[HiltonP]

The Wildlife Photographer Of The Year Exhibition

Sponsored by Discovery Channel's Animal Planet, NHU Africa, BBC Wildlife Magazine and the Natural History Museum. Currently hosted at the V&A Waterfront complex in Cape Town, South Africa.

To paraphrase Julius Caesar's immortal words . . . "I came, I got as far as the foyer, I was angered!".

I am a quadraplegic and am permanently confined to a wheelchair. My wife and I, both keen photographers, made the effort to attend the exhibition, only to find that it was being held upstairs, and the organisers have provided no wheelchair access of any kind. This is simply un-acceptable.

I have been permanently in a wheelchair for over thirty years and disability access issues are not new to me. However, when an international exhibition, sponsored by international bodies, in the 21st century, is hosted at an international venue, in a country which guarantees equal rights for all its citizens, and it is completely inaccessable, there is no excuse.

It is a sad indictment of all the parties involved and I call upon the disabled community to voice their concern, and ensure that all future exhibitions are held at venues which recognise the right of all individuals to access.

ANIMAL PLANET . . . AdSales_Discovery@Discovery.com (the only contact I could find)
NHU AFRICA . . . sophie@nhuafrica.com
BBC WILDLIFE MAGAZINE . . . wildlifemagazine@bbcmagazinesbristol.com
NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM . . . http://www.nhm.ac.uk...ries/index.html


HILTON PURVIS
South Africa

[JulesUK]

This is totally useless I will email the sponsors this evening.

Did you complain to anyone at the time. If so, what did they say?

As well as emailing the sponsors is there any local press that might run a story about this?

[HiltonP]

JulesUK . . . thanks for eMailing the sponsors.
Everyone needs to "rev" them!
They should not be doing business with people who do not provide access to all.

I attended the exhibition over a weekend, and of course all management / marketing / pr people were un-available. The phone lines did however hot up on the Monday morning! I have contacted the waterfront complex's management/marketing/pr, all the disabled organisations I know, the local press, and all the sponsors/organisers.

Everyone is very apologetic, but the exhibition remains open, and in-accessable. It is still too easy these days to shrug off a lack of access and offer an excuse. They would not dream of blocking access based on gender, or race, yet they are prepared to conveniently overlook disability. We need legal mechanisms which can literally shut down a place if it does not provide access. Then everyone will be wide awake.

[JulesUK]

Sorry, have not actually done the emailing yet, I will do though.

A quick Google search leads me to believe that the complex where this exhibition is is a fairly new looking waterfront development. I'm guessing something along the lines of some of the developments of the docklands in London?

I don't know what the situation is in SA but I'm pretty certain you would not be allowed to build new buildings like that in the UK now, which are intended to be buildings the public will access if parts of them would be inaccessible. That said there are plenty of older buildings in the UK where this sort of thing might happen.

This post has been edited by JulesUK: 18 July 2007 - 09:41 AM

[HiltonP]

The V&A Waterfront was originally developed around 1988 and has continued to expand and evolve since then. It is a hugely successful development, a combination of business, retail, entertainment, exhibitions, restaurants, working harbour, museum and aquarium. They do however slip up on access every now and then.

We sadly have no laws in SA enforcing the provision of access in new buildings. The net result is that brand new, in-accessable buildings are going up around us as we speak. Given our supposed world-class constitution it is a disgrace, but no-one really cares. It is not deemed newsworthy.