Inaccessible Ottawa

There are two old, conjoined buildings along Bank Street in Old Ottawa South, between Ossington Avenue and Cameron Avenue. One is the type of classic brick commercial building indicative of the neighbourhood, some 50 years old and home to a Lebanese bake shop and a video conversion shop. The other building is a bit newer, with light brickwork on the street level and painted cement above.

All 10 of the buildings’ street-level businesses have one or two short steps leading to their front doors. These steps are only a few inches high, but that’s enough of an obstacle to prevent a person in a wheelchair from accessing the entire block of Ottawa shops.

That’s common in Ottawa, according to Sarah Wilson, the founder of Miss Ability—a service which looks to help businesses in the city become aware of accessibility issues, and which works with businesses to become more accessible.

Wilson tells a story of a downtown tea shop that was told—by the city, according to the owners—that it needed to make its bathroom wheelchair accessible. The stalls and door were retrofitted, but the only way into the shop from outside is over steps. It’s a common theme, she says: business try to be accessible, but don’t know how to go about it.

“It’ll take some thinking on their part,” she says of accessibility-conscious businesses. “There’s a lot of hesitancy when it comes to modifying their stores.”

But thinking doesn’t always come with answers, not according to Jim Grimes.

Grimes Realty has been in business for nearly three decades and owns and operates 1200 Bank Street, that block of shops that aren’t easily accessible to people in wheelchairs. Though some of the shops share a temporary, movable ramp that gets used on an as-needed basic, finding a permanent solution is difficult.

“It’s a cost factor and it’s a design factor,” Grimes says. “How do you physically ramp into a retail store? It’s not a question of nobody wants to do it, it’s a question of how do you do it? Some of the buildings are very easy to do that with, but others are more difficult.”

Grimes goes on to explain that accessibility isn't a problem with new buildings, since provincial and municipal regulations basically ensure that any new residential or commercial property includes accessible entry and exit points. But older buildings, like his building on Bank Street, were built before designers and politicians took accessibility into account.

“You would never build that building today, not the way it exists now,” says Grimes. “When you built something out of steel and concrete 40 or 50 years ago and now you try to make it accessible, it’s almost impossible.”

So what can store owners do? Grimes and Wilson agree that there are no easy, long-term answers for physical solutions for older buildings.

In the coming years, more businesses will need to address accessibility to comply with the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act. The act applies mostly to municipally owned and operated buildings like libraries, hospitals and schools, but encourages privately owned business to become accessibility-conscious.

The Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services is still developing standards for built environments in accordance with the act, but has outlined customer service standards that are in line with what Wilson’s Miss Ability looks to achieve. Accessibility is only partly about ramps, she says. Wilson’s trying to develop a “lifestyle brand for people with disabilities.”

Wilson wants Miss Ability to be a go-to guide for anything to do with the lifestyle for people with mobility issues. She points out that business can make small changes to improve accessibility, such as widening the space between tables in restaurants and ensuring that tables are at wheelchair height, but that solutions can also be more creative.

“I think it might be an idea to make their products or service available through some other kind of portal,” she says, referring to websites like hers. “Or even to pair up with another business that may be like-minded but is wheelchair accessible. We need to get it out that [services and products] are available somewhere that we’re able to get in.”

Readers can contribute to Sarah Wilson’s growing database of accessible stores soon. Miss Ability plans to release an iPhone app to review shops in Ottawa based on a few criteria. Wilson and her development team are working out the bugs, but she hopes to release the app in fall 2011.