What can our community do to make St. James Town more accessible?

Accessibility is a human right. Is the St. James Town community failing or passing, on making the area as accessible as possible to people who need it?

St. James Town is a diverse and multi-faceted community located in the heart of Toronto, bordering Sherbourne Street to the west, Bloor St E to the north, Parliament Street to the east and Wellesley St E to the south. The community is made up of more than 17,000 residents and is comprised of many high-rises built in the 1960s. Many of the residents that live in St. James Town are senior citizens and require mobility devices and other supports needed to live, work and play independently.

The problem is that the St. James Town community is severely lacking in the supports needed to make it a truly accessible community.

For example, certain residential buildings like 240 Wellesley may have a ramp but, they have no automatic door push button at the entrance for people with mobility issues to enter or leave. Therefore, people with disabilities have a challenging time enter or exiting without any help. Especially challenging early in the morning or late during nighttime (why??). To fix this problem, we need to add automatic door push buttons in 240 and other buildings that don't have them to make St. James Town more inclusive.

Sidewalks in St. James Town is awful for people with disabilities, especially wheelchair and mobility scooter users. From the steep ramps, broken or missing and bumpy sidewalks and construction blocking sidewalks giving people who use wheelchairs and scooters a challenging time traveling in St. James Town.

In the words of one wheelchair users: " People with disabilities are people too. We do not stay at home all day, we go outside for shopping, sightseeing, and traveling as well. The sidewalk in St. James Town is a nightmare for me. I have fallen countless times off my wheelchair because of how steep the ramps are especially during winter.”

Everyone who lives in St. James Town has to deal with snow and ice. People with disabilities, on the other hand, have it far worse. This is especially true for people with disabilities who do not have access to a vehicle and must rely on sidewalks and other pedestrian pathways to get to work, shop, or leave their homes for any purpose during the winter. Therefore, we need to make ramps less steep, and fix broken, missing, and uneven sidewalks. Construction workers need to ensure wheelchair and scooter users have a pathway to travel by when construction is blocking the sidewalk and have more proactive sidewalk clearing efforts during wintertime.

The areas that are accessible in St. James Town are the Community Corner, the Community Center, most of the grocery stores.

“Do you feel like the 200 Community Corner is accessible to people with disabilities and people in general?” I asked one of the staff workers at the Corner. " It is accessible. We have a ramp and an automatic door for people on wheelchairs and scooters. We help people with disabilities with housing needs and help with documents. We cook food in our kitchen and deliver it to seniors and any leftovers are given to anyone in need." she said.

We need to have outlets where people with disabilities can come to and have their voices heard. Even with areas that are accessible friendly, improvements can be made, “Even though we are wheelchair accessible at the Corner, we still need to improve our website to be accessibility for people with vision disabilities” a staff member said. Big and small upgrades can lead to a more accessible St. James Town.

 

Written by
Biraj Jha

Journalist
FOCUS Media Arts Centre