He moved to Canada about 20 years ago from the UK and never left. We chat with accessibility consultant Ramesh Lad who aims to make Vancouver Island accessible to all.

TRANSCRIPT

00:08

Welcome again to DDA's Encouraging Abilities podcast, where we chat about everything disability related. I'm your host, DDA Communications Manager, Evan Kelly. Now we talk a lot about accessibility on this podcast, how things can be done better to level the playing field for people with disabilities, whether physical or cognitive. Now that could mean adopting a universal design concept so that everything we build or create is done with everyone in mind.

00:33

Sometimes that's easier said than done. So we need consultants who navigate design beyond meeting building codes, because building codes doesn't necessarily mean it's accessible. It just means it might be relatively safe. So joining me today is accessibility consultant, Ramesh Lad, who hails from Vancouver Island. I came across Ramesh on an ex or Twitter story, if you're still there. So the power of social media is good.

00:57

And I was a person with lived experience. Ramesh started step-by-step accessibility consulting in 2018 and has been building his business ever since. So thanks for joining me today, Ramesh. Thanks for giving me the chance to chat. Thank you. No problem. I always like to start things like this. So tell me a little bit about yourself. So where do I start? So I'm basically originally from England. I moved to Canada in 2001.

01:26

And I came with the idea of just to live and work out here for about a year, just to get some different experience and to have a different sort of lifestyle. But 22, 23 years later, I'm still here and enjoying Canada, basically. My background is I in England, I worked with youth in schools. Before that, I worked in human resources.

01:54

And then when I came to Canada, my first job I had was with BC Paraplegics Association as one of their counsellors. And then from there, I've done various other jobs. Most recent jobs I've had is working with youth at risk here in the Covox Valley. I've also worked on the downtown east side in Vancouver when we lived in Vancouver. So my career history is quite varied.

02:21

My personal background is I was affected by the drug thalidomide, which is a drug given to expectant women to alleviate things like morning sickness. But unfortunately, the drug had an impact on the fetus, which left people with various types of disabilities, including limbs missing or short limbs.

02:51

And not everyone, sadly, had survived. So in the UK at the moment, there's about 400 people that were affected by thalidomide that are still alive. In Canada, I think it's just under 100 now that are still living and, yeah, living. Now, if you don't mind me asking, Ramesh, how old are you? I'm 62. Okay. You look younger in your photographs.

03:20

Thank you. That's good. It's amazing what Photoshop can do. And so, I mean, you know, just checking your profiles and things in your business website, what really got you interested in working with at-risk youth? I think it's just one of those areas I fell into. Like I said, my background was working with youth in England, but mainly in schools and colleges.

03:51

So when we moved to the Valley, a position came up, when we moved to the Colmocks Valley, a position came up which was involving working with youth at risk. And I'd already worked with adults at risk, as I was saying earlier, on the downtown Eastside. So this is just sort of following on from that, but specifically working with youth at risk, which is an area that had an interest in, especially as I've worked with youth in the past.

04:18

So that was it really, it was just more of a chance that came up here in the Cobox Valley where there was a program run called Blade Runners which is working with youth at risk to try and give them basic skills to allow them to find entry level jobs. So I was working with youth to sort of train them up to get into entry level jobs and then not just train them but also...

04:45

working with local employers and local companies to try and get them placed as well. So, but my interest came from my background. Oh, interesting. Now, so Vancouver Island is, you know, of course, a little bit detached from the rest of BC. Do you, how's business? How do you, do you feel like you're making an impact on businesses and design over there? I think I am. It feels like it at the moment. I'm quite busy with mainly educational establishments.

05:14

that I'm working with and I've done some work for a couple of senior homes and I've just started working with somebody who wants to improve their home for aging in place. So I think it's taking off. Businesses are a little harder to work with because I think there's the financial barrier that they feel might come up with what they need to do to make their businesses accessible.

05:41

I think the other thing is here in the Covox Valley, I don't know if you've been here in recent years, but in Courtney, a lot of the businesses downtown, the buildings are a little older, so they're a bit more difficult to make fully accessible. But I think businesses do try really hard to accommodate everyone. Trevor Burrus Now talk about, tell me a little bit about the cost.

06:10

making things accessible is that the cost really is somewhat negligible. And if you're thinking about a business where if you're a retailer, for example, or a restaurant, whatever, that if you're not making something accessible, you're turning away a big dollar. Absolutely. No, that's totally true. You are. Yeah, it's basically you're throwing money out the door because...

06:38

people aren't able to get in. And I think what we have to remember here is that people always think of disability or people with disabilities as being this very small percentage of the population. So they're looking at the big picture of, well, all these customers are coming in. I might only get one person in a wheelchair or one person with a learning disability or a hearing impairment. But in reality, what they're forgetting is that we've got an aging population here.

07:06

You know, worldwide we've got an aging population. Now that aging population comes along with various challenges of their own. You know, for example, mobility might be an issue, or hearing might be an issue, or sight might be an issue. So if you're making those accommodations, that population of people that might not ordinarily use your services are more likely to use them. You know, whether it's retail, whether it's entertainment, whether it's...

07:35

leisure and so on. So I think the cost, and again coming to the cost of it, it depends what needs to be done. If it's a new building, then the cost is, as you were saying earlier on, absolutely minimal because you can put those, you can implement those design features that will allow greater accessibility into place as the building is being constructed, which saves a lot of money.

08:05

And those things that they're putting in aren't huge. Why the doors? As an example, or recently I worked for an organization that works for affordable housing, and they were building units, and to make the units accessible, one of the things we looked at was putting support beams in the bedrooms. So in the future, if one of their residents needs a hoist or something, that could...

08:34

The hoist could be attached to that support beam and it is safe and everything else. But if you try and do something like that after the building is built, you're talking about quite a few thousand dollars to make that happen. Whereas when the building was being built, it was minimal, a few hundred, and that's just for the material. The labor costs don't even come into it because they're building this unit anyway. So it all depends on what level of...

09:03

you're talking about. New buildings, I would say you're actually right, minimal. Older buildings, it might be a bit more, but again, I would say the costs are huge. I think there's a lot of assumptions about what needs to be done. So having somebody like myself or one of the other professionals from the Rick Hansen Foundation look at things would give them a clear idea of the cost maybe not being as high as they're thinking it's going to be.

09:34

So with that in mind when you enter a building or someone I guess someone's house or something like that when it when it turns When it comes to making a sort of a report, what are the main things you're kind of looking for? Well, I start right from outside So whether it's a building or a house, you know, you're looking at it from the exterior pathway to the front door or to the entrance of a building and then

10:03

You know, you're basically walking the building, walking through the building in your mind and looking at every aspect of it. So for example, on a driveway or a pathway, you wanna make sure that it's level, it's easy to identify the path, it's safe. The lighting is good for nighttime. When you get to the front door, is it a level entry, are there steps? How easy is it to reach an intercom if you're...

10:33

going into an apartment building. So it's every little detail that you can think of that you're looking at. You're not just looking at, okay, what if I'm inside, can I get from the living room to the bedroom, or can I get from one office to another? It's not that, it's you're looking at every aspect of that building, and not just the interior, but the exterior as well. And so you mentioned you've got aging clients, so you're dealing with private individuals as well?

11:01

Yeah