The built environment in our towns provides the context in which people engage in a range of occupations that they want to do, need to do, or must do. This engagement can happen in many different places –in workplaces, public spaces, shops, banks, and a variety of locations where economic, social, and cultural events occur. To support and enable an equality of opportunity, the public realm in our towns need to be accessible to people with a wide range of differing abilities to be considered inclusive and enabling.

Poorly designed and fragmented streetscapes coupled with an apparent lack of disability awareness by some individuals continue to frustrate, hinder, block, and prevent a significant number of disabled people to carry out normal, expected activities and occupations of daily living. “Almost 50% of people living with a physical disability experience difficulty when going outside the home alone” (Disability Federation of Ireland 2017 https://www.disability-federation.ie/publications/general-disability-the-facts/).

The purpose of this Occupational Therapy accessibility audit of the urban areas of Westport is to identify resources, possibilities, and barriers in the built environment that might either enable or prevent disabled people from participating and engaging in life.

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Information for this audit has been collect from two sources:

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1. The lived experience of several Westport residents and visitors to the town who have disability or support a disabled family member, and,

2. By carrying out a detailed Occupational Therapy based environmental assessment of the public realm areas of Westport, focusing primarily on wheelchair accessibility.

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Several common environmental barriers emerged during this audit process, namely:

1. No continuous wheelchair accessible footways between common destination nodes (e.g., the Post Office, banks, supermarkets & shops, Churches, Schools, the bus stops and the train station).

2. Narrow poor surface quality footways (pavements) often with excessive crossfalls (towards traffic) and/or steep gradients.

3. Open drainage channels across footways, on pedestrian road crossings and beside accessible parking bays.

4. Poorly designed pedestrian road crossings that renders them inaccessible or dangerous for wheelchair users and those with reduced mobility.

5. Blocked footways – parked cars encroaching onto the footpath, cars/vans blocking road crossings, advertising boards preventing free flowing movement along the pavement and creating a falls/injury risk to some pedestrians, euro bins outside businesses forcing wheelchair users to the footpath margins and outdoor dining furniture and customers creating “no go areas” in the centre of the town. Most of the local individuals with the lived experience of a long-term disability identified two other issues that they felt significantly impacted on their ability to freely participate in independent activities outside their immediate home environment. The lack of general disability awareness in Westport, and, the lack of information and provision of accessible facilities. Finally, this accessibility audit should be seen as a starting point rather than a definitive statement on the state of accessibility to the public realm in Westport. The audit represents one way of viewing the issues of Occupational Justice and Equality of Opportunity for all users of the public realm spaces in Westport. Different voices and viewpoints need and should be heard to develop a continuous dynamic plan to improve and maintain access for all in the town of Westport.

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Brief:

      To promote occupational rights and equality of opportunity by exploring ways to improve access for       disabled people to the public built environment of Westport.

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Why an Accessibility Audit?

1. So that all people can have equal access to participate in everything that Westport has to offer.

2. To identify the physical barriers and obstructions in the public realm impact on disabled people the most.

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Why an Occupational Therapist led accessibility audit?

The central role of Occupational Therapy is to assist, and support disabled and marginalised people to work towards an equality of opportunity and occupation – in other words supporting an individual’s occupational rights. Furthermore, Occupational Therapists understand that the denial occupational justice disproportionately affects those individuals who encounter barriers due to impairments or disabilities, particularly when it comes to the built environment in our towns and cities.

Therefore, an Occupational Therapist led accessibility audit is likely to undercover more occupationally relevant person-centred issues and solutions than an audit carried out by another non-Occupational Therapist auditor.