My mom and I are embarking on a new journey and we are requesting your help. Our hope is to design a website that will be a resource for people with disabilities and their families. As many of you know, our family has personal experience with disability. My father lost his battle with ALS in October of 2013 after years in a power wheelchair as a result of the disease.
While sick, my dad made the journey to upstate New York to attend my Master's graduation. It was important to him that he be there for me, and he was willing to move heaven and earth to make it happen. His effort and determination touched my heart and is a constant reminder of how much he loved me and how important my successes were to him.
As any one who travels with disability knows, it is a constant challenge in creative thinking and physical exertion. On our trip, Mom, Dad, and I discussed how useful it would be to have a web resource with details about hotels and disability access. Even though most of these hotels meet the specific requirements for handicap accessibility, there are often little surprises here and there that it would be best to prepare for ahead of time. Mom and I were revisiting this idea and decided to give web design a try.
The greatest challenge when talking about disabilities is that their are countless types of disability and needs to help those people. With this project we are trying to catch as many specific needs as possible in an organized and controlled environment. To do this in the best possible way we need some help from our friends...namely you dear reader.
So, what do we need?
1) Feedback on our hotel assessment form. Please follow this link (https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0u4tibbMiF2UGJFNE0xTnkyMms&authuser=0), we have done our best to capture all of the needs we could think of but are definitely looking for feedback and input. We are particularly looking for feedback on vision or hearing impairment needs and anything else you feel we have missed in our form. Please leave a comment below with your thoughts.
2) Please share this article on your social media sites. We are looking for a lot of feedback and help. The more people who hear about this project, the most experiences we can gather, and the better our results. Please, please, please
tell your friends and share this post, we want as much involvement as possible.
3) Help assessing! Once we have finalized our assessment form we will be looking for people to visit hotels (either in your local area or on your travels) to assess their accessibility and return the completed form to us so the data can be entered onto the website. The more hotels we can assess, the more helpful the site will be to disabled travelers and their families.
4) We need a name! We want a catchy name that will also express our mission of helping people travel more easily and successfully when dealing with disability. Please leave your suggestions in the comment area.
Thank you all for your help and support with this idea! I look forward to working on this with you and seeing it develop by the grace of God.
Please remember to share this post and leave your feedback in the comments!
Please remember to share this post and leave your feedback in the comments!
