Engaging People with Mobility Disabilities

By Dimitrije Martinovic
Dimitrije is a staff with FOCUS MEDIA ARTS CENTRE

In Regent Park, which is in the middle of a massive physical and social transformation, where community engagement and involvement is taking on new and concrete dimensions through greater negotiations between resident’s groups, builder/developers, and policy makers. One of the main areas of interest has been the growing awareness that public spaces need to be more accessible to people living with disabilities.

Lloyd Pike, a long time resident of Regent Park, and someone who is legally  blind and uses a scooter to get around, has  first-hand  knowledge of what sorts of issues  are involved in  having  a  mobility disability. And it was this particular  knowledge that  formed the basis of the community-based research  project Engaging People with Mobility Disabilities, which was funded by a grant from the Regent Park Social Development Plan (SDP).

Vivian Nguyen a  Regent Park resident and Urban Planing Consultant with Tridel Builders Inc. partnered with Lloyd Pike to produce this report.  The project has its beginnings in Lloyd's observations regarding the lack of participation of people with mobility disabilities at social functions and community meetings. All of which led Lloyd to conclude that people with disabilities needed to have more access to public spaces if they were ever going to be included, whether that was participating socially, or participating at the structural level with decision and policy making – accessibility was the key to inclusion and security both in the short-term and the long-term.

The initial steps included dialoguing with the City of Toronto, the Daniels Corporation, Dixon Hall, and Toronto Community Housing (TCH) to discern what are the available resources with regards existing programs, funding pools, and research data. The goal was to investigate what did the Regent Park community need to expand accessibility throughout the neighbourhood? This meant consulting with residents of on markings on pavements, ramps on sidewalks, and getting in and out of local stores. Resolving these considerations often means tackling the problems at the design level, builders and policymakers should be implementing appropriate mobility solutions from the ground up in new residential and commercial buildings.