Tracy Martin: Over a million Irish people have a disability, but nowhere is accessible

Why are people with a disability or long-term condition faced with an obstacle course every time we leave the house, asks a frustrated Tracy Martin 

The country has grown shinier, more coffee shops, more apps, more ways to pay for parking, but the basics when you are disabled, the ramps, the doors, the toilets, the footpaths, are still stuck somewhere between 1987 and wishful thinking, writes Tracy Martin. Picture: File photo

More than 1.1 million people in Ireland — that's 22% of the population — are living with a disability or long-term condition. That figure from the most recent census has risen dramatically from 643,131 in 2016.

I have been in a wheelchair for 37 years, long enough to have watched Ireland grow up, modernise, digitalise, caffeinate itself to death, and still forget to put in ramps.