THE Barbados Council for the Disabled (BCD) will continue to legislate for accessible public buildings.
Public Relations Officer, David ‘Joey’ Harper, said persons from the BCD would love to contribute to the creation of a revised Building Code for the island to ensure that disabled persons were able to give their opinion to this important area.
“If given a chance, the disabled community would be happy to do that. We have a lot of accountants, lawyers, the President of the Senate and others. Give them a chance to voice their opinion,” he said, adding that it was critical not to automatically assume what the needs of these individuals were.
“Make sure that you can call these people into a forum and be willing to listen and you would be surprised as to how many issues would come out,” Harper stressed, while on a morning television programme recently.
Commenting that the transport system in Barbados is accessible for disabled persons only to a level, he stressed that while the council is able to move such persons from point to point, it was not easy for such persons to get around during the holidays.
Harper stated that while the public’s opinion on those with disabilities has made a positive change over the past two decades as society was more willing to embrace persons with disabilities into the wider community, he said there was still room for improvement.
“It was bad at one stage where people did not like to be associated with a person with a disability. You know that there were houses 50 years ago that locked up their children with disabilities and these children were never seen on the road or could not come out of the house because the parents did not want the embarrassment of knowing that their child had a disability, but we have moved past that stage,” he said.
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