Eurostar is failing disabled travelers in a big way.

In a recent Buzzfeed article discussing the ignorance and hassles that face disabled travelers in the UK, Eurostar featured prominently. First, Eurostar told a young woman she’d need to pay a “luggage fee” to bring her wheelchair on board a train. Next, Eurostar staff refused to help a blind woman walk through security.

It’s absurd for travelers to face unfair fees, ignorance, and discrimination from Eurostar staff that are tasked with customer service. But there’s an easy solution: transport companies like Eurostar need to ensure that policies around accessibility are clear, fair, and well-known to all staff.

Call on Eurostar to update its accessibility policies and require all staff undergo a disability awareness training in order to better serve disabled customers.  

When Layla Harding was told she would have to pay a £60 “luggage fee” to bring her wheelchair on a Eurostar train to Brussels, she told them “this is necessity,” not like the musical instruments or bicycles that warrant a luggage fee. Eurostar eventually waived the fee and said an employee had given Harding the wrong information. But why don’t Eurostar staff know their own companies accessibility policies?

It doesn’t end there. In the same article, Holly Scott-Gardner, who is blind, recounted how Eurostar staff refused to offer her assistance walking through security and told her to “hurry up” while her and her friends attempted to gather up their luggage. “It was like they didn’t expect disabled people to be traveling,” she said of the service.  

Eurostar is failing to treat disabled travelers with the dignity and attention it affords to other customers. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Eurostar can choose to face its ableism problem head on and require all staff to undergo a disability awareness training in order to better meet the needs of disabled customers.