CONGRATS SHAZ. OUR FIRST WINNER DEMONSTRATES THAT INCLUSION IS MORE THAN ACCESS TO LEISURE.

Back in December last year, we ran our first competition designed to encourage people to share access information about places they come across in their daily lives. Roughly speaking, if 1 in 200 of us were to add one place to our map with our mobiles, we would have access information on every single leisure-related place in Australia.

So, when WheelEasy founder, Max Burt was made an LG Local Legend on the Kyle and Jackie O show on Kiss radio, he decided to donate his winnings ($20,000 worth of LG branded electrical goods) to WheelEasy. He felt that WheelEasy could offer these prizes as incentives for people to add information to the WheelEasy map.

The first of the prizes on offer was an ultra-slim 19 inch LG Gram laptop. We were absolutely overjoyed that first out of the hat in the random draw for this laptop was a wheelchair user; Shaz T from Toowoomba.

Shaz (who used to be an Occupational Therapist) has been unable to read books, computers, letters, or anything written down since a brain injury 11 years ago. A specialist in assistive technology has set Shaz up with software that makes reading words on the screen possible. But, without a computer of her own, Shaz was unable to rejoin the workforce, and unfortunately the NDIS would not provide the funds for the purchase.

After Shaz received her new laptop in January, WheelEasy’s potential to assist people with disability to get back into everyday life became clearer than ever. Max emphasised that this is a demonstration in action of the power behind WheelEasy to really change people’s lives for the better. Not only is WheelEasy providing better quality access information, but in doing so it has helped people like Shaz to become fully integrated into daily life, in ways beyond just providing information.

Shaz said that “winning this laptop is a dream come true for me. Not only is it giving me access as a disabled person to the written word, but I see it also as giving me a tool to use in pursuing a dream to have an effect in my local community and create change”.

Our first winner has demonstrated that inclusion is more than access to leisure. One of the reasons we started WheelEasy was that we wanted people with mobility needs to have more opportunity to do things in their leisure time. But there is another side of life — the “at work” side — which is equally important, where the barriers to full inclusion for the mobility-impaired are even more pronounced.

In Australia, roughly 84% of people are in work. This drops to just over half if you have a disability, and to a jawdropping 27% for those with a severe activity limitation (like wheelchair use). This is awful news for wheelchair users; it is too easy for them to find themselves stuck in an increasingly vicious circle from which it is hard to escape — difficult to get job as a wheelie, leads to greater unemployment, leads to more difficulty getting a job etc etc.

This can lead to a state of permanent unemployment and lack of self-esteem, adding to the all-too-common perception that this is a group of people who constitute a cost to society; constantly taking and rarely giving back.

The irony is that most wheelchair users will tell you that they would give anything to work; they want to feel more included in a society which often excludes them. And if you ask most employers of wheelchair users, they will tend to tell you what a good job they do. Furthermore, in this new digital economy where work location is increasingly less important, especially in the world post covid, where more people work from home, wheelies can come to the fore!