Push it real good

Disabled travel, by Si Truss

When I was about twelve years old I went on a day out to a US theme-park with my disabled sister. During the day, while she was elsewhere, I decided to take a spin in her unoccupied wheelchair. Unfortunately, misjudging my trajectory, I ended up caught in an uncontrollable descent down a nearby, sharply declining hill. Needless to say my adventure in the wheelchair ended with me landing face-to-concrete at the bottom of the hill.

Imagine this predicament viewed from the perspective of one of the employees of the Disney Corporation, stationed in the nearby gift shop, seeing a young boy careering past the window and ending in a mangled heap a few meters away. Now when the aforementioned employees who came running to my rescue saw me stand of my own accord their shocked expressions soon changed to one of sheer disappointment.

I’ve discovered, from several years of holidaying and general moving about with someone of quite severe disability, that the general public are often very keen to take the opportunity to help out someone less able than them. Now while this can at times lead to the odd well-meaning but misguided patronising gesture (crayons, colouring books, kid’s menus) it more importantly has the upshot of making disabled travel often easier than you think.

That’s not to say it doesn’t take a little extra effort. It generally involves more forward planning than you would associate with normal budget travel. It’s important to search for places to stay with lifts, stair-free entrances, etc. Also, when you’re planning where to visit there’s lots of little things worth taking into account. For example, countries such as Croatia that have been involved in conflict over the last twenty years are always going to be more geared up towards the disabled than you think. While it’s a tragic fact that places such as this are going to have a much larger percentage of the population than normal with missing or non-functional limbs, this also means that the issue of disability is taken a lot more seriously. In all, disabled travel is always going to mean a little more work. However, there is nothing stopping people of even serious disability from enjoying international travel.