The DDA is almost 30, The Equality Act is almost 15
I became a wheelchair user in 2018
I am #DisabledByTheRailway
Disabled By The Railway
I'm Sam Jennings and I am #DisabledByTheRailway
I became a wheelchair user in 2018 when I had a floristry business in Norbury train station in south London.
In a previous career in licensed retail I helped train staff in the Equality act, long before it came into law into 2010 so I (rather naively) assumed that everything would be fine.
Everything was not fine, hoo boy it was not fine.
In the first 18 months of becoming a wheelchair user I endured over THIRTY assistance fails with Southern Rail alone!
I engaged in good faith but very little changed at all -we even had a meeting at The House of Lords.
When I realised I was being given the same apologies, invites to engage, and excuses over and over again, I finally lost patience and found a very good Equality Solicitor who has changed my life and who I am still working with to this day to challenge this ongoing unlawful disability discrimination.
I have been very vocal on Twitter about so much of this journey, and now I have decided to set up this resource to help other disabled people learn from some of the mistakes I've made along the way and feel empowered to assert their own legal rights.
Around The World In 80 Claims
We shouldn't be enduring this discrimination so many years / decades after laws came in to protect us.
I also know that the settlement (which is just the very last bit of often long legal negotiations) is to 'make it right' so I like to use some of that compensation to start working through my bucket list now while, with the right adjustments, I can still travel fairly independently.
I'd absolutely encourage anyone who's had a settlement to do something epic to try & create a more positive memory away from the trauma of the incident/s that resulted in the legal action being necessary.
Around the world in 80 claims is a space where people are invited to share stories of what they did - I'm particularly fond of sending a postcard to my discriminator letting them know where I've been & reminding them that staff training / a ramp /adjustments would have been cheaper for them. If big businesses and organisations don't want to invest in access then I urge disabled people to assert their legal rights & join us to see if we can collectively work our way #AroundTheWorldIn80Claims
FAQs
I often get tagged on Twitter when people share access fails / refusals (not just for transport!) and I am very happy to answer questions when I know the answer or to signpost people when I don't know the answer. A lot of the questions can be repetitive which is fine, of course, but I do struggle with my own energy levels a lot so I've decided to write up some detailed responses to the most common questions (with links to other sites / resources where appropriate) as a web page is going to allow a lot more detail than a twitter thread that can get lost.