The Association for Persons with Disabilities (APD), Free State, has accepted the challenge to access opportunities and empower people living with disability.
The organisation’s latest innovation is the provision of accommodation for students with disability studying at universities, as well as accessible transport designed for those confined to wheelchairs.
These are passive income generating initiatives offered from the Jean Webber Home in Bloemfontein, a residence for persons with severe physical disabilities.
This mode of transport is also available for rental to the public to transport people with disability.
The vehicle is user friendly for wheelchair-bound people. It has a ramp, which makes it convenient for a wheelchair to move in and out.
To ensure safety, there is a full-time driver who is capacitated to assist people.
The student accommodation caters for basic services for students who pay a substantial amount for the duration of their studies. They also benefit from the transport.
“The need to access job opportunities and self-reliance necessitated this initiative of transport and student accommodation,” said Dylan Mashele of the National Council of and for Persons with Disabilities (NCPD).
He said the difficulty to accessing user-friendly public transport motivated having this mode of transport that caters for people with disabilities.
“Public transport such as taxis are not adaptable for people with disabilities, henceforth we started our own accessible transport mode.
“The advantage of an accessible transport service is the assurance of taking people to wherever they want to go – be it work, hospital, doing shopping and going home.
“This is a convenient transportation for people who are not able to drive because of vision or cognitive impairments,” said Mashele.
The two initiatives form part of sustaining the facility, which is a home to 37 people who need physical support with the most essential activities of daily living.
The centre receives a subsidy of 25% of operation costs from the Department of Social Development.
