Source A: The width of a welcome

An original contemporary non-fiction-style practice text, written for this question.

‘Can we get there?’ Ellen asked.

She was looking towards the pharmacy, less than two hundred metres away. Between us and its green door stood a waste bin, a delivery cage, three café tables, a portable sign and a van with two wheels on the pavement. None of these objects appeared permanent. Together, they made a wall.

I had joined Ellen to examine access along our high street. I expected to discuss ramps, automatic doors and the measurements used by planners. Those things matter, but I had imagined accessibility as something installed once, like a fire alarm: a feature of a building, inspected by an expert and then forgotten by everyone else.

We moved forwards. At the first café, chairs had spread beyond the roped area. The manager apologised and pulled them back. Outside the bakery, a driver said the delivery cage would be there for ‘only five minutes’. Beside the crossing, bags had been stacked around the bin because its container was full. Each obstruction was temporary. So, unfortunately, was the next clear stretch of pavement.

Ellen did not deliver an angry speech. She kept having to calculate. Could her wheelchair pass between the sign and the kerb? Was there enough room to turn if somebody came the other way? Would the van move before the rain became heavier? The street that I crossed without thought required from her a chain of small predictions.

This was the most uncomfortable part of the morning: I recognised some of the decisions. At a charity book sale the previous month, I had placed a folding table outside the community hall. It had looked welcoming. I had not measured what remained of the path. I had been so pleased with the entrance I had created that I failed to notice whom it might exclude.

People often defend an obstruction by describing its purpose. The sign helps customers. The table raises money. The van carries essential supplies. These explanations may be true, but a useful object can still be in the wrong place. Good intentions do not widen a pavement.

By the time we reached the pharmacy, several people had helped. The café manager rearranged the tables. The driver moved the cage into the loading area. A shop worker carried the portable sign indoors. Later, the council agreed to empty the bin more frequently and repair a section of broken paving near the crossing. No action was heroic. That was precisely the point.

Yet kindness alone is not a system. A route that depends on a stranger noticing, apologising and moving something is not reliably accessible. Ellen should not have to collect favours in order to buy medicine. Businesses need routines for deliveries and displays. Event organisers need to check the space they leave, not merely the space they use. Councils need to maintain surfaces and provide places where bins, bicycles and vehicles can stand without taking the pedestrian route. Residents need to treat a clear pavement as shared space, not spare space.

The physical obstacles were easy to photograph. The habits behind them were harder to see because each belonged to a different person and seemed too small to matter. But exclusion can be assembled from ordinary actions: one sign, one table, one five-minute delivery at a time.

On our return, the route was not perfect, but it was passable. Ellen repeated her first question: ‘Can we get there?’ This time I heard the pronoun differently. The question was not whether she could overcome the street we had made. It was whether we had made a street that allowed all of us to move through it.

Accessibility is often measured in widths, slopes and distances. It is also measured in attention. A public place offers a genuine welcome only when each person accepts that the space left for others is partly their responsibility.