What is the Aphasia Friendly Business Campaign?
The Aphasia Friendly Business Campaign aims to educate local businesses about aphasia and advocate for the rights of people with aphasia to receive access to goods and services. Businesses are offered the opportunity to receive on-site accessibility training and personalized accessibility toolkits designed to accommodate the needs of people with communication disorders.
What is Aphasia?
Aphasia is a language disorder found in approximately 1 in 3 stroke survivors. It affects a person’s ability to speak, read, write or understand. Participation in society is difficult for people with aphasia because of communication, physical and societal barriers. These include lack of public awareness, lack of public communication strategies, and inaccessible written information.
What problem does the Aphasia Friendly Business Campaign solve?
The Aphasia Friendly Business Campaign can help your business comply with legal acts, including:
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Charter of Rights and Freedoms
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Human Rights Code
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Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2001
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Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005
What can the Aphasia Friendly Business Campaign do for my business?
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Receive local attention for joining our efforts
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Receive recognition as an “Aphasia Friendly Business” in the community, including being listed on a local registry of “Aphasia Friendly Businesses”. This registry will be provided to local health care providers, including speech pathologists and clinical neuropsychologists, for distribution to their patients
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Expand access to services at your business for people with communication disorders
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Be awarded an “Aphasia Friendly Business” decal to display
The Aphasia Friendly Business Campaign and Windsor Adult Conversation Groups
Beyond the Aphasia Friendly Business Campaign, we are promoting our mission to enhance quality of life and encourage participation in society for people with aphasia by launching an adult conversation group in Windsor. Adult conversation groups for people with aphasia do not currently exist in Windsor, Sarnia or Chatham (see region’s geography below) and given the scale of this underserved area, there is identifiable need and demand for an aphasia group.
We are partners with Windsor Regional Hospital’s stroke navigator and outpatient speech language pathologists. The stroke navigator will serve as our primary source of referrals as she has contact with stroke survivors one year post-trauma.