Bronx family aims to help people with disabilities find accessible attractions in NYC

NEW YORK –  On a scorching weekend morning, the Lachhman-Persad household traveled to the Brooklyn Museum from the Bronx, shopping the Sunday market and having fun with one another’s firm. 

Visiting locations throughout the town is one thing they have been actively making an attempt to do extra usually, however it’s not at all times simple for them. 

“It truly is isolating when you could have a incapacity and wish to get out and do not know methods to do it,” says Lakshmee Lachhman-Persad, a incapacity advocate. 

Her youthful sister, Annie, was born with cerebral palsy and is in a wheelchair. Lakshmee additionally lives with vertigo, which impacts her listening to and deteriorated bones on the left facet of her physique.

The household, immigrants from Guyana, began a weblog in 2018 referred to as Accessible Travel NYC. With their platform, they purpose to offer free ideas and accessibility data for standard landmarks in New York. 

“Pure Historical past Museum, the Bronx Botanical Backyard, one in all our favorites, the Bronx Zoo,” mentioned their mom Pearly Lachhman, itemizing a few of their favourite locations. 

“And the Met,” Annie added. 

For example, the perfect place for a wheelchair consumer to enter the Met is on fifth Avenue and 81st Road, according to the blog. 

“After working 20 years within the journey trade, I hadn’t realized that there have been one in 4 folks with a incapacity right here in the US and, as a journey marketer, I by no means ever as soon as thought-about advertising and marketing to folks with disabilities,” Lachhman-Persad mentioned. 

They hope their adventures will encourage others to benefit from the arts and tradition this metropolis has to supply, regardless of how tough it may be to navigate with a incapacity.

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