Stop using wheelchair-friendly fitting rooms as a storage space
The wheelchair-friendly fitting room at Mango on the Kalverstraat in Amsterdam
Wheelchair-friendly fitting rooms are those specifically designed for customers with limited mobility. More spacious than standard fitting rooms, this size allows wheelchair users to enter, exit, and manoeuvre independently. The space is not built for the purpose of storing stock or clothing racks — and yet I see this done all the time.
Mango on Kalverstraat 35 is one shop in Amsterdam repeatedly filling their fitting room to the brim. Not only does this shop use its wheelchair-friendly fitting room to store stock; clothing racks sometimes block a wheelchair user from entering at all. I’ve noticed this for years, every time I visit this particular shop.
On one occasion, I approached the shop manager to share my frustration. She told me they didn’t know where else to store things. The “solution”, she said, was that customers who use a wheelchair and need to use the fitting room can just “ask a member of staff for help”. A staff member then has to move everything out of the fitting room so that a wheelchair user can get in. “It’s full now,” another staff member added, “but we empty it if someone needs the space”.
I explained this simply isn’t good enough. Waiting for someone to “ask for help” is well-intentioned, but it completely misses the point. The point is that a space that has been built for wheelchair users is blocked off for wheelchair users. It’s demoralising and upsetting to pull back the curtain and find that disabled access has not been prioritised.
As a wheelchair user you want to be independent. You don’t want to be asking for help for the smallest things — especially not to use a space that was designed for you.
Wheelchair accessibility is not just about checking a box. It’s about having accessibility features that can be independently and properly used by wheelchair users. It’s about accessible facilities being ready for a wheelchair user at any moment. Wheelchair users shouldn’t be an afterthought, especially not in a “wheelchair-friendly” space.
