After the tweet series I mentioned in my Part 1 article, I received feedback from some of the institutions I tagged. In this article, I would like to draw attention to how institutions have reacted to the CSO’s accessibility due to my criticisms.

The first institution to return was Biletinial, the website where tickets for CSO events are sold. They sent me a message on my Twitter account and said they wanted to talk in detail, and we discussed this situation and our ideas with them.

It seems that Biletinial is aware that they cannot sell tickets to people with disabilities, and they have tried to come up with some solutions. During our long talk, I had the opportunity to listen to some of Biletinial’s suggestions for solutions or what they cited as the causes of the problem.

The biggest problem that Biletinial pointed to was how to combat the possibility of people with disabilities buying seats reserved for people with disabilities. One of the first suggestions was to see the health records of the person they sold the tickets to, with the identification number. In this way, they plan to prevent someone without a disability from purchasing accessible seats. Of course, this proposal does not seem like an appropriate solution since it violates the citizen’s privacy. I learned later that the state authorities rejected this proposal with the same argument. Unfortunately, they think that the reason why they remain unresolved regarding Biletinial accessibility is that the health records are not shared with them.

Then, they presented their second proposal as a solution. This suggestion was that accessible seats should be sold at the box office before the event, not on the website. In this way, they said that they could be sure that the person who buys the accessible seat does have a disability. However, since selling tickets at the box office will cause other problems, they will not be able to implement this solution. For example, more disabled people could want to buy tickets than the number of seats; they cannot find a ticket and have to give up their plan to go to the event at the last moment. So Biletinial’s argument is that they are aware of the accessibility problems, but they have no solution because their hands are tied.

After listening to these ideas, I also conveyed my criticisms to them. The last thing I argued was that people without disabilities acting unethically and buying tickets for accessible seats was no worse than a ticketing site failing to sell accessible seats. Yes, there would be problematic people, but isn’t this always the case? Is it wise to completely ignore the rights of people with disabilities so that someone doesn’t violate them?

I just told them they should give people equal rights to buy tickets. No disabled person wants to be privileged. Yes, maybe the disabled person will not be able to go to the event they wish because the accessible tickets are sold out. The same goes for all people; you can’t buy tickets if they’re sold out. End of the story. But if a group of people is discriminated against because the ticket they can buy has never existed, that’s the real problem. We thanked each other with Biletinial officials, and our conversation ended here. I thought that day I was taken seriously and a solution was near, but months later, I realized that they did not genuinely intend to produce a solution.

Still, it was an effort that they were aware of the problem, wanted to resolve their part, and showed kindness, considering I did not receive a response from other institutions tagged in my tweets for a long time. CSO has never responded to my tweets, nor have the state offices.

But, I got received some reactions from Uygur Architects. In my tweet series, I was claiming that Uygur Architects had not complied with regulations while designing the CSO building. They said they were sorry about what my sister and I faced, but the architects followed regulations; if they were asked to make revisions in the building design, they would love to help, etc… Well, giving parking space to people with disabilities is not being accessible. I constantly criticize regulations for not covering every aspect of the daily needs of people with disabilities, but in these circumstances, a building complying with bare minimum regulations is finding water in the desert. And this is an award-winning building.

I can only say that we should change the mindset of architects if we want to change the physical environment. I see no other way.