A group of five and six-year-old students armed with paint brushes and a wagon are hoping to teach Canada’s largest city a lesson about improving wheelchair accessibility, one wooden ramp at a time.
Kindergarten and Grade 1 students from the Mabin School in downtown Toronto were inspired by a wheelchair-bound friend who needs to be lifted up and down a set of stairs to get around the building -- an arrangement that didn’t fit their definition of fairness.
“It wasn’t fair if somebody needed to go somewhere, and everybody else could, but not you,” six-year-old Norah told CTV News.
The children’s concern quickly morphed into a mission to build a more inclusive, barrier-free city for people with mobility issues.
“We wanted to try to get a ramp for our school, and then it spun into ‘let’s make as many things accessible as we can,’” said senior kindergarten teacher Laura Johnson.
The children are taking on the challenge of improving the city’s infrastructure in collaboration with the StopGap Foundation, an advocacy group that builds lightweight one-step plywood ramps for street-level businesses. They’ve been busy assembling and painting in their classroom workshop.
“These ramps are very, very simple. They are four pieces of wood and they are doing an incredible job of highlighting the benefits of a barrier free society,” said executive director Luke Anderson.
The StopGap Foundation has distributed over 1,200 brightly coloured accessibility ramps in 40 communities from Vancouver to Halifax.
The group of Toronto kids was featured in a short video on the foundation’s website called “Fairness from 5-year-olds.” Narrated by the children, the video documents their fact-finding trip around downtown Toronto, where they identify inaccessible stores and contact the owner with a letter.
One local coffee shop took them up on their offer. The kids proudly towed a new red ramp adorned with the Stopgap.ca logo to the business’s entryway, bridging a small step towards a more accessible city.
“Some restaurants or places don’t have that,” said five-year-old Olivia. “So in 10 years, everything will become accessible.”
With a report from CTV’s Peter Akman
