The Dundonian wrote:
If that's the case then what's the point of the legislation?
The legislation was a do-gooder's charter which no politician wanted to vote against. It was ill-concieved and took no account of the practical difficulties involved in meeting the rights it conferred.
The Dundonian wrote:
If a disabled person can't get into a bus, say, then you just say, 'tough, they're being treated equally to able-bodied people'?
I do not. They clearly aren't being treated the same way.
The law is an ass in so much as it has given disabled people the expectation that they can do anything an able bodied person can do, regardless of the difficulties and cost involved. No matter what changes are made, there will always be someone who can't manage to get on this bus by themselves and others who cant get on it at all. This is the politicians' mess and it's theirs to sort out.
See my previous answer as well.
A wheelchair bound quadriplegic will never manage the pole vault, regardless of what the law says.
The Dundonian wrote:
The way I see it is this. You turn up at a pub for someone, who is taking the Mick and don't appear for twenty minutes. You put the meter on long before that.
That's equality of treatment, but if the person turns out to be disabled and you spend five minutes loading their wheelchair then you shouldn't charge for the additional five minutes of your time.
Of course, it would be difficult to quantify the time spent loading the chair and thus subtracting it from the meter, but in practice it's normally the case that the hire would be more immediate, in which case the disadvantage to the wheelchair user is quantified simply by not activating the meter until they're loaded.
That is your choice and it is yours to make. It's a different thing to be told that you
must work for free
The Dundonian wrote:
I don't really get your point about the wheelchair ramp into a shop, but in essence my point was that it's costing the shop more to provide it, just like it's costing a cab driver more to load a wheelchair, but it seems unlikely that a shop could charge a disabled person more to use the ramp to offset the additional cost to the shop, ditto taxi drivers.
No, you don't get it at all, do you?
The shop providing the ramp is like the taxi driver providing a WAV. The rules say that this covers their obligation under the law. The meter rate for a WAV is the same as a saloon taxi so no discrimination is involved.
If the act of getting into the cab takes longer, then the blame lies with those who approved the cab as suitable - not the driver who simply bought a vehicle which complied with conditions set by his council. This is one of the practical difficulties that the politicians didn't bother to concern themselves with and now want to put on us.
Consider this:
Cabby buys a new WAV to comply with council requirements.
Wheelchair punter wants to hire the cab but needs assistance from the driver to get in.
Driver himself is disabled and cannot push the wheelchair, although he is fit enough to drive.
DDA says that the passenger has a right to be able to hire this taxi (not wait for another since this would disadvantage them), and it also says that the driver has a right to work as a taxi driver.
How can both people's rights possibly be met?
The entire act is an unworkable joke which will never satisfy everyone.
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