Step-free access ends at the ticket page

Most venues have spent money on ramps and lifts while leaving the hardest barrier where it has always been, in the buying process.

The lift works. The platform is level. The steward knows the route. And the supporter never got there, because buying the ticket required a phone call to a line open four hours a day, staffed by one person, opening on the same morning as general sale.

Access provision in stadiums is measured almost entirely in physical infrastructure, because physical infrastructure is what regulations describe and what photographs well. The purchasing path is barely regulated at all, and it is where most people actually fall out of the process.

Consider what a disabled supporter is often asked to do that nobody else is. Prove eligibility with documentation, sometimes annually, sometimes to a standard that assumes a permanent and legible condition. Book by a channel separate from the main sale window. Nominate a companion in advance, by name. Accept that the seat cannot be transferred if plans change. Any one of these would be tolerable. Stacked, they amount to a parallel system with worse hours, fewer options and more paperwork, running alongside a self-service website that everyone else uses in ninety seconds at midnight.

Clubs will say the verification exists to stop abuse of free companion tickets, and that is a real problem with a real cost. Fine. Verify once, hold the record, and stop making somebody re-prove a lifelong condition every August. Several venues have moved to a shared access card scheme precisely to end this, and the sky has not fallen.

There is a further layer that gets forgotten because it is not about wheelchairs at all. Ambulant disabled supporters, people who can walk but not queue or stand for long, are the largest group and the least catered for, because they need aisle seats, short walking distances and somewhere to sit on the concourse, none of which appear as a line item in an access audit. Sensory provision has the same problem: a quiet room is cheap, and a venue either has thought about it or has not.

So here is the test I would apply to any club claiming its ground is accessible. Not the lift. Not the platform.

Can a disabled supporter buy a ticket at the same hour, on the same website, with the same number of clicks as anybody else? If the answer involves a phone number, the ground is not accessible. It is merely ramped.