England’s 4-1 Ashes loss has triggered a post tour review in London yet one of the more striking takeaways from the summer has nothing to do with swing bowling.
A visiting journalist with muscular dystrophy has written that travelling around Australia while covering the series was, in many moments, simpler than he expected.
The England and Wales Cricket Board says its thorough review will look at tour planning and preparation, individual performance and behaviours, and the team’s ability to adapt as circumstances change.
Against that backdrop, freelance journalist Charles Reynolds used a first person account to describe the practical side of following an away Ashes with a disability.
He wrote that he approached the trip with anxiety about logistics, only to find the day to day reality often felt too easy.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates 5.5 million Australians, or 21.4% of the population, had disability in 2022.
This scale means the quality of accessibility affects workforce participation, service delivery and household budgets as well as the attractiveness of towns and cities to visitors.
The federal transport department notes that the Disability Standards for Accessible Public Transport are made under the Disability Discrimination Act and set requirements for operators and providers to make services accessible and remove discrimination.
It says the standards took effect on 23 October 2002 and apply across train, tram, bus and coach, ferry, taxi and aviation services.
A usable platform is not much help if an interchange has no functioning lift, if the taxi rank is difficult to access or if a venue has limited seating options that can sell out early.
The department’s guidance talks about designing for the whole journey pushing providers to think beyond minimum compliance and towards end to end reliability.
Travellers with disability along with older visitors and families are more likely to choose destinations where accessibility is predictable rather than improvised.
Austrade has been promoting accessible tourism within the visitor economy including projects aimed at increasing recruitment of people with disability into tourism jobs.
In February 2025, the federal social services portfolio announced funding of up to 100% of eligible accessible infrastructure for projects in national parks, beaches and play spaces including portable Changing Places facilities and items such as beach wheelchairs and accessible pathways.
Older buildings, uneven footpaths and patchy regional services can still turn a simple outing into a complex plan. But Reynolds’ experience, shared at the end of a high profile sporting tour, underlines what good access looks like when it works, travel that feels ordinary.
Under the current transport standards, the final compliance deadline for trains and trams is the end of 2032.
