Bar and restaurant managers should be given shopping trolleys

Reading the article by Nick Bishop, who has cerebral palsy, on coping with getting around bars and restaurants, I found myself nodding in agreement (a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/jan/10/disability.longtermcare">How am I supposed to get up there?, January 10).

My disability is very different to Nick's - I'm paraplegic. However, many of our challenges are the same, because we both have to spend most of the day sitting in a contraption with four wheels. So when he talked about the "frustrating everyday obstacles", I know exactly where he's coming from.

I use a manual wheelchair (which means I push it myself). During rehab they taught me a nifty trick where you can flick up the front wheels and balance on the rear ones, while travelling forwards. The front wheels clear the kerb or step, and the forward momentum with an extra push means you sail up on to the pavement. Get it right and you look like a pro; get it wrong and you tip over backwards and crack your head on the concrete. I use this technique to get myself into many bars, restaurants and shops. But it only really works if there is only one step, and not much higher than a couple of inches. Anything higher is risking injury, especially as you have to take it at speed.

I can't imagine Nick doing this. His electric wheelchair is considerably heavier than mine and not capable of the same acrobatics. I winced when I read that his carer sometimes lifts him up a couple of steps - I wonder what his or her chiropractic bills are like. He also mentions that sometimes his friends "heave [his] wheelchair up a step or two". Like he says, great at the beginning of the night when they're sober, but a minefield when they've got a few pints inside them.

The biggest problem, as Nick pointed out, is not that people don't care about access; they just don't know what is sufficient. As he described in the article, staff are all too willing to do what they can, but often they just don't have the tools (such as a suitable ramp) at their disposal. It's pretty hard to put yourself in the shoes of a wheelchair user, to know exactly what our challenges are and then design a restaurant around it.

So here's my suggestion for the hospitality industry. Have a look at any supermarket. Apart from some irrelevant issues concerning the availability of disabled parking outside, you'll see how it's done. And it's pretty obvious why that is - every single one of their customers uses a four-wheeled contraption to gather their shopping.

If restaurants really want to know what it's like for a wheelchair user, they should send their manager to a local supermarket and get him to push a week's supplies all the way back in a heavily laden trolley. Kerbs, potholes, parked cars, public transport, the lot. Oh, and once they get back, I'm sure they'll need to answer a call of nature, so they should attempt to take the trolley into the toilet and see if the door will close.

Although the logistics of getting around make us wheelchair users different from other people, essentially we just crave normality. Going to a restaurant or bar where I'm not reminded of that difference is a pleasure, and I'm happy to spend my money there.