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	TX: 27.06.08 - Disability Rough Guide PRESENTER: MANI DJAZMI

	Downloaded from www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE 麻豆约拍 CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. Djazmi Well I'm in a car driving to the Natural History Museum with broadcaster and journalist Mick Scarlett, who's also a wheelchair user and his wife Diane, who isn't. The first piece of information that we're going to use from the Accessible Rough Guide is where to park. We've phoned up the number suggested in the book and we got through to someone who knew what we were talking about and we've booked a parking space, now it's just a matter of finding out if that parking space really exists for us. Scarlett Hello mate, we've booked a parking space in advance to go to the museums under Mick Scarlett. Parking attendant Oh that's right yeah. Scarlett Cool. Parking attendant Down the bottom, you see where that yellow sign is? Scarlett Oh yeah. Parking attendant Right that's bay number one. Scarlett Excellent, nice one. There you go so the Rough Guide has done something for us because normally what would happen is we'd park on the street, all the other times we've come here, so today there were actually spaces but normally what happens is there isn't and what there is is a very large amount of swearing. Audio guide The big three destinations of museum land in South Kensington are the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum and the V&A or Victoria and Albert Museum. The need to use lifts can mean longer routes to reach certain exhibits, most noticeable in the V&A's complex labyrinth of galleries and lengthy waits at busy times as you'll be vying with parents and pushchairs. But there's almost nothing you can't see if you really want to and in addition a huge range of special facilities and tours are on offer. Djazmi Well that's what the audio version of the Accessible Rough Guide sounds like. It's produced by the charity Motability and it costs the same as the print version which is £6.99. In the book there are a number of symbols which denote the kind of assistance which people with different disabilities can expect to find at various places, for instance here at the Natural History Museum there's a hearing loop, there's assistance for people who are mobility impaired and there's assistance for people who are visually-impaired. Unfortunately it doesn't actually explain what that assistance is. Now I've just been up to the information desk at the front of the museum to ask them and apparently the museum provides sighted guides for blind and partially-sighted people, the only trouble is you have to book in advance, so if I'd come here as a punter then I'd have been stuck without a guide probably. So anyway Mick. Scarlett I will be your guide because of course you haven't booked one. Djazmi Exactly. Scarlett So here we are inside this wonderful building... Audio guide The ever popular dinosaur gallery has a tiny lift to a raised walkway which is relatively narrow and often crowded. Ask to use the back entrance if you need more space. Djazmi Wow it's really small isn't it. Scarlett It is quite frighteningly small. Djazmi There's literally only room for ... Scarlett For a wheelchair and my wheelchair's not that big. Djazmi And half a person. Scarlett So if you back up... Djazmi So I'll back out. Scarlett Yeah and there's a railing to your right. I personally maybe might have said if you're a user of a very large electric chair it might be worth checking in advance because I'm pretty sure that some of the very big road use chairs might not fit. The main thing I think about the Accessible Rough Guide is that it isn't really a rough guide, it's more a brief guide with quite mainstream information in it. I mean we're in a museum and okay fine it's a museum, it's great, it's one of the things you do on a holiday but the Rough Guide to me is about finding the little unknown places, the kind of more weird things to do and there is none of that in the book. There isn't even any information about restaurants nearby. Djazmi Well that's actually a point that I put to Martin Dunsford who was actually one of the founders of the Rough Guide back in the early '80s but he's swapped his backpack and sleeping bag for an office and a personal assistant these days because he's now the book's publishing director. He says that the information that's offered in the Accessible Rough Guide is absolutely what people need to know. Dunsford We set out to do a mainstream guide, I mean we set out to do a hundred attractions in Britain, some of which are kind of a little bit left field and others are, you know, like Legoland is very mainstream indeed. I don't think there's anything wrong with that because what we're trying to do is actually publicise the fact to get people used to the idea that actually you can get out there, it is possible, and it's about giving people information in advance which if they do know in advance they can actually plan their trip and have a much better day out accordingly. I mean you could turn up somewhere and there might be some steps, there might be some sort of access problems or you might have to book to use a lift - I can think of one place where you need to do that - I think it's the details that can actually be the difference between a good day out and a disastrous one. Djazmi But Mick Scarlett doesn't think that the Rough Guide to Accessible Britain provides much of an alternative to what's already available. Scarlett Yes it is what we need to know but it's kind of available anywhere else. Most of us use the internet and while it's nice to have it all in one place it needs to have been a little bit more critical. Okay it's got a toilet but I know in the Natural History Museum that the toilet here is also shared with all the baby changing, so it means that you may have to queue for donkeys ages to get in and it may be a little unpleasant. Healy That's true to say but I'm not sure that was the point of this book, to be honest. Djazmi Andy Healy is a wheelchair user and one of 16 researchers who compiled the Rough Guide to Accessible Britain. Healy I was thinking not so much of myself and my compatriots who have been disabled quite some time now but for younger people who have only recently become disabled to - sometimes need a bit of encouragement to get out. I remember when I was first disabled it was quite a leap of confidence to actually get in the car and go somewhere. And to know that there is at least a minimum level of accessibility is a positive thing and I think books like this bring out. Audio guide Ask any family with a child with special needs where to go on a day out and the answer is almost unanimously Legoland. It's not just that the park is 95% accessible to wheelchair users, Legoland has a positive ... Kew Gardens: Non assisted wheelchair access, facilities for the mobility impaired, assisted toilets ... Helicopter to the Isles of Scilly. The O2. Windemere Lake cruises. Cairngorm Mountain Railway and Ski Centre. Durham. The town centre's fully accessible in the sense that there are no steps but there are few extensive level areas, numerous very steep gradients and some challenging surfaces - cobbles, flagstones, narrow pavements and so on. Dunsford We picked a hundred great days out, they were deliberately chosen to be all kinds of activities from the more sedate to the more adventurous and they were also chosen - we wanted to give coverage of the whole of the country including Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales as well as England. Djazmi What proportion of the researchers were disabled and how many were able bodied? Dunsford I think by far the majority maybe about 80% were disabled in some way. Some of the others were able bodied but in almost every case, even when there was an able bodied researcher, they would have been accompanied by someone with some sort of disability. Djazmi The Accessible Rough Guide is a fraction of the size of the Rough Guide, why did you decide to have a separate publication, I mean why didn't you just incorporate the information into your mainstream book? Dunsford Well we do try and incorporate as much accessibility information into our mainstream books as possible but it does mean that the size of the books would grow if we incorporated the sort of depth we wanted to get into this book. The size of England - our Britain books - would grow to a sort of unmanageable size which we'd publish at an unfeasible price. We wanted to go into more depth really and it's an area of publishing which we've tried to do before, we did actually do a guide for disabled travellers, called Able to Travel, which was stories to inspire people with disabilities to get out there and see the world. We haven't published that book for a while because actually it didn't sell as well as we'd hoped. This was an opportunity, working with Mortability, to do what we think we do best, which is to enable people to get out there and travel and see the world and to give them the information they need. Djazmi Mick, give us the rough guide to the Accessible Rough Guide, what's good, what's bad about it? Scarlett If you are new to disability it is quite useful, it does tell you stuff that kind of you won't know. A bad point for me is it is kind of going over old ground, it is stuff you could probably get on the internet or from tourist offices for free but it does mean that you can carry it around in your glove box as opposed to spending hours on the internet then printing it up, then putting it in a little folder, sticking it in your car and then losing it somewhere on the way to where you're going on holiday. Dunsford As well as our mainstream British guide books, which are general guide books, this is a guide which sort of complements those and I think we'd like to carry on publishing it, we'd like it to get bigger, we'd like it to be maybe a really regular, maybe even a yearly thing if there was enough interest. 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