By Geoff Adams-Spink BBC News Online Disability Affairs Reporter

The Terry Group portable lift is operated at the touch of a button

A portable lifting device which enables disabled people to access podiums, stages and other raised areas has won an award.

The device is made by British company, Terry Group Ltd, and is on display at the Interbuild Exhibition at the NEC in Birmingham.

Last night it won the Interbuild new award for for disability access.

Terry developed the portable lift to meet a demand from schools, theatres, village halls and churches which sometimes need a temporary solution to provide wheelchair access to raised areas.

Other access solutions on show

The lift rises from ground level to a metre high.

"It was designed to be particularly portable and to store in to small spaces," Terry's commercial manager, Kelvin Goodacre, told BBC News Online.

"It's less than the size of an upright piano and so can be stored away into cupboards or other small areas."

Affordable

The lift costs �4000 to buy, but Terry also rent it out at �750 for the first week and �70 for additional weeks.

The device is battery operated and is designed to give a day's use without needing to be recharged.

Although it was developed 18 months ago, Terry has only just started marketing the lifting platform.

It has already supplied 100 units in the UK and has had considerable interest from other European countries.

New laws

Terry is one of a number of exhibitors at this year's Interbuild displaying equipment that will help businesses and other organisations to comply with new disability laws.

The third and final phase of the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act comes into effect in 1 October this year.

It requires anyone providing a service to remove physical barriers that prevent disabled people from accessing the service.

Terry's Kelvin Goodacre says he hopes that the new legal requirements will concentrate minds as well as boosting his company's sales.

"There's still such a lot of work to be done in terms of making barrier-free access a regular occasion throughout the country, and I think that this portable lift provides a particularly effective means of putting that access in place where otherwise it might not be considered."