Charity aims to improve wheelchair access

Two Peninsula residents have established a new charitable foundation with the aim of improving access for those in wheelchairs, which will also benefit parents with strollers and the elderly.

Max and Justine Burt ended up living on the Peninsula after finding life in London, with its old buildings and infrastructure, too difficult for Max following a car accident that resulted in him needing to use a wheelchair.

"The buildings and infrastructure are much better in Australia.

"We can survive here because of the access so we chose to build a home here," Ms Justine Burt said.

Max had operated his own advertising agency before his car accident and he met and married Justine after the crash.

"In London it became obvious that if I couldn't go somewhere, we couldn't go somewhere and that is what encouraged us to set up a charity to advocate for better access for wheelchair users, their families and friends," Mr Burt said.

The official statistic is that Australia has 200,000 people who are dependent on wheelchairs but Mr Burt said he believed a more realistic figure was 5.6 times that.

"If a group of people want to go out to dinner everyone congregates around the person who needs access," he said.

"Where is it possible for me to get into a bus, a restaurant, a shop, a cinema?

"Where is it possible to access leisure activities, beaches, fishing, whale watching?

"We often sit and say 'we've got Sunday off, what shall we do'?"

The objective of encouraging businesses and governments to provide more accessibility options encouraged the couple to establish Wheel Easy, a deductible gift recipient charity, to assist those in wheelchairs, their families and friends to identify locations, facilities and activities that are accessible for wheelchair users.

The foundation's first product is wheeleasy.org, an access information website that will be launched shortly.

The site has been in development for a year with funding from the NSW Department and Industry and a couple of other organisations.

"We are aiming for the site to be self-sustaining through donations and crown funding," he said.

Mr Burt said the foundation had already done some "remarkable work" with the Cerebral Palsy Alliance, Telstra and their main corporate partner, Mirvac.

The website has initially focused on rating 10 Sydney hot spots based on professional assessments of their accessibility and the couple has decided to rate Central Coast locations next in the hope to promote the area, and particularly the Peninsula, as a destination for accessible tourism and leisure.

"The intention is for the backbone of the information to be user-driven, we want the content to be a community creation, relying on end users to contribute positive and negative reviews about locations.

"The photos on the site are from a wheelchair user's point of view with very specific information about doorway widths and the use of measurement tools to give specific information about access to toilets, for example.

"The measurements used are also specific to the destination so the assessment used for a beach is different to that used to rate a cinema," he said.

Wheeleasy.org will be officially launched on June 19 with a five-week crowd funding campaign to follow.

SOURCE:

Interview, 19 Apr 2018

Max and Justine Burt, Wheel Easy

Reporter: Jackie Pearson