Excellent wheelchair access, friendly staff
4.5
4.5
Date of visit: June 2024
I am a disabled person. I have experience of challenges around: accessing toilets and moving around.
I use or have experience of: disabled toilet
Overall Rating
Excellent
A good optician shop in the heart of London's West End. Mainly excellent for wheelchair access, and charming staff. Recommended.
Disabled Access In and Around
Excellent
The shop is step-free at the entrance and throughout. There is a lift to all floors. Navigation for people using the lift has not been thought through properly. When I emerged from the lift in the basement floor, I was confronted with half a dozen closed doors, and no signage. This was bewildering and unhelpful. A sign is needed directing customers from the lift to the public waiting area/reception desk. I mentioned this to the delightful optometrist and he promptly informed the manager, so I feel confident that by the time you read this some decent signage will have been organised.
Parking & Transport
Excellent
The nearest step-free station is Tottenham Court Road. Bond Street, a little further away, is also step-free and reasonably convenient. Billions of buses pass along Oxford Street and will drop you off practically outside the shop.
Accessible Toilets
Average
There is a very good accessible toilet, but it has two big flaws: (1) The corridor leading to it is very narrow, has insufficient space for turning and, when I visited, it was cluttered with piles of plastic crates, which a friendly member of staff had to move elsewhere. (2) The accessible toilet cubicle was being used as a storage area for large boxes. They obstructed the space and made it impossible to turn around in the toilet. The staff do not realise that an accessible toilet is emphatically NOT a store-room: the spaciousness is designed into it because wheelchair users need room to turn and manoeuvre. I struggled, and had to emerge backwards when I had finished.
Staff
Good
All the staff I met were charming, friendly and bent over backwards to be helpful. One star lost for whoever decided that an accessible toilet is a storage area.
Additional Information
All the spectacle frames on the ground floor are expensive. To find more affordable frames, go to the first floor. Nobody tells you this, and the first floor seems a well-kept secret.
