'd never have been able to hold the attention of a non-disabled audience. But given that Saturday was such a political gig and the reason I'd asked to speak was to talk about benefits I did a set solely about cuts to disability benefits. The only reaction I was really expecting was some polite applause when I finished from people thinking "aw, wasn't that nice the disabled woman telling us about benefits." I wasn't expecting such a warm response and to come off stage to have all my friends hug me at once. It was like being mauled by an octopus, but in a nice way.

I've always thought that comedy had a wonderful capacity for education, another reason I really wanted to speak. So I was chuffed to bits when I got home to read this in The Guardian's Live Blog about the day:

I just spoke to two teenagers aged 17 and 19 who have come from the comedy show in Soho Square, and they said that what they heard there made them think more than anything they have ever learnt at school. It's their first demonstration and when I asked why they came they said they realised that the demonstration is about more than just the UK.

They can understand the connection between the shops and the banks that people are targetting and the global situation that is effecting everyone. They've heard Mark Thomas and a disabled comedian and Johann Hari speak. For these teenagers the protest is absolutely opening their minds to a much wider picture.

Noa, who snapped that pic of me in action, said:

you rocked it woman, it was FUNNY and also very disturbing to learn a few of the stories you shared. many thanks and please keep healthy and get back on stage where you belong!

I'm absolutely thrilled that I opened some people's eyes to what's going on for disabled people in the UK. There's a couple of extracts from my set in the Laugh Out London podcast.

I left Soho Square on such an adrenaline high. I'd taken a huge gamble in asking to do a set but it absolutely paid off. I would have skipped home if I could, you know, skip.

Then came the sadness. I love doing stand up so much. It's such an amazing feeling when you've got hundreds of people laughing at jokes you wrote, and Saturday was a reminder of just how thrilling it is. It's so painful that I'm not well enough to perform any more. I have good days and bad, Saturday was obviously a good day. But the sheer frequency of the bad days means that I can't book gigs more than 14 hours in advance because I can never guarantee that I'll be well enough to show up. It doesn't matter if you have a legitimate reason for not showing up to a gig, if you let a promoter down they're not going to book you again and will very possibly bad-mouth you to other promoters. I have this thing that I love doing, and Saturday reminded me that I'm actually reasonably good at it, but my health prevents me from pursuing it. And the government and tabloids really think I'd rather be stuck at home claiming benefits than out following my dreams?

The other element of sadness on Saturday night came from watching BBC News attributing the Black Bloc protesters smashing things up to UK Uncut. UK Uncut are a group of peaceful protesters who'd given me this wonderfully enjoyable afternoon of comedy in a park. And here these lovely people were being falsely accused of violence and vandalism. It was deeply disappointing.

Despite the day starting with access fail and ending in sadness I don't think I'll ever forget that chunk of a few hours in the middle where I had the best time I've had in years.

Cross-posted at Where's the Benefit?

BADD 10: Discrimination by ignorance and the myth of the DDA

"But I thought everywhere was accessible now."

How I loathe that sentence. It usually follows my asking "so why did you hire somewhere inaccessible for your event? Because now I can't come."

For example, I've just spent the last 3 days at a film festival/conference tied to my course (and is why my BADD post is a day late). I arrived on Thursday, picked up my ticket and was told by cinema staff "it's in screen 2, which is not accessible."

Joy.

And, of course, the "but I thought..." line swiftly followed from the director of the event who'd hired the venue.

At the end of last year I joined a masters swimming team in my vague attempt to be slightly fitter/healthier. Recently the pool has had some lane closures due to building work and a member of the committee wanted to move the session I usually go to to a different pool until the building work had ended.

"Can you please not, cos, you know, I don't wanna be excluded and I hear the other pool is not accessible."

"But I thought..."

Lots of people started boo-hooing when The Astoria got demolished. Me? I was thrilled because never again will I miss seeing a band because they had their one London date in that inaccessible venue. When I told people why I was so pleased it had been demolished (and demolished to make way for an accessible train/tube station no less!) I frequently heard "But I thought..." I'm sure even most bands playing there didn't realise all the fans that were being excluded because of "but I thought..."

(I'm sure Jim Davidson would've loved playing there though.)

I'm a big fan of the DDA. Yeah, sure, it's got so many holes it's kinda like a sieve. But it wasn't around for the first half of my life and in the last 15 years since it was written I've noticed that the world has become much more accessible and less cruel.

But it does have its sieve-like qualities which means that the world isn't as accessible as it should be. There's not really any excuse for a major west end cinema that's part of a huge national chain to not have full access. But the holey law means they get away with it.

Then the myth that DDA works makes the problem worse. People book venues in good faith assuming they're accessible. The venues then think "we don't need to improve access because the money's still rolling in." And I'm the one that loses out.

I don't know how we go about pointing out to the world en masse that they're mythtaken (thanks Buffy!): The world is not accessible so when booking a venue you need to check access. But that's one I'll have to tackle another day. Now I'm going to put heat pads on my painy ankle and shoulder from hauling myself up a flight of stairs repeatedly for the last 3 days.

Gadgets

Just for a change, I am ill. I was going to do all sorts of constructive things today, but between pain and painkillers I have the attention span of a gnat (hat tip to Sheldon for the gnat quote). So I'm going to rant. Because that comes naturally and requires little concentration. As you've probably already gathered if this isn't the first post here you've read.

iWant an iPhone. I really, really, want an iPhone. The phones themselves aren't all that special; but they've captured the imagination of every software developer so there's literally an app for everything. Want do do your shopping on the move? There's an app for that. Watching a film and you want to know where you've seen that actor before? There's an app for that. Trouble sleeping at night? There's an app for that. Trying to find a laptop-friendly café? There's an app for that.

I've got an iPod Touch which is basically like an iPhone without functioning as a phone. So you can send Email using it as long as you've got a WiFi connection, you can surf the web on it as long as you've got a WiFi connection, you can Tweet on it as long as you've got a WiFi connection... Basically it's a useful little gadget until you take it out of the house and then it only functions as an mp3/mp4 player. But that's OK, because I only needed it as an mp3/mp4 player. Having an iPod Touch has given me an insight into whether or not the iPhone would be accessible to me: And the answer is a great big no.

It's a great little gadget for playing music on, browsing the web on and checking my Facebook notifications on. My access problem with it comes as soon as I start to type: It's excruciatingly painful. Typing on a touchscreen means you have to keep all your other digits held back well away from the screen otherwise they'll brush against it and type something random. And I really need to rest my fingers on my phone's keyboard like you do when proper touch typing. Having to keep my digits curled up away from the screen makes my RSI-addled arms scream "pain! Pain! PAIN!"

I know I'm not the only person to have access problems with the iPhone, check out Geoff Adams-Spink's review.

And I thought the days of inaccessible phones died along with those stupid pokey pen things ("stylus" I believe was the technical term). I can't grip an actual pen, so why on earth would a small poking device be any easier to hold?

ATMac's article about Dragon's dictation software for iPhone/iPod makes it look slightly more manageable, but a big problem with speech-to-text software is background noise. I use Dragon's NaturallySpeaking on my PC and my upstairs neighbour's TV interferes with it, so I can't imagine that dictating a text message in a noisy pub is going to work. At all.

I'm not anti-touchscreen. I think they're ace. Wanting to click a link and just being able to poke it is a brilliant thing. I just can't type on a virtual keyboard because of "ow". Which is where Google's G1 comes in. It has both a touchscreen and a slide out QWERTY keyboard. I've had a play with Lilwatchergirl's G1 and it seems to be a piece of genius. So why haven't I got one of them? Because they're only available on T-mobile and their network coverage is rubbish. Virgin Mobile use T-mobile's network and I know from trying to use my Virgin mobile broadband dongle that you basically can't get a T-mobile signal outside of London.

So I'm stuck with a rather crappy BlackBerry Curve 8520. I call it "crappy" because in many ways it's worse than its predecessor, the 8310. The 8310's camera had a flash, the 8520's does not; so you can't take photos indoors. The 8310 had GPS, the 8520 does not. And the 2D limited palette icons on the 8520 look miserable compared to the 3D multicolour picture icons on the 8310. So why didn't I return my 8520 at the end of my 14 day evaluation period and keep on using my 8310? 2 reasons: 1) The 8520 has WiFi so I can get decent speed internet on it indoors. 2) It has a web browser that works adequately, the one on the 8310 was utterly useless.

While the iPhone has an app for everything, the BlackBerry has very few apps, and most of them are rubbish:

The App World store has just about 2,000 apps available for download, compared to the iPhone App Store’s 90,000 apps or Android’s 12,000.

From http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/11/blackberry-innovative-edge/

In my experience Tweetie for iPhone is the best way to access Twitter. It's wonderful. It makes ÜberTwitter look pretty pants in comparison (but I will admit that ÜberTwitter has got a lot better lately). The Facebook app for BlackBerry has, again, gotten better recently; but it's still rubbish compared to Facebook for iPhone and I usually end up accessing Facebook on my phone via http://m.facebook.com. Absolute Radio have had an iPhone app out for ages. I got all excited a couple of weeks ago when I found out that they'd finally released their long promised BlackBerry app, only to discover that it's only for 3 models and the 8520 isn't one of them. And Safari on the iPhone makes BlackBerry's built in browser look like it belongs in the 1990s.

After all this ranting, what would make me happy? Simple: If Apple made an iPhone with a slide out QWERTY keyboard like the G1 phone. If they did bring out such a thing I'd sell a kidney to be able to afford one on the day of release. As a consolation prize I'd be satisfied if BlackBerry joined the twenteens.