Maya
Maya is 22 years old and has a physical disability as a result of a spinal cord injury at birth. She uses a wheelchair and has used disability support services all her life.
Maya lives with her parents, but finds and chooses disability support services for herself. She would like to move into her own home in the future and will use the Disability Gateway to find the information she needs to make this transition.
“I’d like to move out of my family home soon, so information on housing, rights and equipment is what interests me at the moment,” says Maya.
“The Disability Gateway has dedicated areas of life where I can find information and connect to relevant services. It has links to practical services like equipment hire and wheelchair ramps, but also information about bigger issues like my rights as a tenant if I need to modify a rental property.”
Maya will soon graduate with a Bachelor of Social Work and is also looking at future job opportunities.
“Finding a job is the next big thing on my horizon so I’m interested in how the Disability Gateway can help me get a picture of what’s out there, the steps to employment and my rights as an employee.”
Describing her experience using the Disability Gateway website so far, accessibility and being able to find information on a broad range of topics are her favourite features.
“The accessibility of the Disability Gateway website stands out for me. There are different options for people with sight and hearing issues, and it’s easy to navigate. I don’t see that on many other websites,” she says.
“To me a gateway is something that gives you access to another place, and that’s what the Disability Gateway does: it’s an entry point to the world of disability services, for people with disability but also for people who support them and need to access services on their behalf – families, carers and guardians, and health professionals.
“A lot of this information is harder to find separately, so having links to all these different services in one place makes it much easier. If you want to find something, the Disability Gateway can take you to the right place.”
The Disability Gateway is an informative website where anybody can go to find disability services that are out there in Australia and more specifically you can go on to your state to find what’s there.
I would recommend the Disability Gateway to those that I know because the website has 10 different Areas of Life so I’m sure that they will be able to find something that might benefit them.
I think the Disability Gateway is beneficial to a whole lot of people. I know that family, friends, carers and even health care professionals would be able to find information and services that are out there.
