Two Hotels In One Building

St. Giles Wembly Hotel and Cititel Express were opened in Penang recently. Both hotels occupied the same building. St. Giles Wembly's entrance is at Magazine Road (Jalan Magazine) and Cititel Express's entrance is at Noordin Street (Lebuh Noordin). (See map below.)

The ramp to enter St. Giles Wembly is as shown in the photo below. The ramp appeared to be steep and there is only handrail at one side of the ramp.

The ramp to enter Cititel Express are shown in the photos below.

The multi-storey car park has a few accessible car parks and one of them was located next to the lift. (Photo below.)

The accessible toilet at St. Giles Wembly was located at the lobby and could be found easily. It was big and bright and quite expensively docorated. The only thing I didn't like was the location of the basin. (See photos below.) It is not good for people who use side-transfer.

The accessible toilet of Cititel Express was quite a distance from the lobby and hidden behind a wooden door. A friendly receptionist led me all the way to the toilet. We had to go up a ramp and then past a long corridor before we could reach it. Then we found that the toilet was locked and she could not locate the person who had the key. I ended up using the one at St. Giles Wembly.

I encountered an irritating problem when I was at the hotels. The floor from one part of the building to another part are often not jointed smoothly. The small front wheels of my wheelchair got stuck a few times and I had to "reverse" (moving back to front) so that I could use the big hind wheels to overcoming the problems. Here are some photos to illustrate my point.

Conclusion: All new buildings in Penang are beginning to have facilities for wheelchair users. This is a good trend. But the designs of these facilities still have room for further improvements.

No Disabled Access: Farquhar Mansion

I phoned Farquhar Masion 10 minutes ago and was told that the place is NOT wheelchair friendly. This post is for disabled people who may want to go there.

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

No I wasn't referring to the famous movie by Clint Eastwood. I was referring to my impressions when I visited the new Royale Bintang Hotel of Penang on Jan 7, 2015.

The good thing about this hotel is that there were attempts to make the premise wheelchair friendly. It has a step-ramp at the main entrance. And I had no problem moving around inside the hotel. (See photos below.)

The bad thing is the hotel's accessible toilet. When I entered the toilet I was very surprised to see that the toilet floor is about 15 mm lower than the floor outside. That posed a problem when I wanted to leave the toilet. The small wheels in front of my wheelchair were unable to overcome the 15 mm height step. I had to reverse my wheelchair and exit back to front. (See photo below.)

The grab bar in the toilet was fixed in a wrong direction. I cannot understand how the designer could make such a fundamental error I really could not understand. (See photo below.) (Please refer to my post about designing an accessible toilet if you want to know how grab-bars should be fixed. The link is HERE.)

And what is the ugly thing -- keeping cleaning equipment in the accessible toilet. Imagine a foreign visitor entering the toilet. What will he or she thinks of this hotel or even Penang. Can't the hotel allocate a dedicated room for such storage and not use the accessible toilet to store such stuff.

Old Ramp, New Ramp

I wrote a post about a very steep ramp (see above photo) on 4 Aug 2014 (see link HERE). The authority reacted promptly by building a much better ramp beside the old one. I wish to thank the authority for taking prompt action. Here are some photos I took of the new ramp.

Greetings To All My Readers

They Did Hear Us.

In Nov 2012, I wrote that Penang State Museum And Art Gallery did not have wheelchair access (see link HERE), I am happy to say that it now has. I was told by one of their staff  that a ramp and an accessible toilet were added not long after my post was published. I wish to thank the authority for listening to the voice of disabled persons. I visited the place yesterday (Dec 14, 2014) and here is my short report.

The new and beautifully designed ramp is at the left side of the gallery compound. I like this ramp because it has a gentle slope, good width and non-slip floor. It also has a pair of well-designed handrails. It would be perfect if it has edge protection at both sides of the ramp. But as a whole it is still a safe ramp to use.

The photo below shows a ramp with edge protection. The purpose of edge protection is to prevent small front wheels of wheelchairs from slipping off the ramp.

I had no problem locating the accessible toilet. There were clear signages to indicate its location. The toilet is reasonably good and it is useable for most wheelchair users. I was surprised to see that the door opening inwards. But since the toilet is very big, I had no problem turning my wheelchair around to close the door.

The toilet bowl was correctly placed. There was enough space for people who use side transfers. (See this video if you want to know what is side transfer.) For more information about accessible toilet, please click HERE.

But I was disappointed to see that grab bars. They were not installed properly. Here is a drawing showing how grab bars should be installed. For more information about please click the link HERE.

After the visit, I concluded that although the Penang government wants to have more disabled access, the quality of access design is still lacking. Malaysian Standards have clear specifications for disabled access, but many designers are still unable to follow the standards correctly. There may be a need for the authority to organise more training sessions to help more people understand the subtleties and requirements of disabled access standards.

Helping Wheelchair Users - Three Points To Remember

A lot of people do not know how help wheelchair users. I am giving three importants tips here. Of course there are many more but let's start with these very important points first.