One Agency: Wheelchair-friendly property initiative

PHOTO: One Agency Founder and CEO Paul Davies

One Agency has started identifying which of its for-sale and for-rent properties are wheelchair-friendly, to make the search process easier for wheelchair users.

The group is now using a wheelchair icon when promoting wheelchair-friendly properties in its social and digital marketing.

One Agency would also like to add a wheelchair-friendly filtering option to its online listings, but this is a much bigger technical challenge that requires input from the property portals.

A wheelchair-friendly property is one that has features like wide doors, large bathrooms, and the ability to enter and navigate the property without stairs.

Founder and CEO Paul Davies said until this issue was brought to his attention, he didn’t realise how difficult property searching could be for people who use a wheelchair.

Army Veteran, Ms Tahnee Barnes, who now works with Veterans with mental illnesses and disabilities approached us to see if there were any changes that could be made to help people with disabilities in their property search.

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“Wheelchair users are up against it from the moment they look at online listings, because although you can filter for things like sheds, balconies and even spas, you can’t filter to find out whether a home is suitable for someone who uses a wheelchair,” he said.

“Think about how tiring and exclusionary it must feel to visit property after property, only to discover you might not even be able to get through the front door.

“The biggest thing we as an industry can do to address this problem is to introduce wheelchair-friendly filtering to property portals. Until then, we can use wheelchair icons on our social and digital marketing. This is a small change that can make a big improvement to the property searching experience for a significant number of Australians.

“Now that I’m aware of the missing functionality on property marketing platforms, we’d like to encourage the major portals and CRM providers to add mobility filters for all users.”