Bermuda has failed its disabled, according to LaKiesha Wolffe, who aims to hold the island to account.

“Our challenges might be different, but our struggles are the same,” is how Ms Wolffe puts it, after enduring her daily struggle with Hamilton’s punishing lack of bays for the disabled.

Monday marked four years since the nearly fatal accident that deprived Ms Wolffe of her left leg.

Happy with her job in hospitality, she had just finished her shift serving breakfast when she got good news about getting a car — a step up from travelling on her rental bike.

But within seconds of leaving work on a bright summer morning, “something got in my eyes, something burning”.

Ms Wolffe hit the brakes, but her bike tumbled over the embankment and down a cliff. After that, she just remembers trying to climb back up — and blood.

“I knew I was dying,” she recalled. “I felt everything in my body leaving me. I couldn’t call for help. There was a house just at the top, and all I had to do was make it, for someone to see me and get help. But I couldn’t do it. Last thing I remember was wishing for God to take care of my daughter.”

Getting her life back proved a brutal struggle through multiple surgeries, rehabilitation, and the psychological torment of losing her limb, unable to provide her daughter with a normal childhood.

Now Ms Wolffe is determined to fight for others who struggle.

“It’s sad that a lot of physically disabled people are moving away,” she said. “They feel they’re going to get better treatment in another country. Why not their own?”

Parking, accessibility, and disabled people’s frustration of navigating insurance and financial assistance have convinced her that the wider community gets an easy pass.

“It’s unfair that the disabled have to live under the same system for help as the normal, average person,” she said. “This is why I’m not leaving until I change what needs to be done.”

Working again and soon to open her own business, Ms Wolffe aims to network with others who struggle, whether they were born disabled or left as such by accidents.

“I have never been a quiet girl. I have always been loud. This is my time to be loud and as spiteful as I have to be, because Bermuda doesn’t care about me. One way or another, I am going to make you care.”

She makes no secret of regularly falling afoul of parking regulations: being required to pay a fee to declare herself disabled, and then finding “barely enough” spaces to park.

“Every two hours, I have to leave my office on crutches and go to move my car,” she said. “Up on Reid Street there are only a few bays. There are none outside the new court building. At the Financial Assistance building, where disabled people have to go, there’s not one handicapped bay.”

Ms Wolffe parks wherever she has to: “I’ve got to get parking tickets — but I’m seen as the mean one.”

There have been small victories: after she spoke with the manager at a Smith’s supermarket, she returned two weeks later to find a bay outside switched over to disabled. Other support systems fall short in accommodating the disabled, many of whom have regular prescriptions.

Financial assistance helps, but those without transport rely on the bus to get prescriptions renewed, then wait 24 to 48 hours for approval before going to the pharmacy. “A disabled person on financial assistance is treated the same as someone normal and able-bodied,” she said.

Even prothesis comes with its indignities: upgrading her prosthetic leg is deemed a cosmetic procedure by her insurance company, while a breast cancer survivor does not face the same challenge.

Ms Wolffe owns up readily to being noisy about her daily problems as a physically challenged person. She used to attend a support group for amputees, then quit. “Everyone feels like my voice is too aggressive, but you’re not going to get anywhere sitting on your tail.”

She is deeply thankful to her family, friends and employer for their support — but hopes that as her business resources grow, she can channel her frustrations into getting organised, seeking sponsorship, and getting the broader community to wake up.

“People all say to me “I understand, but ...’” Ms Wolffe said. “No, you don’t. Trust me. There’s no ‘but’ to anything.”