this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2024
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Pardon my ignorance but does the UK not have an ADA equivalent?
Laws without enforcement and steep penalties for non-compliance are just political image management.
We do. It's called the Equality Act 2010. It requires reasonable adjustments for disabled people. However, this is not always provided for in reality. The equality act is mentioned in the original article
I can only speak as an American myself but I don’t believe so.
It’s something I’ve heard through the vines (back in the days of Reddit) that Europeans and other travelers are often impressed by when visiting is how accommodating our buildings and their infrastructure are.
I have always assumed part of the reason they don’t is it helps we are a much younger country that in most areas has plenty of room for such accommodations. Implementing and enforcing ADA requirements like the US does on new construction and renovations in cities with buildings and infrastructure as old and tight as exists in Europe would be difficult to say the least.
Source - I’m some random guy on the internet who works at general contractor that has to abide by ADA requirements when building and renovating spaces.
That is possible, I also heard of a lot of ignorance on standards (like councils painting what's supposed to be bright yellow tactile tiles on the ground grey to blend into the ground, making them difficult to see for partially sighted people). Although I know of a lot of older buildings impressively retrofitted. I have helped a person in a wheelchair a few times or spent time with them, and you have to navigate the world differently. Even crossing the road on a small market street needs you to find a dipped curb, then rumble across aesthetic cobble paving down the road to find another dipped curb on the other side.
Yeah, not to mention the resistance to modifying historic buildings. That's already hard enough to get approval for in US and Canada, our historic buildings are nowhere near as historic. Hehe.