Not enough accessibility for disabled in public and private facilities – NDU director
Barbados still has a long way to go to make public and private facilities fully accessible to people with disabilities, says Director of the National Disabilities Unit (NDU) John Hollingsworth.
He said that while some effort was being made to accommodate the disabled community, more needed to be done.
“There’s still a significant road to go in relation to making facilities, both public and private, accessible to persons with disabilities, and you must recognise that accessibility doesn’t only relate to wheelchair access. It also relates to access based on signage, and it relates to access based on location as well.
“So we still have a long way to go, but we’re working towards it. We’re trying to encourage as many private organisations as well as public ones to basically conform to what is required to make the facilities accessible to persons with disabilities,” Hollingsworth said on Tuesday after the reopening ceremony for the National Assistance Board’s Lancaster House in Lancaster, St James.
He added: “The private sector generally is slower to get on board, but we are pleased by the initiative taken by a number of private sector entities, primarily those areas that are patronised by the majority of the population, like supermarkets and medical facilities.”
However, he said that there was room for improvement in the retail sector, especially businesses where Barbadians did their shopping and bought garments, and in the financial sector.
“In the financial services sector, we still find that although most persons are moving technologically to make the services more efficient and accessible . . . there’s a lot more that can be done,” Hollingsworth said.
As it relates to employability, he said the NDU was tackling that issue.
“There are a number of initiatives in place to ensure that persons with disabilities are not adversely affected in terms of employment. We do recognise that we still have this traditional approach to persons with disabilities as it relates to employment. But what we seek to do basically is to encourage employers and put programmes in place not only for employment but also for self-employment, entrepreneurship,” he said.
The NDU director also used the opportunity to assure Barbadians that no one in the disabled community was adversely affected last weekend when feeder bands from Hurricane Tammy affected the island, causing flooding in many areas.
“There were no distress calls from persons with disabilities who would have been impacted by the weather over the weekend. But in the event that there was a case, we had systems in place. We had transportation on standby that is equipped to carry wheelchairs and we would have also known of persons with disabilities living in low-lying areas and we monitor those areas and there was no real significant impact that would have affected them,” Hollingsworth said.
(SZB)
