Accessibly Yours – Enhancing Environments for Wellness and Occupation

About us

Accessibly Yours aims to enhance environments for the purpose of wellness and occupation. The term environment encompasses not only physical but also cultural, institutional, social and emotional environments. A broad scope of activities will be addressed and may include needs based on issues related to mobility, motor abilities, sensory skills, size, mental health, communication and cognition. Clients may include Individuals, Facilitators, Employers, Health Care Professionals, Government Bodies, Special Interest Groups, Undergraduate and Post Graduate Students. Accessibly Yours provides services in areas where there are few existing resources and is a venture of the School of Rehabilitation Science at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario.

Guiding principles:

• We will provide services and consultation where services are unavailable or where comprehensive services are limited.
• We will partner with colleagues in other practice settings and other environments.
• Inter-professional relationships will be built and modeled.
• We will approach activities within the context of health, wellness and productivity.
• We will engage in and model the integration of evidence into professional practice.
• We will develop a broad network of educational opportunities for pre-licensure, graduate and continuing education.
• We will encourage and support research.
• We will treat everyone with respect, dignity and mutual regard.
• Clients are viewed in a broad perspective and include individuals, families, agencies, communities, industry, government groups and others.
• Clients are defined by need not label.

Contact Accessibly Yours

School of Rehabilitation Science
Institute for Applied Health Sciences
Rm. 403
McMaster University
1400 Main St. W.
Hamilton, ON L8S 1C7
Phone: (905) 525 9140 ext. 27835
Fax: (905)524-0069
Email: yoursrs@mcmaster.ca

Core Team:
Mary Law, Sue Baptiste, Mary Forhan, James Leslie, Elizabeth Steggles, Joy MacDermid

Mary Law

Mary Law is an occupational therapist with graduate training in Epidemiology and Health and Social Planning. She is a Professor, Associate Dean (Health Sciences) and Director of the School of Rehabilitation Science at McMaster University. Mary is currently Co-Director of CanChild Centre for Childhood Disability Research, a multidisciplinary research centre at McMaster. Her clinical and research interests include the development, validation, and transfer into practice of outcome measures, evaluation of occupational therapy interventions for children with disabilities, and the study of environmental factors which affect the participation of children with disabilities. She is the lead author of the Canadian Occupational Performance Measure, an outcome measure for occupational therapy now translated into 22 languages and is used in over 35 countries around the world.

Sue Baptiste

Sue came from England to Canada, pursuing an occupational therapy career - with a focus on the assessment and management of people suffering from chronic pain. Concurrently, Sue developed a keen interest in leadership and management, and made a major commitment to gaining knowledge and credibility in the areas of professional development, ongoing adult learning and mentoring.

Throughout her clinical and executive management career, Sue developed a parallel life within the academic environment, to the point where she chose to invest fully in her faculty appointment. More recently she became a member of the tenured faculty at the School of Rehabilitation Science at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada and is currently the Assistant Dean, Occupational Therapy at that institution. She has consulted around the world in areas of chronic pain, problem-based learning, faculty development and curriculum reform.

Recent academic endeavours have focused on workplace re-entry and change; professional roles and accountabilities within changing organizational structures; the development of the Canadian Occupational Performance Measure (COPM); the development of a self-assessment tool for the College of Occupational Therapists of Ontario (COTO); and, the redevelopment of the occupational therapy curriculum for the entry level master’s programme, which began in September 2000.

Mary Forhan

Mary Forhan is an occupational therapist with more than 15 years of clinical experience in the areas of psychosocial and physical rehabilitation. She has planned and facilitated a number of small and large group workshops in the areas of eating disorders, mental health and healthy lifestyles. These workshops and groups have been attended by clients and healthcare professionals. Most recently, Mary joined the School of Rehabilitation Sciences at McMaster University as a part-time faculty member. Obesity is a topic of current interest for Mary and she was one of the first occupational therapists in Canada to define the role of occupational therapists working with clients who have obesity.

Elizabeth Steggles

Elizabeth trained as an Occupational Therapist in the United Kingdom where she specialized in assistive technology working for the Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation, a manufacturer and an Oxford University teaching hospital, where she was also Director of Occupational Therapy.

In Canada she has retained her focus on assistive technology working with both children and adults in community and hospital settings, working since 1991 at Hamilton Health Sciences in the Technology Access Clinic and with Independence Technologies.

Elizabeth is a professional associate of the School of Rehabilitation Sciences at McMaster University and is also a column editor for “OT Now” the practice magazine of the Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists. She has contributed to research on the utility and cost benefits of electronic aids to daily living and regularly publishes and presents on the topic. She is a member of the College of Occupational Therapists of Ontario, the Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists and the Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America .

James Leslie

James trained as an Electronics Technologist at Mohawk College in Hamilton. He worked in the telecommunications industry before joining Hamilton Health Sciences as a rehabilitation technologist in1984. He has since worked within multidisciplinary teams of health care professionals addressing the needs of people with disabilities in the areas of mobility, wheelchair seating, alternative and augmentative communication and computer access. Most recently he has specialized in electronic aids to daily living providing accessible environments through the use of high technology equipment.

James jointly manages Independence Technologies and is a professional associate of McMaster University, School of Rehabilitation Science. He is involved in education including teaching OT students, presenting at national and international conferences and contributing to Internet course materials.

Joy MacDermid