Hansard

In my intervention on the minister, I made a point about the phrase “people with disabilities”, because it is important to recognise that we must put people first. It is people who have a disability or an impairment. It is easy—I have done it many a time and I have no doubt that I will do it again, perhaps even this afternoon—to use the word “disabled” before the word “people” but, when we look at accessible tourism, it is important to consider the broad aspect of accessibility and what it means. Most members have made telling contributions about the wider meaning not for the individual but for the individual and their family.

Holidays are often family holidays. During her training to be a paediatric nurse, my daughter did social care work. I take up Nanette Milne’s point about nursing colleges looking at nurses getting into an aspect of social care and providing respite care, perhaps in holiday destinations.

My daughter cares for a young man who has severe and complex mobility issues. She says that the difficulty that she has when she is out with him—she has been on holiday with him—is the basic accessibility to what we consider to be the normal places that we would like to visit. That includes things such as shops, restaurants and cafes—things that we take for granted.

We have come a long way. I have been involved with access panels for probably around 40 years, and that has always been worth while, because I have seen the progress that has happened.

When I am considering going on holiday, I tend to look at venues that do not require me to cross busy roads. If I go abroad on holiday, I tend to leave my guide dog at home, because I think that he probably deserves a holiday from me at the same time as I probably deserve a holiday with my family. I do that deliberately because I want to be able to still have a degree of independence. I want to be able to enjoy the freedom of being on holiday and the relaxation.

I have many friends who have disabilities. The examples that we bring to the chamber quite often come through family members or friends. One friend in particular tells me that his biggest frustration—we have witnessed this ourselves—is in simply going out for a meal when he visits other friends in other parts of the country, down south, or abroad. He says that, when he finds restaurants with level accessibility and accessible toilets, he then finds that he cannot use the facilities. The problem is that, between where he is and the accessible toilets, the tables and chairs will be placed in such a way that there is no room. We then have to ask people whether they would mind moving so that we can get a wheelchair through. That should not be the case; we should always have direct access to accessible toilets.

There is another frustrating thing that many people bring up. I am sure that many tourists who come to this country sometimes simply shake their head and say, “My goodness! There’s an accessible toilet here, yet it’s got the trolley for the cleaner in it, the pail, the mops, the waste bins and whatever.” Sometimes there will be an accessible toilet, but people cannot get in to use it. We need to be sure that, when we have those facilities, they can be used for the purpose for which they were designed. Access means accessibility. That should be there.

When we are considering people with sensory impairments, we have to consider whether the equipment in many of our wonderful facilities—whether in our castles or in Holyrood palace across the road, which is an exemplar for people who are deaf or hard of hearing or who have other sensory impairments—works and that the people who provide it know about it. In many places that provide hearing loops, for instance, those hearing loops can be faulty or the person in that place may have no idea how to manage them or instruct on their usage.

I want to stick to some basics. It is quite often about awareness and common sense. There is the frustration of a person with a hearing loss, for instance. If they go into a ticket office to buy a ticket for a particular venue, sometimes the lighting is not good enough, so they cannot lip-read what the person behind the glass counter is saying. Worse than that, the person behind the glass counter quite often looks down or away, so there is absolutely no way that they can lip-read what they are saying anyway. We need to be aware of that basic aspect of training and awareness, and that does not cost money; it simply costs a little bit of training and awareness. That is not in itself a huge expense for people to take on board.

I take on board what the minister said about the VisitScotland website and the training facility and training tools there, but I gently say to him and to those who create the website for VisitScotland that it could be better. When I navigate the website through the search engines to look at accessible accommodation, it is not particularly easy. Given that we are trying to entice people to come to Scotland, regardless of where they are from and what their needs are, the VisitScotland statement should say, “Yes—our doors are open, and if you have a particular disability, impairment or need, we can manage and cope with it.” It is not difficult.