Access Denied
London Book Fair hosted a diversity and inclusion panel with no wheelchair access. What went wrong?
It’s no secret that publishing has access issues. Despite the progress made in recent years the industry still remains closed off to a large number of marginalised writers who find themselves unable to navigate its many barriers to entry. One of the ways the industry tries to address these issues is by talking about them… a lot. Panel discussions on diversity and inclusion pop up in the schedules of every writing conference, festival and fair to try and provide awareness and an understanding to the problems within the industry as well as, hopefully solutions to how we might build a fairer publishing landscape.
These discussions aren’t just useful for decision makers and publishing insiders, they can also provide valuable insight to the marginalised writers looking to break in. Publishing is famously opaque to those outside it and many come to these panels looking for advice on how to overcome the obstacles that stand in their way. So, It can be heartbreaking for these writers when the very discussions on how to break down barriers come with their own insurmountable barriers to entry. This is exactly the situation Kirsty Farnfield found herself in when she attended this year’s London Book Fair.
Kirsty is a writer and artist who is autistic, LGBTQIA+ and disabled, specifically she is a wheelchair user and uses a powerchair. Kirsty attended the 2024 London Book Fair (LBF) in the hopes of learning how the field of publishing worked and how to get her work in front of publishers, and there was one event in particular that she wanted to attend. In her own words, “I specifically came to LBF on the [Day 3 of the fair] because of the panel with Katy Shaw, Michael Sheen, Farrah Storr, Tracey Markham, and Sunjeev Sahota precisely because it was about diversity and inclusion, and removing barriers to access for marginalised groups like myself.”
Unfortunately when Kirsty tried to attend this panel she found simply getting into the room was a barrier she wasn’t able to overcome. When she tried to attend the talk she was told that the only lift to the mainstage (where the talk was taking place), was out of service and that there was no wheelchair access available. Kirsty was directed to what the staff claimed was an accessible alternative, an area with a screen with wireless headphones where the talk could be watched. However she found the alternative woefully inadequate. Most of the headphones were not functioning and those that were quickly running out of battery and were quiet to the point of being practically unusable. Kirsty pointed out that this would have been less of an issue if the live feed had closed captioning available but this was not provided. And while there were British Sign Language(BSL) interpreters visible on the screen, for those not fluent BSL the talk remained inaccessible.
I asked Kirsty if she encountered any other accessibility issues while attending LBF and she told me that she was able to access all other parts of the fair and that Olympia London (the venue where LBF takes places) has always been a pretty accessible venue for her to attend. Ironically the one place at the fair that excluded disabled people like Kirsty was also the place hosting the talk on diversity and inclusion. What makes the situation even more ironic is the fact that at this very same panel, Maya Jordan’s debut memoir was announced. Maya, who is also a wheelchair user, was supposed to be in attendance for the announcement but was unable to make it to London due to accessibility issues relating to our national rail network that she details in her own blog here. The disappointing fact remains that even if she had made it to LBF she would have been excluded from her own book announcement by the same issues that Kirsty faced.
So what went wrong? According to LBF’s then director Gareth Rapley it was an unavoidable incident. In an email to Kirsty about her experience at LBF he said, “Unfortunately, very close to the first day of the Fair, we were informed by the Olympia venue team that a part for the lift that accesses the Main Stage area would be unavailable until later in the Spring, rendering the lift unoperational (sic) during the Fair itself. This was a frustrating development, especially given the efforts we have been putting in over the past few years to improve accessibility and the nature of the discussions on the Main Stage, but was totally out of our control.”
This response however only raises more questions. Why was such a crucial piece of information not known until so close to the beginning of the fair, why did it not come up earlier in the planning process? Why when LBF discovered that the mainstage would not be wheelchair accessible did they not communicate that information to attendees who needed wheelchair access, allowing them to adjust their plans or even request refunds? Why is the mainstage at one the biggest publishing events of the year in such an inaccessible location in the first place, one that is only reachable by stairs with no ramp or ground floor access? In a venue as vast as Olympia London was there really no accessible space where they could have set up the mainstage instead?
I put these questions to Rapley and he laid accountability for the matter squarely at the feet of Olympia London stating that renovations being carried out by the venue team, which LBF has no control over, had reduced the venue’s capacity this year. He also stated that they had spent nearly a year planning the layout and had been in constant communication with Olympia to ensure they were using parts of the venue that would be fully operational. He went on to say that “according to the plans shared with us by Olympia venue team, we understood that the Main Stage would be a fully accessible space. Once we discovered the lift was not operational we did look into fitting a ramp but unfortunately it was not feasible, especially given the tight time constraints” and that they were “very disappointed to be informed about this problem so close to the Fair, and finding out at such a late stage severely hampered our ability to make any changes.”
When I asked Olympia London about this situation they replied saying “Unfortunately, it was not possible to get the new lift operational in time for the event. Therefore, the venue worked with the event organiser to create an area on the show floor (that is fully accessible), so that anyone unable to access the room could watch the content streamed live”
As previously mentioned this fully accessible area had some significant failings. In response to those concerns Rapley stated that it was a new feature they were trialling and as such they experienced some teething issues both in its execution and how the information around the accessibility issues was communicated and that “this is something that we will look at closely in our planning for the next Fair.” He went on to say “We have been working hard with many industry stakeholders and the Olympia venue team to address the needs of all our visitors, and we will continue to work in dialogue with them to ensure that as many people as possible are able to access the Fair and make the most of our seminar programme.”
These vague allusions to doing better in the future are scant consolation to Kirsty who had her LBF experience ruined by not being able to achieve her main goal at the fair, seeing the one talk that was her whole reason for buying a ticket. As she put it “I was incredibly frustrated and upset. It takes a lot out of me to be able to attend events outside my home, it's exhausting, and leaves me stuck in bed for a day or so afterwards recovering, and usually it's worth the pain, but it was a kick in the gut to go to all that effort, expense, pain, and exhaustion, to not manage to achieve my goal.”
I’m reminded of what is often the main criticism of diversity inclusion panels, that no one is really listening, that for all the talk and good intentions real solutions and real change don’t often follow. Because how can it be that we are still in a place where an event can be planned for almost a year and something like this can still happen. Kirsty didn’t feel the response she got from LBF was particularly helpful or that the apology she received was good enough. When asked what she would like to happen going forward she said “what I really want is a genuine apology and an assurance that all staff involved will learn from the experience and not repeat the issue again - to keep access for all in mind at all times and to put in place checks to ensure that plans are verified as accessible in future, with contingency plans for issues on the day e.g. ‘if access to this location relies solely on a single lift, what happens if it breaks? Can we move to one of the other areas within the vast exhibition centre, perhaps one of the areas where other panels were taking place?’” She also noted in terms of the problems with alternative LBF came up with “When you have an ‘accessible’ alternative due to lack of normal access, then you need to ensure that it works for everyone.”
Yes, this incident seems to have been caused by a catastrophic failure of communication by the Olympia London venue team but LBF is also responsible for their own planning failures and for not having adequate contingency measures in place. The ideas Kirsty suggested for how this whole fiasco could have been avoided in the first place seem straightforward and workable and it goes to show why we need more disabled voices in every stage of planning and organisation of these events. Organisations need to acknowledge that just saying, “we’ll do better next time”, is not good enough when these problems keep happening. It’s not enough to just have the conversations, inclusivity and accessibility must be at the heart of every decision they make.
Actions speak louder than words