What You Need To Know To Make a Bus Handicap Accessible

Discrimination is still prevalent in areas of society. One of the guiltiest areas is the transportation realm, which overwhelmingly serves people without disabilities while leaving people with disabilities in the dust. If you’re reading this, you’re ready to make a change. Check out our tips for what you must know to make a bus handicap accessible below.

Understand the Social Implications

Ensuring you’re armed with knowledge about how people with disabilities are negatively impacted by subpar transportation will light a fire under your belly. Low empathy is a key reason why infrastructure and human-level transportation changes haven’t been implemented earlier. We need to understand that people struggling with poverty and physical ailments are often at a disadvantage. This is certainly the first step to creating substantial change in your community through your fleet.

Train Your Staff

The first thing you have to do is train your staff. Putting policies and safeguards in place for people with physical disabilities will be difficult unless your staff is abreast of all the changes. Train them on how to treat and communicate with people who have disabilities. Listening to their needs is the first step to understanding them, which will help tremendously in learning how to accommodate. Tell your staff that they can also take suggestions from passengers about what should and shouldn’t change. It’s always best to get ideas from the source about your public transportation or school bus rentals and how you can improve on what you already have.

Get the Right Equipment

Luckily, this isn’t the Middle Ages. There are examples of people making their fleets more handicap accessible. First, make sure you have the right equipment. Consider getting bike racks attached to the hood of your bus. Consider getting a ramp that can unfold just behind your door to make it accessible for people in wheelchairs to enter your bus.

While many people with disabilities have “stoppers” on their wheelchairs to help hold them in place, you’ll also want to have straps that lock their chairs in place for additional support. Getting the right equipment is key to ensuring your bus is accessible for people with handicaps. Overall, following these tips will help you make your fleet accessible to all, which is all we can hope for.