Put yourself in a disabled person’s travelling shoes for a moment. You’ve just flown into Edmonton. At the arrival gate and on the DATS bus, helpful personnel give you an extra hand.
But at your hotel, the city seems less welcoming. When you were booking a room, there weren’t that many places to choose from that were accessible for your disability. Those with the most to offer put you over-budget. Availability was also at a premium; most hotels had just one or two rooms equipped as “accessible.” You booked the best you could afford.
You enter easily enough, but it’s difficult to pivot into the living space because the corridor doesn’t give much turning room. The light switch is too high; the bed, too low. And this hotel’s idea of an accessible shower is to place a plastic chair in the tub. The reflection of your frustration isn’t even visible, because the bathroom mirror is placed too high. Many visitors to Edmonton encounter that frustration when they check in. As M.N. Wali, a wheelchair-reliant visitor from Toronto, wrote to a local newspaper last summer: “Full wheelchair access does not mean just having a ramp.”
The dearth of hotels rooms accessible to a wide range of people with disabilities is ironic, considering how many of our visitors are drawn to this city to take care of their health. Of the more than 120,000 hospital admissions to Edmonton hospitals each year, 22 per cent are from outside the region. By the end of the year, the Mazankowski Alberta Heart Institute will open one of North America’s leading cardiac care centres, the first of its kind in Western Canada. Next year, the Lois Hole Hospital for Women opens; in 2012 the Edmonton Clinic debuts. All will attract patients and their families from across the Prairies and northern Canada. Aside from that, we’re Alberta’s top tourist destination, attracting 4.35 million people in 2004, the most recent figures issued by StatsCan.
Yet despite all our attractions, our hospitality in the private sector continues to inhibit the 12.4 per cent of Canadians who are disabled, a number that is expected to rise as our population ages. A random phone check of 25 city hotels revealed that while many tell callers they are wheelchair accessible, few actually have roll-in showers or raised toilets.
Edmontonian Larry Pempeit has spent the last four decades as a quadriplegic after surviving a motor vehicle accident in 1966. As director of community development for the Canadian Paraplegic Association (Alberta), he travels often.
Pempeit says five-star hotels in Edmonton tend to accommodate disabled people well, but hotels in the low- and middle-price range often miss the mark. Things have improved in the past five years, he says, and hoteliers have good intentions, but their criteria are “all over the map.” There’s a lack of standardization in what is considered universally designed or barrier-free, he says. “I’ve had maybe two or three hotels consult with me for renovations over the last 10 years. And they didn’t end up taking my recommendations.”
Ideally, hotels would follow the principles of universal design and be accessible to all people, including seniors and children, says Beverley Matthiessen, executive director of the Alberta Committee of Citizens with Disabilities. In the absence of that, her wish list includes: a clear pathway from parking lot to lobby; elevators with lowered buttons inscribed with braille; doorways at least 32 inches wide; large bathrooms with a roll-in shower, grab bars and transfer space to a raised toilet; counters with sufficient space to accommodate a wheelchair; angled or full-length mirrors; raised beds with enough surrounding space to allow for transfer from a wheelchair; flashing lights on fire alarms and phones for the hearing impaired; lowered wall fixtures and peep holes; braille menus; and an outdoor spot for guide and working dogs to relieve themselves.
The province that’s doing the best job with accessible hotel rooms, says Pempeit, is British Columbia, which is preparing for the 2010 Olympics. Last year, the B.C. government gave $1.5 million to a non-profit organization called 2010 Legacies Now. That money is being used to publicize tourism-related businesses that have accessible facilities and to advise businesses on how to upgrade. The program — called Accessible Tourism — has already assessed 500 hotels (300 in Vancouver) and rated them. They are now entitled to display the rating, plus the logos of Accessible Tourism and the B.C. government, on their own websites. The plan is to rate 3,000 hotels by the 2010 Olympics.
Alberta’s hoteliers were once a progressive force in providing barrier-free and universal design. In 1995, the Alberta Hotel Association launched a certification and training program for hoteliers and hotel staff. That same year, it became a national program operated by the Hotel Association of Canada. Access Canada set standards for hoteliers to meet if they wanted to be considered accessible, and rated hotels on a scale of one to four. Both the United Nations and the International Hotel and Restaurant Association endorsed Access Canada for its efforts.
By 2005, 21 Edmonton hotels were recognized as accessible by Access Canada. But three years ago, the program was halted in order to be redesigned with the help of the Canadian Hearing Society, the Canadian Paraplegic Association, the Council of Canadians with Disabilities and a Quebec-based disabilities organization. The checklist of standards to meet increased from 400 items to more than 500. A more comprehensive training component was added; key hotel staff members also need to complete certification now. The program was re-launched a year ago, and hoteliers were asked to reapply for certification. But the process takes time; so far, no Edmonton hotels are yet certified.
Typically, any hotel will have some facilities for people with disabilities, says Tony Pollard, president of the Hotel Association of Canada, but he acknowledges that the number of rooms varies. “It’s a lot easier to accommodate people when you’re building it from scratch,” he says. Despite that, Pollard believes “our industry is doing very well considering it’s all voluntary.” Renovating old hotels is an understandable challenge, says Ron Wickman, an Edmonton architect specializing in universal design. Considering that most hotel rooms were designed to make the most of every scrap of space, “how do you make the bathroom bigger without compromising the rest of the suite?” he asks. But new hotels have few excuses for not building universally designed units, he says. “It really isn’t a whole lot more expensive. Maybe a five- to 10-per cent cost increase.”
Wickman believes hoteliers are concerned that universally designed rooms will be unpopular with non-disabled patrons. But he says the point of universal design is that it accommodates everyone. “I’m old enough to have lived in this city when there wasn’t a single curb cut,” the 44-year-old notes, referring to the subtle ramp we now consider normal as we push our bikes or baby strollers smoothly from sidewalk to crosswalk.
Curb cuts, as well as LRT elevators and DATS transportation, are some of the features his father, the late Percy Wickman — a city councillor, Liberal MLA, paraplegic and disability activist — fought for. Just as we’ve accepted these fixtures as the norm, Wickman says, we’ll eventually learn to consider hotel rooms with roll-in showers the same way. “The time is coming,” he says, optimistically.
