InfoToday

We often hear the saying “Don’t build it, it’s not worth it, we don’t see people with disabilities using them…”. Attitudes distorted by this ignorance affect the development of the country and has been occurring continuously for a long time.

I have been to Japan twice. One of the amazing things I noticed was that their rivers and canals were clean —I repeat, very clean! I remember waiting on one side of Kawaguchiko Lake to take a photo of Mt.Fuji and seeing waste water running into the lake through gutters from various places, but the water was visibly CLEAR. In many traveling attractions, they even kept fish —- you could see them swimming!!!

I do always stress this phase, and I’m gonna do it again. Admittedly, there are problems everywhere around us. Yet a problem itself is not as problematic as your attitude to deal with it. What’s more important is the people who step forward to make a change, who no longer deny to remain an avid criticizer, who refuse to compromise standard. As a society, you must make a change now. Begin from what you’re good at or feel comfortable. Otherwise we’d be filled up with mountains of problems. Let’s make a move!

The 6th anniversary of Accessibility Is Freedom! Finally we’ve got a Thai official name “เข้าถึงและเท่าเทียม” On 15 August 2014, I launched the very first video clip about accessible parking problem. Since then, with relentless fight for equality as well as strong collaborative networks from countless parties and individual endeavour, it’s not exaggerated to say that we see some significant accessibility improvement in Thailand. Our works still prevail and continuously move forward, even more extensive.

[7 August 2020] Today I woke up so early at 3 a.m. because I have two stellar missions to do. I’ll have to drive at least 219 km. having two important meeting at east side of Thailand and North side Bangkok. The estimated expense today will be around 1,000 Baht, toll fee and gas, with heavy focus while meetings. This kind of expenditure occurred regularly along my almost 6-year intensive social work.

Both images took place in a different time scale of 30 years. It exemplifies the voices of brave PWDs (people with disabilities) who stand up to demand a basic human rights, stated by the constitutions. Yet, from the past till present time, most PWDs remain unable to go out of home conveniently, to go to school and hospital, to work and make a living individually. This is a living, catastrophic summary of the basic human rights of PWDs in Thailand. What else could be worse?

Believe it or not, since the very beginning of our organisation (and Page name) I’ve never thought about its Thai name, only English one. Many of my friends often requested me to come up with Thai official name for the proper use in official document. So recently we’ve brainstormed, realising a Thai name would typically catch more eyes on many Thais, and finally come up with this name! Now you guys can search for us more easily, whether in Thai or English Love Saba Accessibility Is Freedom

Along the past 6 years of my intense social contribution, I’ve paid focus on tools for effective communication to convey the best message to everyone. In doing that, it inevitably costed a price to pay, a big amount of expense. When I made a serious field survey: shooting or editing, it needed a storage to collect that useful information. Our close team members would recognise that I put emphasis on storage, all data must be kept safely and conveniently. I already purchased several extra storage tools. But since my finance is not doing quite well recently, this act must be …

According to my last area survey, some might say that it’s “too much”, it’s coming and “can’t hold it”. Here is the picture for an example. In the PTT gas station – Bang Na, there are 2 toilet areas for normal people (male and female). I assume that there should be around 20 rooms in total. However, each area has 1 room for PWDs and one of these two is out of service. So just only 1 left still available.

Let’s see what we have contributed… 1. Advising on the 2nd phase of the High Speed Rail Project (Nakhonratchasima – Nong Khai) at Nakhomratchasima province 1.1 Encouraging and empowering the local PWDs there. This was also to build a strong connection. 1.2 Advising and providing practical information about accessible infrastructure to their responsible department of design and architecture. 1.3 Expected travel expense was about 4,000 Baht. Fortunately, this was subsidized.