Louise Milicevic's story - Access to Historic Buildings
Channel: National Disability Authority
Date: 2012-06-01

This video was produced for the Access to Heritage Conference that took place on 30th May 2012 at the Law Society, Blackhall Place, Dublin 7. This conference was jointly hosted by the National Disability Authority and the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. The conference presentations can be found on the NDA website at http://www.nda.ie. The other videos in this set can be found by searching for the tag accesstoheritageconference2012. The transcript for this video is available below.

Louise Milivevic's story -- Access to Historic Buildings
Hello, my name is Louise Milicevic. I'm a person with a disability. I use a walking stick and from time to time would use a wheelchair. I'm a married mother of two young children so, not only do I have to take into consideration - my own accessibility needs, but also accessibility where they are concerned in terms of buggies and prams etcetera. I live in Newbridge, in County Kildare and within my daily life, I would have access or would have to access, an historic site on a daily basis, in terms of my work, or my office. 
I remember one occasion when we did have a meeting in the accessible meeting room, and it was - basically during the course of the meeting the lift broke down and then trying to get me down the stairs, there's no handrail, there's only one handrail on the stair and the staircase going up, and I need to have handrails on both sides, that's very important for me if I have to use stairs. However, there was no handrail on my good side coming down and they're extremely narrow steps anyway which I would have great difficulty with. So the end result was that one of my colleagues had to actually carry me down the stairs, which in a work situation really isn't you know, appropriate.
The meeting rooms themselves, they're -- as I said it's an old listed building so they have these very nice, ornate, doorknobs on the doors which look lovely, but they're a nightmare for somebody with a dexterity issue, because you have to turn and twist to get the door open and it's very difficult.
One time, in a national park whereby they had these -- across the boardwalks, they had a wooden boardwalk, and they actually had the gaps between the planks weren't uniform and I ended up falling. My stick went down through the gaps in the wood, fell into the water below, meanwhile my husband was pushing my daughter a little way ahead and he had to come back, to try and assist me up, to try and retrieve my walking stick from the water and all the time try and calm down a crying child. So it's those sorts of things that you nearly have to do a lot of research, do a lot of homework beforehand so that you are going to have an enjoyable family day when you go to these places, but they have to be accessible and they have to be safe for you and the children as well.
One big issue for me is the distance from, maybe my car, to the entrance of a building. Because it takes me -- I generally find the accessible entrance is a far greater distance than maybe, the main entrance is, and for somebody with an ambulant disability you have to factor that in. By the time I get to the accessible entrance, am I going to be too exhausted to actually enjoy what this premises or what this service has to offer?