For many able-bodied people (walkers, as us wheelchair folk sometimes call them), getting in and out of our home is something they barely think about. They reach for the handle, open the door and go. It’s one of those everyday routines that feels almost too ordinary to notice.
For people living in Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA), that experience can be very different – and that’s despite the implicit promise that SDA is accessible and the millions of dollars spent on purportedly making it so.
In our Tenant Voice Reference Group meetings, our members repeatedly tell us that they can’t safely, easily and independently enter and exit their properties. What should be a simple part of everyday life can instead become a frustrating, difficult, or exhausting task.
These aren’t hypothetical scenarios. They are the experiences of people living in SDA, who struggle to navigate their own homes.
Sometimes, the barriers are physical. Spaces can be difficult to navigate, making it harder to approach or move through an entrance. Other times, it is something as seemingly small as a heavy fob that makes swipe entry difficult or almost impossible.
When entering and leaving your home is difficult, it affects your ability to move through your day independently. It means more assistance is needed, more funds are spent on support workers, and plan funding dwindles more quickly. It adds frustration to everyday routines and, for our members, creates another barrier to feeling genuinely at home in the place where they live.
And this is when the simplest fix – assistive technology – could be used to increase a participant’s independence… yet we have no one who holds the responsibility to drive and implement AT in SDA.
That is why we decided to put the issue in front of the people responsible for making SDA work.
We asked members of our Reference Group to film the aspects of entering and exiting their properties that they found most difficult. We brought that footage to the Just SDA Management Conference and shared what our members experience in their homes. The response was powerful. Understandably, our audience was shocked and disappointed by what they saw.
Because when you hear someone describe an accessibility issue, it can be easy to imagine it as a minor inconvenience. Seeing someone actually navigate a difficult entrance or struggle with an access system tells a very different story.
Most importantly, our members wanted these experiences to be seen and heard.
Tenant Voice exists to make sure that people living in SDA have a meaningful say in the decisions that affect their homes and their lives. That means listening when people say something isn’t working. It means taking everyday experiences seriously. And it means continuing to push for systems, services and homes that support people to live with greater independence.
There is no single feature that will make an SDA property work perfectly for everyone. But there is an important starting point: listen to the people who live there.
Our members have shown us what the barriers can look like. Now we need to keep turning those experiences into action.
Watch the footage for yourself. You’ll be surprised by how difficult something as simple as getting through the front door can be.
