Tanni used to be criticised by other disabled people cos she would 'tolerate' that sort of first-floor-no-lift nonsense cos she was physically able to do it back then. In recent years she's clued up that while 20yrs ago she was a super fit paraplegic-type not all wheelchair users have that option and that with her profile she could fight back better.
I think a lot comes down to disabled people being SO used to shit, that a lot of us are scared to complain too much or we might get the nice thing (job, figurehead for disableds, attention, publicity) taken away. Tanni is a lot less star-struck by her fame these days, she is much much more astute that she gets less discrim than average (the average rate is monstrously high, Tanni's is merely medium-high) cos of her fame, but will then use her fame carefully (careful to avoid bullying frontline scapegoated people) to try and effect change. The problem is this is SO wide spread that it's a very difficult thing to change.
Someone in the House of Lords tried to bring in a law specifically saying 1 step of 10 inches or 2 steps of 10 inches each should 100% be ramped or replaced as a low-hanging-fruit to try and fix shop entryways and similar, try to shift the culture. Tories bounced it saying "We have the Equality Act".
For those of you not wheelchair users (or carers thereof) try looking at shops, pubs, things on the highstreet. How many have a single step, or something that for a few tens or hundreds of quid could be temporarily or permanently ramped? Often new tenants taking over a shop will remove level access and ADD a step which is unlawful but very difficult to litigate cos the law is tricksy in those areas.
For those of you interested in a read (same woman as the Swarthmore video above) my
friend Esther "sued a whole street" in Cambridge. In practice it took years, one business owner physically assaulting her, the local trade association briefing the council and local media against her, local media publishing where she lived, police not understanding Equality Act correspondence and trying to do her for blackmail, abusive behaviour from respondents and their lawyer (we think the lawyer approached the shops thinking he'd have an easy win for clients, then discovered the shop owners were horrible clients and unreliable witnesses who wouldn't do paperwork or be honest). The lawyer claimed that Esther could jump 10cm in her powerchair and that one of his clients had seen this which took a whole hour or more in court of Esther explaining that's physically impossible and the step they claimed was 10cm was actually 10inches in their OWN photo. At that point the patient judge lost his shit at the other side but still had to go through the tedious abusive process.
The law isn't enough, we need culture change. Kind of like how indoor public smoking and drink driving became largely unacceptable we need to make this kind of access failing unacceptable.
