Where's The Party?

By Scott Bremner It’s like clockwork. Every Friday night at college and university campuses across Canada, students pour into the streets, eager to find a place to hang out with their friends and enjoy a pint or two. It’s a time-honoured rite of passage, and some say a necessity for students to survive the stress of school and pressure brought on by exams. Young people with disabilities are no different. The problem is, there are often barriers that get in the way of having a good time.

It has happened to me. I use a manual wheelchair to get around in daily life, and the major problems I find when going out to clubs and other hotspots is the lack of automatic door openers, accessible washrooms and space to manoeuvre. I’m afraid to wheel through crowds or push my chair up to a bar because the music is often so loud that even when I say “Excuse me,” people can’t hear. I’ve accidentally rolled over feet more than once, so now I prefer to stay at a table while pals of mine get the drinks.

My friends have also found bars and clubs less than welcoming. My buddy Dan Di Poce has a hard time moving his walker around in most bars. Servers always ask Kathryn Blair, who is 25, for proof of her age, and she suspects it’s because of her disability. “Clark” says that at one club, bouncers “looked at my disability, at the way I looked, and thought my I.D. was fake.” Tom Pendergast has been turned away from a club entrance because he has cerebral palsy. Hearing about experiences like these makes young people with disabilities really want to rush out and go barhopping. Not.

There are some bars and clubs that are working to eliminate barriers that prevent young people with physical disabilities from enjoying their facilities, many of them on campuses. For example, I used to visit E.P. Taylor’s, a student pub near Durham College in Oshawa, Ontario, where I studied journalism. The pub was my safe haven, a place to hang out with friends. Everything but the section with the pool tables was accessible. Then, to my delight, in the summer of 2006, the staff moved the pool tables so that they could be close to the rest of the bar.

“We decided to move the pool tables down from the raised area to closer to the front doors and that was basically it. We didn’t want to use the upper area for anything so we just closed it down,” says Brandon Alexander, food and beverage manager for Durham College and The University of Ontario Institute of Technology’s Student Centre. Accessibility and pleasing the students are top priorities for Alexander. “‘Student’ is a key word. All students pay a fee regardless of race, culture, disability or whatnot, so we treat every student the same. If one student can’t have access to something, then we have to change it until all students have accessibility.”

Encouraged by the example set by E.P. Taylor’s, I decided to explore the nightlife off-campus. What I found was often disheartening. At J.P. Fitzpatrick & Son, an Irish pub in Whitby, for example, it took me three minutes to get the bathroom door open because the restaurant didn’t have an automatic opener on the men’s washroom door. On the plus side, the business has an accessible stall.

I complained to the management about the lack of a door opener outside the men’s room. “How am I supposed to get to the accessible stall?” I asked. Upon hearing my complaint, the management decided to fix the problem. The owners are considering some type of call box technology as a solution. When someone needs to open the door, the device will alert staff. “It wouldn’t be a phone that you’d have to dial, I think you’d just maybe have to dial something to get the connection into our phone and it’d be answered at the bar,” says co-owner Sandra Whitehead. The pub is currently looking at prices for the system.

Going further, I took a trip with my father to Toronto to get something to eat. In the process, I found a handy tool: Toronto Life’s online restaurant directory. The website (www.torontolife.com/guide/bars-and-clubs/) can narrow down the list to only those that consider themselves accessible. That’s how we discovered Sarah’s Café and Bar, a fully accessible restaurant and bar on Danforth Avenue. It doesn’t have an automatic door opener, but there’s a doorknob I can manage. The washroom is accessible, and there is enough room to turn my manual chair around anywhere in the establishment. I almost did flips and spins when we found the place!

I asked other young people with disabilities about their experiences. Luca “Lazylegz” Patuelli, 23, is a breakdancer, motivational speaker and student at Concordia University who has a disability. (He was featured in the Spring 2007 issue of Abilities.) Patuelli, who uses crutches, travels a lot and has explored the entertainment scene in other cities.

“I have been to several places around Canada and have always tried to hit up the nightlife,” Patuelli says. “I was impressed in Halifax. Everywhere I went was accessible. I went to several clubs that were fully accessible with ramps and elevators. There was a club called The Dome, and it was like four clubs in one.”

In most other places, Patuelli says, if a club or bar is accessible, it’s because the venue is located at street level. “In Montreal, most clubs are on the second floor or in the basement, and I do not think I have been to any club in Montreal with handicap accessibility except for concert halls.”

He adds that Montreal still has a way to go in terms of overall accessibility. “Not all the metros are accessible, and in certain parts of the city the sidewalks can be uneven, narrow and in bad shape.” He’s optimistic that things will improve. “I think that in every major city there is much more awareness about accessibility issues, and we are seeing more and more accessible areas. Things are changing for the better, every day.”

I was curious if the situation is better south of the border, where the American with Disabilities Act (ADA), which has rules about accessibility, was passed in 1991. I talked to Ryan Pritchard, 20, a wheelchair user who has juvenile rheumatoid arthritis and lives in Ohio. She doesn’t believe the law has been effective. “It’s just not taken seriously. I have been to newer stores and restaurants and the doors aren’t accessible,” Pritchard reports. She often has trouble accessing dining establishments and concert venues. On a scale of one to 10 (10 being the best), Pritchard says she believes accessibility in the States is a five. “Some places can be perfectly accessible and others you cannot get in or anything. We have power doors, but they don’t always work and there aren’t a lot of wheelchair ramps at places.”

Bars and clubs aren’t the only businesses that lack accessibility, of course. It’s a widespread, long-standing problem, and few business owners and organizations are improving. Some cities are working harder than others – Vancouver, for example, aims to overhaul its public transit system to be accessible by the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games. But, without legislation similar to the ADA to spur people to action, many of the country’s public places remain inaccessible to people with physical disabilities.

One province where changes are happening is Ontario. The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA), which aims to remove barriers to accessibility across the province, was passed in June of 2005. “The AODA’s overall goal is to get that accessibility on or before 2025, but there are requirements to have standards going before that, and there are also requirements to review the legislation itself and the developments of any standards, I believe, in five-year increments, so 2025 is an end point,” explains Tracy MacCharles, acting chair of the Accessibility Standards Advisory Council, which gives advice on the standards to Ontario’s Minister of Community and Social Services.

The accessibility standards are being developed by committees whose members include people from the public and private sectors and the disability community. The customer service standard, which emphasizes the principles of dignity, independence, integration and equality of opportunity, has already been passed. Public-sector organizations must comply with its requirements by January 1, 2010, and the private sector has until January 1, 2012. But even without the new rules, businesses have a good reason to shape up – according to Royal Bank, people with disabilities in Canada spend an estimated $25 billion every year. They also influence the purchasing decisions of 12 to 15 million other consumers. And, as the population ages, inaccessible businesses will lose customers.

“There’s a very strong business case for owners to really step up here, and I think it will benefit their business and it’s, of course, the right thing to do. There’s a lot of spending power by persons with disabilities,” says MacCharles.

I hope that businesses will hear the call and respond sooner rather than later. In the meantime, my friends and I fantasize about the ideal club. “An all-accessible club should have a ramp, automatic doors, an elevator if there is more than one floor, and an all-accessible wheelchair bathroom or a stall in the public bathroom that is big enough for a wheelchair,” says Blair. She adds that there would be a sink, toilet, hand dryer or towel dispenser “all inside the stall.”

Pendergast, who uses an electric wheelchair, adds, “The ideal club would have wider doorways, buttons on all doors and huge washrooms.”

But perhaps Di Poce sums it up best when he says, “Either have an elevator or put the bathrooms on the main floor! It’s hard enough to be disabled and climb stairs, but to be both disabled and drunk? As you can imagine, it’s no picnic.”

Scott Bremner is a freelance journalist based out of Oshawa, Ontario. He can be reached at bremner.scott@yahoo.ca