Rolling with Sarah

I’m going to kick this section off with a post about my first time being an accessibility advocate. Due to complications in my health from childhood cancer treatment,  I became wheelchair bound. I went to go to the medical day unit in the children’s hospital one day on my own. When I went to open the door, I discovered I couldn’t. It was a heavy door with no button to push to automatically open it. I had to wait for someone to walk by and politely ask them to grab the door for me. This may seem like a little thing, but I was appalled that my independence (a lot of which I was losing at the time) was taken away by something so simple.

I started by writing letters to my doctors and talking to my interlink nurse. From there, they provided me with contacts who were best placed to help me. When I did connect with them, there was no problem to putting an actuator (more commonly known as a wheelchair button) on the door. Sometimes it just takes someone to notice it is missing. The first day I had an appointment after it was installed was one of my proudest days. It encouraged me to join the hospital’s accessibility committee and since then I have seen several buttons installed in the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario.