A Red Deer senior says the lack of wheelchair access at the entrances to a small, downtown mall creates a significant barrier for some people.
Sandra Ladwig, 82, said visiting her denturist at Towne Centre Mall on Ross Street is much more difficult than it should be.
“There’s three doors getting into that building and none of them are wheelchair accessible,” said Ladwig about the glass doors which do not have handicap door access switches to automatically open the doors for people with disabilities.
“It’s quite a rigmarole to get in that door. I’m in a wheelchair, and I’m on oxygen, so it’s a hardship for me,” said the senior who held her hand out to keep the door from closing while her daughter Tricia Pope pulled Ladwig’s wheelchair inside the mall on Wednesday morning.
She said a few years ago when she used a walker she had difficulty opening the door at the mall. Recently she returned and had the same kind of problem in her wheelchair and it’s likely an obstacle to other people with disabilities.
“There are several people who try go in there with their walkers and their wheelchairs and their canes.”
She said other malls and offices are accessible in Red Deer, as well as public buildings. Many people probably know someone with mobility issues who rely on buildings being accessible.
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The owner of the Towne Centre Mall was unavailable to comment on the lack of accessibility at the mall’s exterior doors.
But Darin Sceviour, building and inspections supervisor with the city, said Towne Centre Mall was probably built in about the 1950s so it would have been built according to the building code at the time and followed accessibility rules laid out in that code.
He said modern accessibility rules would not apply unless substantial renovations are done to an older building. The downtown has many older buildings with similar accessibility issues.
“If you take a look at a lot of places, there’s stairs going into buildings because that’s the way it was constructed in the day,” Sceviour said.
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Towne Centre Mall is a two-storey building, which also has shops or offices in the basement, and does not have an elevator.
Sceviour said there were no previous complaints about the building’s accessibility. While the city is proactive when it comes to barrier-free standards for city buildings, the city has no authority to force other building owners to improve accessibility unless there are major renovations.
But the city would require building owners to address safety concerns, he added.
szielinski@reddeeradvocate.com
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