Disabled access a universal human right

William (Bill) Walsh Wrightson, disability access campaigner: b Wellington, May 11, 1949; m (1) Diane Glennie (diss), 2d, (2) Patricia Blatchford; d Wellington, April 5, 2017, aged 67.

Bill Wrightson was a man ahead of his time with a vision of a universally accessible world. He was a leading contributor to the discourse and advocacy of access issues in New Zealand, his premise being that access for disabled people was a human right.

Wrightson made it his life’s work to rail against discrimination for the disabled. He fought valiantly on reference groups, committees and wrote profusely on why the main entrance to a building should be useable by everyone. The idea of sending a disabled person to the side entrance or the back of a building while everyone else entered via the front door was abhorrent to him.

He was committed to doing his bit in making the building environment accessible for everyone and took every opportunity to educate others on the workings of legislation around access.

Wrightson was training to be a maths teacher when in 1971 a drunk driver ran a red light in Cuba St, Wellington, smashing into his car. The accident left Wrightson with tetraplegia. He was never bitter about his injury and was determined to make the most of his life.

With no ACC back then, he knew he would have to work. New Zealand in the early 1970s was a hostile environment for those with disabilities and he decided early on to get involved at a practical level to make it more friendly, not only for the disabled, but for parents with prams and older, less mobile people in an ageing population.

He completed his training as a primary school teacher but after two terms gave up the profession and headed to Massey University, where he worked as a research assistant in the education faculty.

He went on to work initially for Crippled Children’s Society (now CCS Disability Action) running its Barrier Free programme, which he directed for eight years. He was behind the conception of the Barrier Free New Zealand Trust, which he chaired for seven years till his death.

He advised the Building Industry Authority and the Disabled Persons Assembly of NZ on mandatory compliance with access requirements and was a member of the Department of Building and Housing Access Advisory Panel.

In 1988 he set up his own consulting practice specialising in access.

He travelled in Europe and the United States promoting his disability access cause in speeches at conferences.

He went on to complete a Master of Building Science in Architecture 1996 and had begun a PhD before his death.

Bill Wrightson grew up in Tawa, the older of two sons to Derrik, a parliamentary secretary, and Eleanor, a home maker. At Tawa Primary School and later Rongotai College he was a keen sportsman, playing rugby and cricket.

When asked how, as a keen sportsman, he found new forms of recreation after his accident, he replied

"The stigma around disabilities heightens the trauma for a person facing this change in their life." Bill Wrightson

drily: ‘‘The role of spectator has just as much validity as playing sport. Would the All Blacks be quite so interested in going out to play rugby if there were no spectators watching them?’’

In his role as advocate for those with disabilities he presented the TV show Get Together, which covered a series of topics related to hassle-free housing for the disabled, for three years from 1995.

At the time he told The Dominion that there was a lot of fear and misunderstanding surrounding disabilities that needed to be addressed.

‘‘The stigma around disabilities heightens the trauma for a person facing this change in their life. Some of that can be avoided through better information and knowledge about how people with disabilities live.’’

Wrightson, who in 2008 was made a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to people with disabilities, met and married Patricia in 1983. As his caregiver for more than 30 years she said she was truly amazed at what her husband had achieved in his lifetime.

‘‘It was all the more remarkable when I consider what was involved in just getting up each day. We often laughed that people wouldn’t know the half of it.’’

Wrightson, whose legacy of making public spaces accessible can be seen all over New Zealand, including Te Papa and Wellington and Christchurch Hospitals, Government House and Wellington City Council, is survived by his wife, two daughters and three grandchildren. By Bess Manson

Sources: The Dominion, Patricia Wrightson, Lorraine Guthrie.