A wheelchair-bound woman speaks out about the alienation of being a less able-bodied person, after being dismissed by a transport company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dee Smith who attempted to order a Wheelchair Accessible Vehicle (WAV), three hours before she needed it, with City Taxis was told the service wasn\u2019t available to disabled wheelchair users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She said: \u2018I was left feeling like I was causing a problem on purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
City Taxis said they were unable to take pre-bookings for wheelchair vehicles, as they \u2018need to check the availability of the vehicles in the area\u2019 and asked Miss Smith to call back 30 minutes prior to needing a taxi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Business Development Director, Paul Gosney at City Taxis, said: \u201cThe reason we are unable to take advanced pre-bookings for WAVs is that the driver partners are self-employed, and we can not guarantee they will be available at the requested time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
City Taxis have 350 WAV taxis in their fleet, spread across their six locations: Barnsley, Chesterfield, Derby, Dronfield, Rotherham and Sheffield.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Miss Smith, 25, from Stocksbridge, Sheffield, called the firm on May 8 to book a taxi to take her to a routine appointment at the Northern General Hospital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She was diagnosed with Friedreich\u2019s Ataxia (FRDA), at 19-years-old, and like many other disabled wheelchair users, relies heavily on reliable transport in order to get around Sheffield. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
She said: \u201cI’m a human being in a wheelchair, there’s nothing else to it, but you do feel very isolated and the only one in the world who is in a wheelchair.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A wheelchair-bound woman speaks out about the alienation of being a less able-bodied person, after being dismissed by a transport company. Dee Smith who attempted to order a Wheelchair Accessible Vehicle (WAV), three hours before she needed it, with City Taxis was told the service wasn\u2019t available to disabled wheelchair users. She said: \u2018I was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":97,"featured_media":47272,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1215,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-disabilities","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n