How do you go open water swimming if you’re blind or in a wheelchair?

11th June 2025

bbc.co.uk/accessall

Access All – episode 163

Presented by Emma Tracey

EMMA-         Hello, I’m Emma Tracey, and in the spirit of starting the Access All podcast with a positive story, Jo Bestoni from Wessex Stoma Support Group is here. Now Jo, what have you lot been up to of a Sunday lunchtime?

JO-                We’ve been having fun splashing about in the pool. We’ve been doing swimming for stoma patients, and this is lots of fun because it helps us to develop the confidence to get fit again after our stomas.

EMMA-         Jo, what is a stoma?

JO-                A stoma is surgery to remove a section of the bowel, and then twist it so that the bowel comes out in the middle of the abdomen. It’s covered with a stoma pouch that collects poo material, which is then collected in the pouch which we have to change on a regular basis.

EMMA-         And you have a stoma yourself, Jo?

JO-                I do have a stoma, yes. Having a stoma can be quite isolating, so it’s really important and nice to get together with other stoma patients for mutual support and to share our stories and our problems, and for a nice way to get fit, because it can be difficult at first.

EMMA-         Yeah. But why is it stoma only sessions then, why not have people with a stoma along with lots of other people? Because it’s a public pool, isn’t it?

JO-                People can be embarrassed about getting undressed and worry about the changing rooms, and feeling confident about wearing a swimming costume.

EMMA-         And what do you have to think about when you have a stoma and you’re going swimming in terms of how to fit it under the swimwear or alongside it, and then also whether the pouch is going to stay on with all that time in that chlorinated water?

JO-                Underneath our swimming costumes we’re wearing a stoma pouch and possibly also a hernia support belt, because a lot of us can develop hernias under our stomas, so we need that support. People can feel sensitive about things looking a bit lumpy and bumpy, so it’s very nice to be with other stoma sufferers and we can all have a laugh about it and understand and give each other some support.

EMMA-         Jo, we had someone on the programme once who said that a big tip for them around their stoma and their stoma pouch was putting mouthwash in it. Have you ever heard of that? And do you have a very big tip for people seeing as you are now a bit more used to your own stoma?

JO-                I haven’t heard of the mouthwash one. But I have heard of putting a little bit of oil inside it to make it slippery.

EMMA-         Why?

JO-                So that everything falls down easily into the bottom of the pouch.

EMMA-         Oh, so put a bit of oil right into the exit point, into the stoma itself. Do you do that?

JO-                Yes, sometimes I have done. I’ve found using the stoma pouches much easier than I would have feared. So we get into the habit of it, we get used to it and we live with it, and I can still get fit and I can meet other people just like me.

EMMA-         It sounds like you’re really passionate about it, Jo. Thank you so much for telling us how you’re making a big splash with your stoma swimming sessions, and now let’s plunge right in to the rest of the podcast.

JO-                [Laughs] Thank you.

EMMA-         Jo, you’re a superstar, I could talk to you all day.

MUSIC-         Theme music.

EMMA-         Hello, I’m Emma Tracey and this is Access All, the weekly podcast that paddles you through the often unpredictable disability and mental health waters. You can contact us, accessall@bbc.co.uk is the email, or you can send me a WhatsApp: 0330 123 9480. And if you haven’t already done so, please do subscribe to us, press that big button on BBC Sounds. Later in the show I’ll be speaking to Dr Grace Spence Green who became a wheelchair user when a man fell on her from two floors up in a shopping centre. It’s a fascinating story and she’s written a book about it, and she tells me all about that later on.

But first [the sound of waves breaking] summer is here, which means that we might find a couple of weeks in the next couple of months where we want to swim somewhere other than a crowded pool in our local leisure centre, and we might even want to do some sunbathing as well. But of course for us disabled people always the way, it’s not quite as easy as all that. Have you ever heard a talking buoy or a beeping buoy to hear where the safe bits are in the water if you can’t see? Have you ever tried to get on a beach in your wheelchair and struggled with the sand? Course you have. Now listen, I have two people with me, I’ve got a wheelchair using paddleboarder expert, Will Behenna, and I’ve also got a PhD student, Sadie Rockcliffe, who are on a mission to make swimming in open water and getting out onto and into the water easier for disabled people. And they’re here to tell me all about it, hello both.

SADIE-          Hello.

WILL-           Hi.

EMMA-         You’re both really welcome. This is a subject very close to my heart, open water swimming, I do bang on about it, so please do tell me to shush if I’m getting a bit too excited. Let’s here a bit more about you both first. Will, off your own bat you have launched an access survey, a survey for disabled people to ask what people want from beaches, what they’ve seen on beaches that they like, trying to get people who are wheelchair users or who have other physical impairments more access to the beach and to the water. Why are you so passionate about this, what’s your story?

WILL-           I grew up down in Cornwall by the sea and spent most of my time when the sun was shining in the school holidays on the beach playing and enjoying the beach and the water. I had a spinal injury from a cycling accident which meant that I became then a full-time wheelchair user from the age of 16, and being on the water has always been my kind of therapy, my comfortable space, whether that’s on the rivers or the sea or the lake. I still can’t quite believe that after 36 years of being injured I’m now starting to bang on about beach access, but it’s just become more and more obvious to me that we are not doing as good a job as we could do improving access to the beach and blue spaces for people with a whole range of different medical, mental health conditions and disabilities.

EMMA-         Sadie, tell me a bit more about your project?

SADIE-          I’m doing a PhD at the University of Brighton and we’re looking at the sensory inequalities and access to blue space, with particular emphasis on those people with visual impairment.

EMMA-         So blue space just means watery spaces, places where there’s water?

SADIE-          Yes. Natural watery surfaces: oceans; rivers; lakes; and seas.

EMMA-         With wheelchair users there’s steps, there’s sand, there’s all these obvious things to think about, Sadie, but with blind and visually impaired people often our arms and legs do work. So what are the barriers for blind and visually impaired people in terms of getting access to open water like beaches and lakes and seas and rivers and stuff?

SADIE-          A lot of the safety equipment, a lot of the directional equipment, are visual based. So you might have safety signs out and about that don’t actually have any audio with them, so people are not aware about what they might be signifying, how the water’s behaving, where and when you can swim. There’s also directional signs that may not have braille, no audios, that makes it difficult. Or even pathways as well that don’t consider people with visual impairments to be able to get down to that water’s edge. And this can go all the way back to the infrastructure and the transport side as well, just being able to get down to a local blue space environment.

EMMA-         I do find that that is a thing with wild or open water swimming, there is lots of people willing to take myself and my husband for a lift, but it is another thing to add to your list and to worry about whether you’ll actually get there at high tide and when there’s a good time for swimming. Which is actually another point, isn’t it, Sadie, you don’t always know where the water is because things can change, weather can change.

SADIE-          Yes, yeah absolutely, blue spaces are inherently dynamic. Potentially slightly less so in rivers and lakes, although of course you’ve got currents and tides as well. But particularly in ocean and sea environments where it changes hour-to-hour. So it’s about being able to put the infrastructure in place to be able to enable people to be able to get down and enjoy those blue spaces.

EMMA-         Will, why are people so excited about getting onto the water, whether it be swimming or on a paddleboard?

WILL-           For me it’s about independence, it gives you that feeling of freedom, you’re just floating, and that’s a very unique experience that lots of other activities don’t do. There is also a really strong water community. When you get together with a group of people on the water, there is an inherent want to talk and communicate and to share, and for me that’s been a real driver and why I use the water as almost like a form of therapy.

EMMA-         So what are the barriers, Will, from your experience with the people that you’ve worked with and with yourself to beaches and other open water?

WILL-           The main one is it’s around connecting parking, accessible parking, which obviously then links into public transport. It’s looking at accessible toilet changing facilities. And then adequate pathways that can then lead you down to the water’s edge. Now obviously on a lake or in a river, that might not involve sand, but on a beach environment where you’ve got stones and loose material, that makes it incredibly challenging.

EMMA-         I mean there is matting and stuff, isn’t there, and there are boardwalks. How accessible are UK beaches, do they have that stuff in place?

WILL-           If you compare it to countries in the mediterranean like Spain and Greece, we’re an incredibly long way behind. We do have some specific challenges in the UK, obviously our weather isn’t as good as the mediterranean, we have tides and significant tides, so in Devon and Cornwall it can be kind of challenging. But we need to come up with some innovative solutions, whether that’s matting or more boardwalks, or maybe different equipment like beach wheelchairs, but it needs to be coordinated, it needs to be brought together, because just putting the odd beach wheelchair on a beach doesn’t meet everyone’s needs.

EMMA-         How many fully accessible beaches are there in the UK?

WILL-           I don’t know. There isn’t a consistency of provisions. We don’t have a central location being able to highlight where all of the accessible beaches are.

EMMA-         Have you ever heard of one or seen one, a fully-fully accessible to your mind with the parking, the toilets, the board or the matting all the way down, and a way for a wheelchair user or a mobility impaired person to get from the top into the water safely and securely?

WILL-           In the UK I would probably say no. The beaches in Weymouth and the beaches in Bournemouth have made some good attempts to do that. In North Devon, in Croyde they’re making massive strides with their Access for All beaches’ project. So there are some organisations doing it. But in terms of having everything in one space and it being available all of the time, we don’t have that I don’t think.

EMMA-         What do other countries do that the UK don’t do but could be doing?

WILL-           The Spanish authorities have got a set of beach access guidelines which basically lay down how beaches should be made accessible, and as a result when you go to a lot of Spanish beaches you will see really, really good access. So they will combine the parking with the toilets, and the access onto the beach down to the water, and they will even provide staff who will support you to get into the water.

EMMA-         Nice. Sadie, what fun interesting stuff do other countries have for blind and visually impaired swimmers that you’ve come across?

SADIE-          I’m busy nodding away to what Will’s saying. Definitely Spain, they’ve got some wonderful facilities, there’s some lovely beaches, as he mentioned, where they have lifeguards with additional training to be able to support access into the water. For people with visual impairment, there are also these long floats that go all the way around some huge areas of water to be able to follow, so you can swim, you can paddle, whatever you want to do in the water.

EMMA-         So you just keep touching the float every now and again to know where you are, or it’s very brightly coloured so you can see. It’s like the edge of a swimming pool or whatever, when I get into a local pool I ask for a lane right at the side so that I’ve got something solid on one side and then the rope on the other, because it’s useful to have somewhere to keep a straight line and keep your speed.

SADIE-          Yeah, that’s exactly it. And they are fairly narrow as well, which does have its good bits and its bad bits. But Spain are brilliant. In Australia as well and some other destinations they also have some buoys and some signage that has audio, so as you walk past them or get near they may give you updates on weather or what the terrain is looking like. Or the buoys will continuously beep so you can hear where you can and can’t swim.

EMMA-         That sounds extremely sensible, Sadie, absolutely. Now, tell me a bit about what’s happening at the lido in Brighton?

SADIE-          Yeah, so it’s at Sea Lanes pool in Brighton, which is actually the National Outdoor Swimming Centre. It’s a really safe environment for those with visual impairments to come down, enjoy the water, either to train, to bob, to try swimming for the first time in a long time, some people haven’t been swimming since they’ve experienced sight loss. So it’s just a nice, safe, flexible environment to be able to test out the water.

EMMA-         In your swimming sessions what sort of things do you do now without the talking buoys and the long floats and stuff? When I’m in the water with someone, I always wonder how I’m going to keep track of them. How do you do that, for example?

SADIE-          We constantly chat to each other, we’re constantly checking in. There’s a really interesting thread of conversations going around at the moment about the best ties for people to have as a visually impaired person swimming with a swim guide.

EMMA-         So like a tether?

SADIE-          Yeah. At the moment some people literally use elasticated shoelaces tied together. Some people like something that’s a lot longer like tow ropes. For some it’s not even about swimming, it’s just immersing yourself in the water to, as Will said, get those therapeutic benefits, and we just hold onto a float and just bob about together and have a chat until we want a cup of tea and sit on the shoreline. Everybody is different, it’s about being able to understand what works for some people and what works for others really.

EMMA-         Sadie, how can people get involved in your research?

SADIE-          The more, the merrier. We would love to hear from everybody. I have a website, accessiblewaters.co.uk, and there’s a contact page if you’d like to learn more and get involved.

EMMA-         Sadie’s lot are out in a lido in Brighton figuring out what will make it easier for blind and visually impaired people to go open water swimming, and we have sent a reporter from BBC South East down to find out more about it. Let’s have a listen.

[Clip]

FEMALE-      [The sound of water] How’s the water feeling, Toby?

TOBY-           Not too bad. A little chilly, but you just have to swim faster, keep yourself warm. You’ve got to be able to have a range of activities and sports to keep yourself fit, keep yourself healthy. It’s vitally important having spaces like this for the visually impaired community, the disabled community at large.

[End of clip]

EMMA-         Will, how do people fill out your Beach Access survey?

WILL-           If you go to the beachaccessproject.co.uk website and scroll down, you will see an orange box, and if you click on that, that will take you straight to the survey.

EMMA-         Amazing. Will Behenna and Sadie Rockcliffe, thank you for joining me on Access All.

SADIE-          Thank you for having me.

WILL-           Pleasure. Thank you.

MUSIC-         We’re not just a podcast, find Access All on social media and read our articles on the BBC news website.

EMMA-         Now you might remember this story. In 2018 my guest, Doctor Grace Spence Green, was walking in Westfields Shopping Centre in London when a man jumped from a third floor balcony and landed on her, breaking her neck and back and rendering her paralysed from the breastbone down. After spending time in hospital and in rehab she returned to what she was doing before, studying medicine, and in September she’s about to train to be a paediatrician. Far from losing her confidence, Grace says that becoming disabled eventually radicalised her, and she’s written a book, To Exist As I Am, in which she explains why. And she’s with me in the studio, hello Grace.

GRACE-        Hi, Emma.

EMMA-         Hello.

GRACE-        It’s so nice to be here.

EMMA-         It’s really, really nice to have you here. I feel like I need to apologise in advance for my first question, Grace, because I’m sure you’ve answered it a hundred times before, but the way that you became disabled, it is like a fully fledged nightmare. I’ve got to ask you about it, and as you say in your own book, you say, “Let’s get it over with,” so let’s do that. A man jumped off an upstairs balcony at a shopping centre and he landed on you. That must be hard to live with?

GRACE-        Surprisingly not. It’s really funny when someone asks me to explain what happened the day of my injury because I don’t have any traumatic memories of that, I can sort of reel off the story quite easily. I think it’s what happened afterwards, my experience as a patient and disabled woman where I have more difficult experiences. But the actual day of the injury, to me it just feels like a story I’m telling now, like it feels so surreal I think, because I was walking through the shopping centre, I was on my way to coach climbing at the Castle Climbing Centre, and I was just walking down the sort of central atrium of the shopping centre, and then I woke up. And I can’t tell you how strange of a sensation that is, is waking up when you hadn’t gone to sleep.

EMMA-         Yeah. I mean the epitome of discombobulating.

GRACE-        Exactly. Exactly. And I think especially because the shopping centre has such bright white lights, so I look up and I just see a sort of white floodlit ceiling, it just felt absolutely bizarre.

EMMA-         So what do you know about what happened?

GRACE-        I think really early on I was able to piece together what had happened. I remember waking up on the floor, I could see lots of concerned faces looking down at me. But I could also sense that there was another figure that was also on the floor and they were telling this figure that he had fallen, and I know I hadn’t kind of been higher up, so I could kind of already get a sense of what might have happened.

EMMA-         And do you know about the man who fell on you?

GRACE-        I know very little, and I kind of prefer it that way. To my knowledge, he jumped. I don’t know if this was on purpose or not. I find it interesting to talk about the man, because whenever I tell my story that’s what people want to hear about, which I understand, they’re curious. But to me, I don’t think of him ever, unless someone brings him up. To me, we were both part of this very strange quite random event.

EMMA-         Do you come back to it? Do you imagine what would have happened if you hadn’t been there?

GRACE-        I think that’s really normal is to start going through what ifs, what if I wasn’t there, what if I hadn’t gone to the toilet or was one minute later, etc, and I think I did that a little bit. But I’m quite a pragmatic person and I found myself realising that I can consider all these what ifs, but I could also consider the very possibility that I would have died, or he could have died if I wasn’t there to break his fall. It actually really helped me to stop picking at a scab of these what ifs, because it felt like I was going in circles.

EMMA-         Well, let’s stop picking that scab, let’s move on and let’s turn to your new book, To Exist As I Am. I mentioned at the top of this interview that you say that becoming disabled actually radicalised you. What do you mean by that?

GRACE-        When I came out of hospital newly disabled person, didn’t know what that meant, didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing, I felt like I fell into these quite classic narratives of what I thought disability meant. I thought it meant maybe trying to be a Paralympian, or I thought it meant doing some very big physical feat, or I thought it meant really trying hard to learn to walk again. And I went down this path for a while, going to neuro physio and spending hours and hours trying to learn to walk again, trying everything, and it got to the point I just felt like I didn’t know who I was doing this for. I was feeling quite comfortable as a wheelchair user, I felt like I was getting better at wheelchair skills. I was considering that this wheelchair was actually a tool for my independence, rather than something I had to overcome.

It felt like I was radicalised because I suddenly stopped internalising all of the comments that strangers would say to me, that they felt really sorry for me, or they asked me what’s wrong with me. It felt like I stopped internalising all of that, and I actually started to look critically at the environment I was in and the way society depicts disabled people.

EMMA-         It must have been an eye-opener looking at how you were treated now differently to how you were treated before?

GRACE-        Yeah, absolutely. You know, you think that you’re quite inclusive. I had no idea. It was interesting to me when I was first injured and I was in a rehab unit with lots of other newly injured people, there was a lot of internalisabilism I had to confront, and I had to have some really uncomfortable conversations with myself really and think maybe I did think disabled people had a lower quality of life before my injury, because I think that’s what we’re taught. That was really difficult, but I think it was really important to confront all that bias.

EMMA-         What were the things that happened to you early in your wheelchair using life that made you go, “Oh my gosh”?

GRACE-        It started happening you know when I was still in the rehab unit, which was so overwhelming to me. I’m trying to figure out how I feel about what’s happening, and I’m having a patient’s relative tell me how sorry he feels me and how tragic my life will be. I remember when I was doing wheelchair skills with my occupational therapist when I was still an inpatient, and I was finding it really challenging, but she was trying to get me to push up this ramp. I’m trying myself, and I remember a stranger just came up behind me and started pushing me up this ramp, and Fran, my OT, told her off and said, “No, she’s trying to learn.” But it made me realise that my sense of self and boundaries suddenly were very different, what people felt like they could do to me, how they could interact with me, was very different.

EMMA-         You said in the book that one of your most enduring scars from your injury is actually the medical trauma that you experienced. What happened in hospital that stayed with you?

GRACE-        I had some brilliant care and some less good care. The less good care was when I really felt like I had no dignity, when I felt like less than a human. When I felt like I had to keep having quite invasive procedures and they maybe weren’t explained well, or I didn’t feel like I had enough privacy or enough autonomy over the situation.

EMMA-         As a doctor now, how you experienced your treatment straight after your injury, has that changed how you do your job?

GRACE-        It has absolutely changed my practice for the better. I feel like I’m acutely aware of when patients are cold, when they don’t feel like they have privacy, when they feel like they don’t understand what’s happening. It’s taken a while not to feel so involved in it that I can imagine it’s myself, I think I have to have some distance from it. But I feel that’s really helped me understand the patient experience much better.

EMMA-         Tell me about doing your job, what supports do you need as a disabled doctor?

GRACE-        When I was first injured I wasn’t sure I actually could be a doctor, I’d never seen a visibly disabled doctor in my life, particularly not a wheelchair user. I worried I wouldn’t be able to do some of the procedures, I wouldn’t be able to interact with patients enough. But that’s all been really brilliant, I haven’t really had any problems there. I think what I need in particular are things like a laptop. On ward rounds and any ward there’s a computer on wheels. I’m already on four wheels, I can’t cope with another four wheels to manoeuvre. So things like that are really helpful. I think what I struggle with in a hospital is most of the staff areas are not accessible.

EMMA-         Ah.

GRACE-        So it’s sort of just a reminder that I wasn’t really designed to exist in these places.

EMMA-         So what do you do to get round that?

GRACE-        I make a fuss, if I’ve got enough energy to. Sometimes I have to use patient facilities. That’s been quite challenging. But I think having colleagues that are really great allies has been really helpful, particularly senior colleagues that really want to fight for access to things. In my last hospital I worked, I couldn’t reach the scrubs. It’s fine if I ask someone else every morning to get them for me, but even better if a colleague comes up with a solution where I can do that independently.

EMMA-         So what did they do, just move them down a bit, as simple as that?

GRACE-        Yeah, exactly. These things are quite basic.

EMMA-         You’re about to train to become a paediatrician. Why have you chosen to work with children?

GRACE-        I think it’s such a privilege to be a part of a child’s childhood really. I was unwell as a child and I just remember so strongly the feeling of being looked after.

EMMA-         What made you unwell as a child?

GRACE-        I was born with a rare anaemia called Diamond-Blackfan anaemia.

EMMA-         Never heard of it, Grace.

GRACE-        Yeah. It was like a sentence in a textbook for me, it really was, it’s really rare. I am quite well, which I feel really grateful for, but I’ve had to have blood transfusions and outpatient clinics, and that just was sort of a normal part of growing up for me. So I felt really comfortable in that environment.

                     I also love the idea of paediatrics being really about health promotion, you’re trying to empower young kids to look after themselves, to manage their disabilities, their chronic illnesses, and I think that is a really powerful thing.

                     I also love how I interact with children. They might ask me why I’m in a wheelchair, but I’ll just say, “Oh, my legs don’t really work that well, this is easier for me,” and they just accept that as fact and they move on and it’s just part of life for them. So it feels like the kind of stigma or the awkwardness about disability hasn’t been ingrained in them yet.

EMMA-         Okay. And do you want to specialise in any specific area within paediatrics?

GRACE-        I’m really passionate about working with disabled kids in whatever way I can. And public health.

EMMA-         Because I just wondered about emergency stuff and CPR and things, would that be tricky?

GRACE-        Yeah, CPR is tricky. I know wheelchair user friends that are doctors that can do it. I personally haven’t ever had to. But actually I was really pleasantly surprised, I did an anaesthetics’ job because I just thought maybe that wouldn’t be for me, but I learnt to intubate, lots of different things that I thought wouldn’t be possible.

EMMA-         So big scary physical emergency things.

GRACE-        Yeah, exactly. And I actually know two anaesthetists that are wheelchair users.

EMMA-         Great.

GRACE-        So I think just opening my horizon.

EMMA-         Yeah, I can just imagine the disabled doctors’ WhatsApp group, how do you do that? What do you want people to take away from reading your book?

GRACE-        I want people to confront their own bias, and I want people to know that I don’t always get it right either. I want us to come from a place of learning, from trying to learn about the experience of different disabled people and the community.

EMMA-         So a bit of an education from someone who’s been in both places.

GRACE-        Exactly.

EMMA-         Doctor Grace Spence Green, To Exist As I am is available in all good book-y places, and I wish you all of the best in the future.

GRACE-        Thank you so much, Emma.

EMMA-         Thank you.

MUSIC-         Music.

EMMA-         Thank you so much Grace Spence Green for that, and good luck with your training to be a paediatrician. We have a Q&A coming up all about the government’s planned changes to disability benefits, and we’ll be getting together an expert panel to answer all of your questions. So if you have any questions about the politics, or the timeline, or how those changes would impact you, please do let me know. You can contact us accessall@bbc.co.uk, send me a voice message or a text message on WhatsApp with your question, 0330 123 9480, or you can also send them on social media, we’re on X and Instagram @BBCAccessAll. Any questions at all about the changes that are up in the consultation, which finishes on 30th June, or that will be voted for in Parliament any day now. Thank you for listening, that is it for another episode of Access All, we’ll see you soon. Bye.

[Trailer for Newscast]

MALE-          Newscast is the unscripted chat behind the headlines.

FEMALE-      It’s informed but informal.

MALE-          We pick the day’s top stories and we find experts who can really dig into them.

MALE-          We use our colleagues in the newsroom and our contacts.

MALE-          Some people pick up the phone rather faster than others.

CALLER-       Hello?

FEMALE-      We sometimes literally run around the BBC building to grab the very best guests.

MALE-          Join us for daily news chat.

FEMALE-      To get you ready for today’s conversations.

MALE-          Newscast, listen on BBC Sounds.