TRANSCRIPT
Ticketek, one of Australia's largest ticketing providers, has announced a new online platform which it says makes it easier for people with disability, their companions, family and friends to purchase tickets online.
This comes after Australians with disability drew attention to the difficulty of booking accessible seats through the company to Taylor Swift's Eras Tour, when four million fans queued up online in June to access around 450,000 tickets.
Those seeking to book accessible tickets, who previously have been asked to do so via a phone support service or email, were left uncertain days later while tickets sold out within two hours.
Dane Cross, Senior Advisor for Advocacy and Access at Spinal Life Australia, who uses a wheelchair after a spinal cord injury, says this has been a common experience for people with disability, Swiftie or not.
"You have to call a special line and then leave a message, and then await a call back for when someone has time to call you back. It's just been such a poor experience in the past, that I've chosen to not attend events. As an example, I missed out on tickets to, I think it was the Red Hot Chili Peppers in Brisbane a little while back, and it was plainly due to the fact that I went to lodge a ticketing enquiry and wanted to be part of that event, but I missed out because it took three days for them to call me back, and by then the tickets that I'd wanted were sold."
Marayke Jonkers is Co-Vice President of People with Disability Australia and a Paralympian who won three medals at the Sydney, Athens and Beijing Olympics.
She says seeing the Ticketek logo on an event in the past has discouraged her from trying to book tickets at all.
“My record for Ticketek is 17 hours, 49 minutes and 43 seconds on hold to get through to get tickets to the Commonwealth Games to watch athletes who I'd help mentor compete. A friend and I who both use wheelchairs tried to book tickets to go to the U2 concert, and by the time we managed to play phone tag backwards and forwards, my friend and I didn't both get to go, we had one wheelchair space with one support worker, so it was a case of I'm going to U2 but not U2."
Ticketek's new online platform aims to address these longstanding concerns from the community.
Key to the platform is the ability for those using it to buy accessible and non-accessible tickets within the same transaction for the first time, allowing the chance to sit with or near their family, friends or support workers, where previously they might have been seated in a completely different area.
Dane says he is also happy to have an equal opportunity to book tickets for high-demand events with other Australians for the first time.
"It puts you in the race right, you're able to - live, in real time - book those tickets, and if I miss out, at least I've missed out equitably. If I were to be a Swiftie and I wanted to book one of those Taylor Swift tickets and I missed out, at least I didn't miss out because of the ticketing platform, I missed out because there were too many people trying to book at the same time."
Marayke says People with Disability Australia welcomes the announcement, including the ability for people to select rather than be allocated seats, from seats for those with wheelchairs, requiring easy access, who are vision impaired or use a hearing loop.
She says she will be watching closely to see how the platform is rolled out.
"It sounds amazing, some of the things, whether they work in reality, such as the fact you can select the seats in front of the wheelchair seats, whether you get priority to do that over other people randomly booking seats or if it means that by the time you've booked a wheelchair seat, your friends are sitting in front or on the other side of the stadium".
The platform is the product of consultation with the community members, including Dane and Marayke, and organisations like Spinal Life and the Physical Disability Council of New South Wales.
Mark Townend, CEO of Spinal Life Australia, says equitable access was central to requests from the community.
"This all started with a complaint from members of Spinal Life Australia to the Human Rights Commission, then we talked and had a mediation with Ticketek, and they found a solution. People with disabilities mostly don't want priority, they just want to be treated normally and to make sure they can be accommodated. This platform gives everyone an equal footing, that's what we asked for."
Marayke says co-design is essential to rebuilding previously broken trust.
"That is how you really engender trust with people who have disabilities because we're the ones who have the experiences, and we're the ones who have the experiences and we're the ones with the expert in seeing how it could be made easier, so that wins a lot of trust, that it wasn't somebody deciding something for us instead of with us."
Dane says now that a platform has been developed, with early sign-ups, including venues like the Sydney and Melbourne Cricket grounds, he wants to see greater uptake by venues.
"We've got a limited few stadiums across Australia that have agreed and signed up to the platform currently, in its current form. I think now the big gap will be to get everyone else onboard and enabling people with disability to use this platform for their event or their venue."
Other ticket providers contacted for this story say they are also striving for greater accessibility to ticketing for events.
Ticketmaster says it was the first ticketing platform in Australia to introduce online sales to customers for accessible seats, through 500 tickets at the 2020 Australian Open.
Humanitix says it has collaborated with Vision Australia and the Australian Network on Disability to educate venues, and make its app and check-ins more accessible.
Meanwhile, Dane is looking forward to attending more sporting and music events with friends and family, and hopes he will no longer have to contemplate missing a concert altogether.
"Big fan of the cricket, season is around the corner, and I took my son to a Big Bash Game last season, but now that we've got this better ticketing platform, I hope that I can use that platform to watch some more of these games. I'd love to see one of my favourite artists perform in a packed out Suncorp Stadium, I'm sure that would be a really great thing for me to look forward to."
Listen to how SBS first covered this story in June 2023
'We have to battle for accessibility': Taylor Swift boycott call over accessible tickets
SBS News
29/06/202306:22
