WALK IN MY WHEELS: Experience, Empathy, and Inclusion in the Workplace
Imagine arriving at work and navigating your office, corridors, and meeting rooms from a wheelchair. Suddenly, every doorway, desk height, and bathroom layout becomes more than just design choices, they are gateways or barriers to participation. This is the reality that WCAPD’s Walk in My Wheels programme brings into sharp focus.
What the Programme Involves
Participants spend four hours in a wheelchair, completing routine workplace tasks and documenting their experiences. The exercise is not about simulation for its own sake, it is about sensitisation: helping colleagues understand each other’s realities, and encouraging employers to ask whether their environment is truly conducive to accommodating persons with disabilities.
Why Workplace Awareness Matters
South African workplaces still lag behind in disability inclusion. Persons with disabilities account for only 1.4% of the workforce, far below the national target of 3%. Many of the barriers are not attitudinal alone but structural – inaccessible entrances, narrow corridors, or inadequate bathroom facilities. By experiencing life from a wheelchair user’s perspective, employees and managers gain first-hand insight into:
WCAPD’s Role and Access Auditors
It is important to note that WCAPD is not an access auditor. Professional auditors exist to conduct formal workplace assessments. However, WCAPD’s awareness-raising initiatives like Walk in My Wheels provide valuable lived-experience insights that can complement those audits. Businesses benefit from both perspectives: technical compliance and human-centred awareness.
Partnering for Inclusion
WCAPD encourages businesses to collaborate with us in rolling out Walk in My Wheels. An educated workforce is a workforce that embraces inclusion and accessibility. By participating, organisations demonstrate commitment not only to compliance but to culture, building workplaces where persons with disabilities can contribute in a positive way.
The Bigger Picture
Awareness initiatives like this are part of WCAPD’s broader mission: to ensure that inclusion and accessibility are not optional extras but central to workplace design and culture. Every report written by participants adds to a growing body of evidence that can inform better practices, stronger policies, and ultimately, more equitable opportunities.
Walk in My Wheels is more than an exercise it’s a call to action. Together, we can create workplaces where accessibility is the norm, not the exception. Email awareness@wcapd.org.za for more information or to bring the programme into your business.
