Business Central September 2020

| 43 Volume 5 | Issue 3 ‘Finding a way’ for disabled mobility The team at Braiden International: passionate about helping disabled people obtain greater mobility. Kelly Deeks REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT » Carterton - Braiden International Pleased to be associated with Braiden International 47 53 Queen St, Masterton 06 377 1301 or 027 215 8781 AutopaintWairarapa reece@autopaintwairarapa.co.nz P assion for getting physically disabled people transport mobile exists in all of Braiden International’s staff, who specialise in vehicle adaptations ranging from the simplest hand con- trols to high-end self-drive vans that can be driven from the wheelchair. Braiden International designs and builds wheel- chair hoists and vehicle adaptations for the disa- bled, manufactures the market leading Gentle Giant range of mobility products for elderly and disabled people, and carries a range of high quality hand controls, driving aids, and other related accessories. Company founder and director John Braiden is a coach builder by trade, whose daughter Jess was born in 1987 with myotonic dystrophy. She spent her life unable to walk and passed away two weeks after her 30th birthday in 2017. John and his wife Sue started Braiden Interna- tional when they shifted home from Australia in 1989 to be closer to their family support. “We came home in the middle of a recession and there were no jobs around,” John says. “I met an occupational therapist who had a job fitting a wheelchair lift into a van, and I said I could do it for him. “But the design was rubbish, so I designed my own. I got some strips of custom wood and made the thing on my garage wall.” John approached the New Zealand Disability Resource Centre and showed them his wheelchair lift, and the rest is history. “I have a theory – if the clients can meet the stringent requirements of Land Transport and a specialist occupational therapist with their kinetic responses, reaction times, and vision, - if they have the will, then we’ll find a way,” he says. John and Sue cared for Jess 24/7 for 30 years, and John adapted all of the family’s vehicles to make things easier as he and Sue got older. He even adapted a three-wheel bike he had bought for Jess to allow her to steer it, and she would chase her younger sister Blair all around the back yard. “It gave her the sense of being a normal little kid,” John says. “I adapted my mother-in-law’s car. She had a little car that was so low to the ground, and with osteo in her hips she had a hell of a job getting in and out. I modified the driver’s seat, raised it up and it went out at right angles. She just pushed a switch and the seat delivered her to a standing position.” The options were fairly basic in the 90s but today, Braiden International is incorporating things like voice control, modifying vehicles for amputees to drive, and even utes for farmers who have been injured in farm accidents so they can still manage their farms from their wheelchairs. Braiden International has a great association with both Land Transport and the Low Volume Vehicle Technical Association, which brought out a certifica- tion process in the 1990s. “I got involved in the disability certification, and most of the pages of the manual on disability transport adaptation have ‘Courtesy of Braiden International’. We helped them write the manual, and we feel pretty proud about that.” “I met an occupational therapist who had a job fitting a wheelchair lift into a van, and I said I could do it for him.”