About Ken
How it all came about.
My name is Kenneth Castledine and I’m 37yrs of age. I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1991. This hit me like a brick after, especially after serving in HM Forces Army where I was in a demanding and physical environment.
Day to day I try my best to make life as normal as possible. The main thing I do most is to get out and about doing lots of driving as I can still drive using hand controls (my feet have lost sensation and I never knew if I was touching the accelerator or brake pedal!).
After doing lots of shopping over the years I found that I was getting frequently annoyed at the lack of disabled bays on some major supermarket stores, especially at weekends. This also happens at restaurants and cinemas which never seem to have enough disabled parking spaces to go around.
This got me to thinking that there must be a way to get around this problem. I had tried using stickers on the inside of my car windows to warn others that I needed extra space to enter my vehicle but these are hard to spot for anyone not purposely looking.
So, I suddenly got the idea of putting a sign on the outside of my vehicle - without making it an eyesore or just looking plain daft!
After a few years using different designs and lots of research involving asking disabled groups what they thought of my project I was very encouraged about the feedback I received.
I have now finalised the design and I have called it 'ACCESS-AID'.
News article from the Newcastle Evening Chronicle (March 2007).
News article from the Newcastle Evening Chronicle (October 2005)
With help from Business Link and the Northern Pinetree Trust - who have helped me through all of the stages of my project - it has now been design registered through the patent office.
