‘How does a person in a wheelchair get down from here?’

The property is owned by investment property company Investa Properties and leased by Secure Parking.

“I would have thought this issue would have been picked up much earlier and changes arranged,” Mr Mayo said.

“Because in many respects it is a successful ‘complaint’ waiting to happen under two or three different pieces of legislation.

“We will be looking for a time frame to have this situation improved, otherwise [Ms Spelta] should lodge a complaint through the Queensland Anti-Discrimination Act.”

Ms Spelta travelled into the city on Monday for her daughter’s marriage but was shocked to find that far from opening at the “Turbot Street” level, the lift from the car park opened one level above.

“There is no lift to the street,” Ms Spelta said. “There is only stairs, and I just can’t get down.”

Louis Spelta, her husband and full-time carer, ended up awkwardly lifting her down the concrete stairs.

As Mr Spelta helped his wife, Alison Jones began limping down the stairs, opposite the Brisbane Dental Hospital in Turbot Street.

She had come from NSW to see her knee specialist about a double knee replacement.

“I just did not believe this was the situation here. It’s terrible,” she said.

“I can’t walk up and down stairs like this without a lot of pain.”

Former Paralympian Geoff Trappett, the CEO of disability access group Inclusion Moves, said only two steps would force change.

The first was a complaint to the Queensland office of the Human Rights Commission.

The second was if the building owners made structural changes to the building.

Mr Trappett said there was still no reliable guide to disability access in Brisbane, even in 2020.

He said the Secure car park needed to meet the guidelines of the 2010 Disability (Access to Premises) Standards legislation and the Disability Discrimination Act.

“But there is a complicating fact. The building only needs to be compliant to the date in which it was built.”

Mr Mayo said disability access had improved in Brisbane’s CBD since 2016, when Brisbane City Council added 40 “curb ramps”. It also published a mobility map.

“They clearly help parents with prams, people loading goods from a truck and people using mobility aids like wheelchairs get over the 150mm footpath.”

But he said the “untold problem” was fewer disability parking spaces on CBD streets and more people asking for disability access parking permits.

Secure Parking’s Queensland general manager Damien Conoulty said the company was sorry to hear of the difficulties the two woman faced and would take steps to improve the situation.

“While Secure Parking are not the owner of 179 Turbot Street Car Park and merely a tenant, we would like to raise this issue with the building owner,” he said.

A spokesman from the Department of Seniors and Disability Services said the state government could not force changes to buildings that met the standards set when they were built.