Tell us a bit about yourself Sophie
I started my life as a disabled person trying to figure things out. There was a shift for me between the world that I had been living in before and the one I was now living in as a wheelchair user. There were barriers everywhere, and the last 22 years, 23 years this summer, has been about unlearning and relearning how to overcome and live with them.
It’s been an extraordinary journey, full of many, many challenges and many, many amazing experiences.
I stumbled into television just six or seven months after my injury. I did an expedition with the BBC called Beyond Boundaries, a TV show that followed 12 disabled people as we crossed from one side of Nicaragua to the other.
It was an amazing wake-up call as to what was possible with travel, what wasn’t possible with travel, which environments would allow me to exist and thrive, and which environments were just absolutely not possible for me anymore.
Why have you decided to get involved as a judge for the Travel for Every Body Awards?
I think it’s really important to celebrate best practice, especially around accessible travel. At the moment we’re seeing more and more people step into this space, which is fantastic, but we really need to single out those who are doing it with the right intentions and doing it in the right way.
It’s really important to to check in where the industry’s at, celebrate those people that are doing well and then hopefully continue to draw attention to this subject; to make the travel industry realise that this is something that is important and beneficial for everybody.
As a judge, I’m looking for individuals, businesses, destinations, and others who have gone just that step beyond the standards of accessibility that we can now hope to expect.
For me, success looks like an environment where everybody feels welcome, so my standards are high and my expectations are high. I think we’re at a place now where we can – and we should – expect a lot, so that’s what I’ll be doing.
How has your TV career enabled you to help represent the narratives of people with disabilities?
Television has the power to shift narratives and perceptions around disability.
It took me around a decade to get into television full time as a presenter and in that time I did a couple of documentaries. One was about driving, which I did because I had a car crash myself. I wanted to learn what was happening with young drivers and why so many of us were crashing not long after we passed our test.
I also did a documentary about disability abuse in Ghana in West Africa. Then the Paralympics came to London and I was a part of the broadcast team for Channel 4. Then about four years later I got recruited to be one of the lead anchors of the Rio Games, and that’s where my career in TV kind of started.
I recently moved over to the U.S., where I presented the Paralympics for NBC.
Can you talk a bit more about your campaign ‘Rights on Flights’?
Two or three years ago my wheelchair was broken by an airline. At the time I was working on national television on a live chat show and I talked about what had happened to me. Afterwards, I was inundated with messages from other people in my community saying this had happened to them too.
I realised that my story was really just the tip of the iceberg.
What I wanted to try and do was to ask the government if they would protect us when airlines fail us, and I asked if they would increase the penalties and the fines.
That’s why I started a campaign called ‘Rights on Flights’ which looks at air travel and the inequities in that space. I made a documentary about it last year too.
And that’s the campaign I have been running now, to a degree of success, for the last few years – but it’s really hard. The airline industry is incredibly resistant. They really don’t want to change. I’m not the first campaigner, nor will I be the last to highlight this problem.
The campaign is made up of a group of people that come together and we talk about what we can do. Some are experts in policy, others in legislation, or perhaps the design of the aircraft.
It’s taken me all over the world, to look at some of the places that are doing good work, some of the places that are just really falling behind, and to consider what we can do collectively to try and improve things.
In your capacity as a travel writer, do you believe the industry is generally innovative or forward thinking?
The world is becoming increasingly accessible. I get inundated with people messaging me saying “could you come and write about this place”. There’s so many wonderful places doing incredible things.
There is much more work to be done, but all over the world there are incredible examples of people innovating in accessibility and creating new and exciting ways to welcome people with disabilities in every form. It’s a really exciting time.
Every time I get the privilege of visiting another place where I see these barriers being removed in some capacity, my bar gets higher. I now know what best practice looks like. I now know what it feels like to be surrounded by people, for example, who’ve had disability awareness training and inclusivity training and language training. And on top of that, they have made their environment really accessible.
But having this privilege creates responsibility and that’s why I love this opportunity to be able to encourage the industry to do better and to showcase the best practice, so that they can see what’s possible and the impact it has. And also to broaden people’s perspective of what disability travel looks like and what disabled travellers can do.
Back when I was injured over 20 years ago, I would never have thought that I would have been able to travel the way that I do. Certainly not as a solo female wheelchair user.
What’s your advice for travel agents who have clients with accessibility needs? How can they make sure that their needs will be met?
If you’re a travel agent or travel advisor and you are looking to work with people in the accessibility space, the best thing that you can do is remove your idea of what accessibility means. Remove your unconscious bias. Don’t have any expectations. Communicate with that human being about what they need.
Accessibility is so relative, it’s so subjective. What is accessible for me and another wheelchair user could be completely different. So the best thing that you can do is apply your expertise and your knowledge as a travel organiser. Just say, ‘what is it that you need?’ ‘How can I create the perfect itinerary for you?’ ‘Specifically, what is it that you want to be able to do?’.
The other challenge is to find providers that you know you can trust. The only way you can do that is research – unfortunately there is no quick fix. You have to get on the ground or send people you trust on the ground to visit. Really check the spaces that you’re sending people to.
The best way that you can do that is to create checklists and build a database of trusted providers. You need to get hotels to send you comprehensive pictures of their rooms and keep that on your database – and get it refreshed every year.
You don’t need to be an expert; we are experts in our own disabilities. You’re experts in travel, so let’s meet in the middle.
Do you have any messages for travel providers, whether that’s a message of encouragement or just to do better?
We don’t need to be perfect. This concept of fully accessible is problematic. What we actually need to do is provide detailed, granular information about what we have.
Say you’re a tour operator and you’ve organised an itinerary, what you need to be able to do for someone like me is show me pictures of the vehicles that you use. Show me pictures of the entrances into some of the spaces that we’d be staying or show me some of the terrain I might have to go over. I will then decide if that works for me and if it doesn’t, let me have a conversation with you. Invite that conversation.
What I want to encourage the industry to do is not to get bogged down in trying to meet real perfection. Just show me what you have in detail and give me agency and permission to tell you what will work for me. If we need to find a solution together, we can.
Maybe it is buying more equipment, training your staff or creating an access guide on your website. Help us know and then we can help you to meet our needs.
We’d quickly break down barriers if we started to think that way as opposed to trying to be perfect before inviting any disabled guests into this space. I’ve been to places that are not accessible but have worked for me in the best way possible because the people on the ground were open-minded to facilitating my needs.
Remove the fear and provide information. It’s not a lot. It’s not an option. It’s a necessity.
Enter the awards here: travelforeverybody.com
