YA reporter spearheads cinema campaign for better disabled access in the UK

YA reporter spearheads cinema campaign for better disabled access in the UK
Thursday, 01 September 2011

By Paul Peterson

A PRESSURE group has launched a campaign for cinemas to improve disabled access.
Members of the Muscular Dystrophy Trailblazers Group are calling for independent and multiplex cinemas across the country to provide better facilities for disabled customers.
Wheelchair users including YA reporter Paul Peterson, from Corringham, and Victoria Pegg, from Chelmsford, both have a form of the muscle-wasting disease and are leading the campaign in Essex.
Paul, 32, who has Becker Muscular Dystrophy, was mainly critical of the Empire Cinema at the Festival Leisure Park, in Basildon.
He argued that in recent years, the cinema’s disabled access had got worse.
He said: “The multiplex used to be excellent and was so good that I would sometimes make the trip back from university in Barking to go there.
“The wheelchair spaces were not restricted to the front rows so I could sit at the back with the rest of my friends.
“When the new premium seating was installed, the number of screens with wheelchair spaces at the back of the cinema was reduced.
“It means you have to sit right at front, which gives you a stiff neck and eye strain because it’s just far too close to the screen.”
Members of the Muscular Dystrophy Trailblazers Lights, Camera, Access? campaign recently carried out an investigation into disabled access at cinemas across the county.
They found that:
* One in three major cinema chains have bad or very bad views of the screen from the wheelchair accessible seating.
* More than half have uncomfortable accessible seating areas and one third have poor access between the ticket office and the auditorium.
* One in three of the major chain cinemas have bad or very bad disability awareness.
* Almost half of independent and major chain cinemas did not offer an online ticket service for the disabled.
* One in five major chain cinemas do not accept the Cinema Exhibitors Association discount card or offer another discount for disabled customers and a carer.
* Of the independent cinemas, 96 per cent have good or very good views of the screen from the wheelchair accessible seating area.
* Eight out of 10 independent cinemas have comfortable wheelchair accessible seating.
* More than 85 per cent of independent or small chains have easy or very easy access between the ticket office and the auditorium.
* Eight out ten independent cinemas have good or very good disability awareness.
Victoria Pegg, 27, who has Muscular Dystrophy, urged people to sign a petition which will be presented to cinema operators and MPs at Westminster later this year.
She said: “We want to work with cinema exhibitors to resolve some of these issues their disabled customers face.
“I hope people will back our petition and encourage cinemas to start putting a little more into the service they provide to their disabled customers.”
For more information about the group, or to sign the cinema access petition, visit www.mdctrailblazers.org

Defining Beauty: Ms. Wheelchair America

Defining Beauty: Ms. Wheelchair America, narrated by Katey Sagal, and directed by Alexis Ostrander, is a feature length documentary that reveals the behind-the-scenes aspects of a perhaps little-known beauty pageant which provides a unique experience for women in wheelchairs by following the stories of five of the contestants in the 2010 Ms. Wheelchair America Pageant.

The women given extended air time in the documentary (there are many more, including pageant organizers and family members, who are given sound bites) make it a point to show the audience that while they must utilize wheelchairs, their status as wheelchair users doesn’t define them, though they are well aware that many able-bodied people look at them and “just see the chair”. One is seen skydiving during the early part of the movie. Another described herself as “a single mother of three kids” (only one of which lives with her full-time, the pageant organizers later sent her a letter asking her to cease publicly describing herself in a way that implies she has full-time custody of all of them), which she says “is not typical for someone in my …position”. Later in the movie, a third who speaks of having consciously rejected “advocacy” for the disabled says she unconsciously ended up engaging in a form of it when she became her high school’s first wheelchair-using cheerleader, and later entered the mainstream Miss New Jersey pageant.

By sharing their personal stories, though many have horrific stories of spinal cord injuries acquired in car crashes, they hope to show the general population an image of wheelchair users beyond the simplistic portrayal of victims or heroes that is often promoted in the popular media. (One soon-to-be-former Ms. Wheelchair America “tags” a wall when out on a sight-seeing excursion for the contestants when she comes upon a street muralist who lends her a can of spray paint to enable her to do this. The citizenry and the law in the area of Texas where the pageant is held seem to take a live-and-let-live attitude during these outings of pageant contestants.)

One aspect of the documentary which is educational for those who are not well-acquainted with the lives of individuals who have physical disabilities, is when some of the contestants discuss on camera matters that individuals with less poise and savvy in dealing with the public might be embarrassed to discuss. Quadriplegics who don’t have physical sensation may occasionally get surprised by errant bladder and bowl action. Those who use catheters risk infection in portable toilet booths. There are those who have physical conditions which mean when they have to “go”, they have to go now. Mention is made of such things, perhaps because if the general public were aware of such matters, they would be more sensitive about keeping the wheelchair stall in the restroom free, and giving the disabled priority in restrooms.

Not everyone in a wheelchair who participates in this pageant has the same degree of ability to do things personally. Some footage of caregivers transferring people from wheelchair to bed, checking their clothing, etc. is seen. A woman who has “flippers” for hands, and stumps for legs, her mother having taken thalidomide when she was pregnant, is able to use the tips of her arms much the way an elephant uses his trunk, and puts on her eyeliner herself by propping the pencil eyeliner against the edge of the dressing table.

The Ms. Wheelchair America pageant draws upon a more diverse pool of applicants than many other pageants, being open to women between the ages of 21 and 60, who rely upon a wheelchair full-time. Judges are “encouraged to place less emphasis on physical attractiveness and more on ‘general pleasant appearance'”, capacity for “advocacy” is emphasized, and while there isn’t the same presumption of purity required of Miss America contestants, some drama ensues when a rumor concerning one of the contestants making porn for “devotees” (men who are “into” women with disabilities with the disability as their primary “turn-on”) circulates among the other contestants.