Toilet chronicles: Where is the accessible toilet situated?

Why the toilet? You might be tempted to ask. For others, it may not be the first place that comes to mind when they leave home; when they meet someone in a hotel; in a school, a public place, literally everywhere the toilet is found. But for many women with disabilities, the toilet becomes an extremely important place. It is a place where a woman with a disability’s dignity is upheld; or it is the place where her dignity is stripped away, completely. Not just any toilet. But an accessible toilet. 

How did this conversation actually start? Remember a while back we wrote about Jane who had travelled for over 15 hours but because there was no cabin wheelchair inflight, using the toilet became one of her worst nightmares. She was asked, ‘must you use the toilet?’ 

Read here: https://advocacynetwork.blogspot.com/2025/07/flying-as-woman-with-disability-and.html

This time round, this is how it began. Rose narrated about this man who was a guide to his wife who is blind and had to get into the ‘Women’ toilet. In the toilet, and possibly shocked, a lady user asked the man, ‘what are you doing in the women’s toilet?’ Rose, her advocacy instincts high, quickly interjected, ‘don’t you think he knows what he is doing? He is guiding his wife who is blind.”

This was the start of our ‘WhatsApp toilet conversations’, and we decided, why not actually write something about this 😊 Read on:

The sensitivities of the public toilet

The thing about our context and toilets, is that we have ‘Male’ toilets, and ‘Female’ toilets, and lastly, the one accessible toilet that has a symbol of the wheelchair at the door. This accessible toilet is meant to serve both men and women with disabilities. Often, we have asked the question, is it that the person with a disability has no gender? Rose also added, ‘is it that people with disabilities go to the toilet one after another, hence the reason it's just one?’ Mmh

Note that we come into this discussion, aware, that there are places where people are welcome to use the toilet they feel most welcome (without considering gender) but where a wheelchair accessible toilet is still situated. These are not more common in our context.

A change is happening

We have started to see public places that are starting to situate the wheelchair accessible toilet within either the Male or Female toilets, which we believe should be standard as it avoids this feeling where people with disabilities are assumed to not exist within either of the ‘genders.’  

Our post today, is also asking much more than, where is the accessible toilet situated? We thought also to speak to our opening, what happens when someone’s assistant is the opposite gender and they, like the man at the beginning of our post, have to accompany someone to the toilet of the other gender? 

Millie brought in this really interesting perspective. 

Care for women with disabilities

Our contextual reality, in a world where economic pressures are increasing each minute, most women with disabilities are not able to hire support personnel. What it means then, is that spouses or children become the default support. They are the ones able to respond to the women with disabilities’ care needs even when they lack resources to pay them on short notice. 

As such, the probability that a support person would be male is quite high, where they happen to be spouses or sons. This may then mean, that it is the man that may be guiding a woman into the ‘Ladies toilet’ and whereas it may come as a surprise to other female users, it becomes a point for us to raise, that it is a reality. 

Are we proposing anything? Not really. It is an invitation to think with us, that when we speak about how we exist together in our diversities, that sometimes we come across things that makes us think in a different way; that things are not always straightforward when it comes to the human condition.

What must happen? 

We have been to many public spaces where the accessible toilet is locked, with a notice requiring that one asks for the keys from an administrator!  We also know public spaces where the accessible toilet is used as a storage room. It makes it extremely difficult for users with disabilities to use the toilet when they are converted to storage rooms. This action is often perpetuated by the people who clean the public toilets, stripping off the accessibility that was the original intent.

There are so many other narrations about the toilet from our members. There is one where a hotel had to break down a door so our colleague, a wheelchair user could actually access the toilet!

There is a lot that must happen. We come from the premise that when the accessible toilet is available, someone’s dignity is upheld. Therefore, in all spaces we occupy, we are invited to think about the existence of the accessible toilet. And not just its existence, but that it follows standard accessibility guidelines; that it upholds someone’s dignity - considering the narrations, many not highlighted here, about difficulties that accompany inaccessible toilets.

Now that we are also in the middle of festivities with so much travelling, parties and visits to unfamiliar territories, the toilet might just be the thing that stops the woman with disability from partying, something that many of us are enjoying during this festive season!

What is your toilet story? 

Compiled by Elizabeth and Mildred