Accessibility a basic human right

Have you ever thought about how you will manage to get around and about in your later years? What will you do when you no longer have a licence to drive your car? Do the places you visit, etc, have ease of access? Will you be able to continue doing all the things that you enjoy doing now? If you develop some impairment to your ability to get around easily — will you be able operate effectively here in Ka¯ piti? I ask these questions partly because my mobility is somewhat impaired, but mostly because I have a new friend who is very reliant upon a walker. Watching this person getting out of a car and then onto a walker gave me a much better understanding of the issues.

Just for starters — not all locations have mobility parking spaces. Some of those parking spaces can have a step up onto a normal “footpath” therefore a person with a walker has to somehow negotiate that as well. Not easy, that is for sure!

Footpaths in a state of disrepair must be a nightmare for these people, and I should add they also cause difficulties for those using mobility scooters. What about doorways — are all of these wide enough for wheelchairs?

As I have often said — accessibility is a basic human right. Given the Ka¯ piti demographic (over 28 per cent over 65) these and related issues should be a basic requirement right from the outset when planning begins.

The World Health Organisation’s Checklist of essential features of Age Friendly Cities and Communities gives a high priority to accessibility, with around eight references to this in its checklist along with many related comments. Just think how great it would be for us to be living in a community where that checklist formed the framework around which everyone conducted their planning.

Now I want to take a piece of information from Newsroom.co.nz that was published in May this year, with the headline “Smart cities are age-friendly cities”. It was written by the University of Auckland’s Claire Dale, and her concluding paragraph read “A truly smart city is age-friendly. And agefriendly communities are better for all ages. We need to start creating our agefriendly environments now as the cost of falling behind in preparing for and supporting an ageing population is too great to ignore.”

The Older Persons Council meets last Wednesday of each month, in council chambers, starting at 1pm.