All right, welcome to the AdaptX Podcast where we have discussions with individuals
who are building accessible businesses or products, advocating for inclusion, or excelling
in adaptive sports. Our intention is never to speak on behalf of those with disabilities,
but rather to amplify their ideas and voice and learn strategies to scale our impact and help
other businesses become more inclusive. We know that inclusion can't be achieved only by businesses
that are dedicated to support individuals with disabilities, but has to be a community effort to
prioritize accessibility. Today we are joined by two members of the team at RolL Mobility,
a mobile app that strives to be the yelp of accessibility. I'll turn it over to the team
now to introduce themselves. I'm Rachel with RolL Mobility. I do communications and social content
for our team and newsletters. We're a small team, so we all do everything unfortunately and
fortunately. That's an essential part of businesses, being able to wear many hats.
Absolutely. I'm Joe Foster. About three years ago, we had come up with an idea for the app
over some napkin math and now we're here, officially launched in February of 2023.
Yeah, that basically segues into my first question, which was going to be like,
can you kind of take me from concept to creation? What sparked the idea and why did you determine
that it would be an app versus a mobile platform versus a web-based platform? So, if you kind of
want to take me back three years and how it all started, that would be great. It was a cold,
dark day. I have been lucky enough to have been volunteering with the US Paralympic Association
and the BOEC out of Breckenridge. They run a program every year called the Hartford Invitational.
It's called Ski Spectacular. We've probably got a few people that have been to Ski Spectacular
or are aware of it. We finished a day on the slopes and we wanted to take a group of athletes
out to dinner. We started calling restaurants and saying, can we have three people in wheelchairs
in your establishment? Do you have tables for us? Is there a ramp to get in? All three restaurants
said, yeah, of course we're accessible. I can already see you nodding that you know where this
is going. This is the reaction that we see over and over again. We get to the restaurant that
we've chosen specifically because it's got an elevator to get down to the bathroom in case
anybody needs to use the bathroom. There's two steps to get inside and there is no ramp.
Because we're with a group of athletes who are very comfortable in their bodies and very
comfortable with themselves, we make it work. We get downstairs and we've got to move four tables
out to the sides to accommodate wheelchairs. Then we've got somebody that needs to use the bathroom
and they go to the elevator. The elevator is from 1960 something and it's too small to
facilitate a wheelchair. We're sitting at the table and we just ask them, this never happens
in a big city, right? This never happens to you in your hometown. This never happens to you anywhere.
They all said, no, no, anytime I go anywhere new, it's a phone call and maybe a drive-by
by my significant other or by an able-bodied friend. The information just isn't there.
You're asking people who don't understand your mobility issue for information
and specific nuanced information about a location. I came back down into Denver
and started talking to a friend who was doing software development and design, Shane Blanford.
We set up some of the napkin math and then our first step was actually sending out emails and
doing... Our first step was sending out emails and gathering groups of people and asking them
what they would like and if this was even something that they thought was pertinent.
It was a very eye-opening experience because they almost to a person said,
yes, or I've been thinking about how to do this for four years. That was the impetus and the
genesis of how things started. We created a version that, Shane doesn't like how I say it,
but I say it looks like your friend's cousin's brother built it in his basement. It was clunky
and half of the time you could sign in and half of the time you couldn't sign in. We started
putting that into people's hands and having them use it. We learned a whole lot the first six months
about what people wanted to see, what we could ask, what we couldn't ask. That really led to
towards a complete rebuild of the app from the ground up and towards the launch in February.
That's lean startup principles. You start with a minimal viable product and you get feedback,
see what works, see what people want and then you iterate on the process as opposed to
investing an egregious amount of money upfront and making sure that it's actually solving a
problem that people want. Getting feedback from the stakeholders beforehand, but then also
starting with something kind of a small tech stack and then building onto it as it becomes
more viable. Was the app development process multiple years? Obviously it took a few years
to get to where it is now. At what point did you think now is the time to launch? Did you feel
like you had to hit a certain number of reviews? No, to be honest, we actually held it way too
close to the vest for a really long time. One of the issues that we have with presenting it to
people is we know how many people in the space have been burned so many times with, oh, we have
this great new thing for you and then you get it and it's clunky and you can't use it or it's
really not designed well and it doesn't work at all or it just doesn't fit in and they haven't
really listened to what the community has asked them for. And so we held onto it for probably
six to eight months longer than we should have because we wanted to present to people that we
had heard over and over again, hey, we keep getting stuff that is like this, it doesn't work
or it's not what we're really looking for. And we did not want to do that to the end.
We did not want to do that to the community. We wanted to come out with something that was pretty polished
and ready to go. We did an okay job of that, of course. When you're using a product every single
day, you intuitively know how to go from point A to point B because you're the one that designed
point A to point B. And so it has been interesting to see the ways that people break things and
utilize it on their own. But one of our core tenants has always been that we're not here to
say to people what they need. Rachel actually has a great point about we're both recovering
therapists and almost all of the therapy language is very ableist and is very much centered around
dysfunction. And Rachel, would you say disability?
No, just more like limitation first, right? Versus letting the patient or the disabled population
quantify maybe like what is function, what is functional to them, which taps into this hard
thing that we're doing is trying to create something for a community that is, even in the
world of spinal cord injury, which I have a spinal cord injury, each person's individual
presentation is just so unique. We're trying to build this platform that meets the needs of many
when people have such unique experiences and such unique presentations and needs.
Brendan, you see this all the time because you train people that have the exact same diagnosis
and they present completely different. Yeah, it sounds like what you're referring
to is kind of what we distinguish between a medical model of disability and a social model,
whereas a medical model says you have X, Y, Z wrong with you, it's my role as a professional
to get you closer to some baseline, predetermined baseline, versus a social model that says you
aren't disabled by a specific impairment but rather by an environment that isn't catered to
the specific needs you have. So it kind of puts the onus on the business, it puts the
onus on the environment to be accessible, obviously to the individual and not just kind of meet some
preconceived idea of how everyone should function in their environment. So that's where I find it
interesting to kind of approach this problem as a whole. Since accessibility can be so diverse,
it's like how do you quantify every aspect of accessibility within an environment so I'd be
interested in kind of seeing how you guys are addressing problems, not the word, because
that's not really a problem, but how are you addressing that piece of determining whether
a building is accessible or not, because you're essentially crowdsourcing users' feedback, right?
Absolutely. I think it's a lot of listening on the front end, right, and the willingness to just
publicly sail forward. Like Joe mentioned, we've been holding it close, waiting for it to be
perfect, but the fact is we just have to put it out there and just be continuously improving
our product and continuously taking feedback in from our community.
One of the things we did right at the beginning was we just had it on a star rating system,
and we said, you know, rate the accessibility of this location on a one to five scale,
and we learned very quickly people that were allies did not feel comfortable rating it because
they didn't feel that they had the expertise to rate it. People that had disabilities, which is a
whole nother wormhole, felt that they weren't disabled enough or they were too disabled, so
they'd be cutting people out, and we wound up with a system where no one really felt comfortable
just doing a narrative that said, yeah, the front door is accessible, but I couldn't do this or I
couldn't do that. I'm going to give it three stars, or we would see people would rate it five stars
because it only had two steps to get from the first level to the second level, and so we very
quickly iterated away from that and moved towards a system that asks the question, you know,
is there automatic door opener at the front door? Is there large thresholds at the different spots
in the building? Are there large, you know, thick throw rugs or different styles of carpeting?
Are there mostly bar top or are there mostly wheelchair height tables, things like that, and so
we really boiled it down to we took those 50 people that we had asked questions to and presented
them a list of, gosh, I think it was 25 questions, and they, we crowdsourced the 10 questions that
they really felt were the things that they wanted to know and needed to know. We know that we're not
going to be able to offer really, really granular information yet, but knowing a little bit that is
coming from one of your peers versus calling a restaurant and asking a hostess who, who basically
knows nothing about, you know, anything about you is so much more valuable than I think we even
have the concept of. One of the stories that was one of the defining moments for the app
was we had a gentleman who attended one of our little information sessions where we asked for
feedback and just asked people to go through and leave a review and make sure that we had set it
up so that it was easy to use and was working well. And he told a story where he had
found a gal that he really was interested in, asked her on a date, went to, you know,
called the restaurant and really wanted to downplay any of the difficulties of being in a
wheelchair. And they showed up at this restaurant that he had called and the, you know, the classic
thing happened. They did not have an accessible entrance at the front, but they did have a
ramp at the back alley and bring him through the kitchen. And here he is trying to, you know,
really present like, hey, look, I can do, you know, this is really not a big deal. Thankfully,
it sounds like she laughed it off and they remain friends, but there's little things that would
really help. And so, you know, he was like, you know, he was like, you know, I'm going to
things that would really help. And so we've got the 10 questions and then a space that just says,
is this space, you know, what other details about the space do you need to know? And so there is a
spot where you can say the accessible entrance is down the back alley or any other information,
or even that, Hey, I got there and the owner wouldn't shovel the walk for me. Like wouldn't
shovel the ramp after it had snowed. We've, we've heard that instance a couple of times.
It's interesting listening to you talk kind of about the process, because it's one of the things
it's one project that we've talked about taking on to a degree is like identifying what fitness
centers around the country are accessible and almost building out like a database of accessible
gyms. So it would be interesting to almost piggyback off of the platform you're already
building. Like instead of us going out of our way to reinvent the wheel, we just reach out directly
to the gym owners in our network, get them listed on your app. Maybe there can be a different segue
when you're navigating it, you can select restaurants versus fitness centers versus something.
And it gives you like a push pin map, or you enter your zip code and it shows on kind of a smaller
scale map what gyms in your area are accessible. But I was also, as you were talking about people
rating things, a thought that came to mind was like, what if, what if you went to a gym like
mine and I didn't have an automatic door in front and you rated it a one, would you give that feedback
to the business owner? Because then what if I go ahead and I install a handicap accessible entrance,
do I then reach out to you and say, hey, can you update my rating? Like I've changed this.
And so one of the ways that we've tried to get around that is the ratings are cumulative. And so
if you have one person that rates it a one, and then you have three people that rated a five,
because you've updated it, then even you as the owner without having us reach out to you,
can go ahead and go in and answer the questions and, you know, change things as well as
well as, I hesitate to talk about it because I don't know how far out we are, but we're also
incorporating picture and video at this point. And so you can take a picture of the front entrance and
say, here it is, we fixed it. And then rerate it so that people know. We do have, I know we've got
several gyms in the Denver area. There's a place called CrossFit Watchtower that's owned by a
gentleman who's in a wheelchair and they're on the app. But yeah, there is the ability to filter
with the mapping system that we use. So we would love to put gyms on there, especially if you've
already got the location data, it makes it really easy for us to extrapolate that data and just
place it on a map. That's one of the things that we're really excited to do with people that
already have the data. We've been reaching out to adaptive programs and placing them on the map with
their actual icon and logo so that when people are traveling, you know, you roll through the map and
you can see, oh, there's an adaptive program here. At least you know you've got one resource that
knows mountain biking trails, might be able to rent you equipment. And at the very least, you've got
a community of people already built in where if you're having an issue, their phone number's
right there, their website's right there, you can navigate to their location through the app itself
and get a hold of them. And you know, our whole sense is this is a giant community of people
that has, let's face it, it's really difficult to get the information that you want for the
amount of energy you're willing to expend for it. And our goal is not to be, the goal is not to
have everything in one place and to be... Well, to shine the light on ourselves.
The spot. Yeah, the goal is not to shine a light on ourselves.
No, you're good. Just to highlight the work that other leaders in the disability community
are already doing. And with the you had asked, Brendan, if we would want to let businesses know
like what they could do to improve their score. And that's definitely on the horizon, but I think
immediately would be to reward the businesses that are already a place that make our community feel
welcomed. And we have a sticker system, you know, if you get a green, green rating, with a kind of a
green... The questions are a weighted scale, right? And so there's like red being lowest scores,
yellow a medium, and then green fully accessible. And for the green businesses we're sending out,
you are welcome here sticker with a role logo kind of just to put on their business
doorfront. I think, you know, when role becomes a household brand, there would be that public
pressure of, oh, we want that role stamp of improvement. And maybe either businesses are
reaching out to us at that point to say, what can we do to improve the score? Or we're maybe at that
point have the capacity to like to send them a friendly letter. But I think, you know, if it's
you and your community and it's a gym or a business that you want to frequent, that maybe the
individual, and quite often, like living a disabled life, so much of that advocacy falls on to you
as the consumer, as the patron, but it's notifying a business in your neighborhood what they can do
to improve their own accessibility. Yeah, I like the sticker system because we talked about
trying to do like AdaptX certified facilities and they could have some sort of banner that says like
it's an inclusive fitness center. And maybe your membership comes in and they don't have a
disability, but you can almost guarantee that they have a relative or a friend or they know
someone with a disability that could benefit from that service. But unless it's visible to them,
they don't know. They don't know that you're making those efforts. And it's also like accessibility
goes a little bit beyond the physical environment too. So like maybe my door has a handicap entry
but my trainers have no interest in working with people with disabilities or they have no knowledge
on how to accommodate someone in a wheelchair, like to help them with their training experience. So
it's like it's multidisciplinary and that like it's not just a physical environment, but it's also
how your wait staff communicates and talks to someone with a disability and their willingness
to make the necessary accommodations. Absolutely, and I think so much of that just comes from exposure,
right? And just really in the last couple of years with social platforms have leaders in
the disability community really had a place to have their voices amplified or just visibility
in general. And that is... No, I think it's you mentioned leaders in the disability space and
sometimes... Because I can commiserate, it's not the word, but I can relate to the business owner
that needs to run a profitable business and needs to cater to a dozen different things if they're a
self-employed individual. And sometimes I see stuff on LinkedIn from like influential voices in the
disability space and they're like, if you don't do X, Y, Z, you don't care about people with
disabilities. And it's like, sometimes that stuff becomes like overwhelming or almost intimidating
to the fact where I would wonder if sometimes a business owner doesn't even want to go down the
quote unquote inclusion path because they're worried that they're going to be subject to
criticism or they're going to be subject to people not being able to access their facilities. And
sometimes it's like you have to incrementally get there. I don't know. That's not to give them an
out or give them excuse for not being accessible, but you have to also understand that there's a
lot of things that go into running a service or running a business that it can sometimes be
a big undertaking. Unfortunately, though, that's the times we live in where if you're online,
you've got a business, you're subject to criticism. Now that the disability community has such a
louder voice and they're demanding more, that we kind of talked on the exposure, the exposure for
businesses. But just yesterday, Joe and I saw this meme that was talking about, not a meme,
but an infographic talking about this circular pattern that says, business isn't accessible.
So then people with disabilities don't come. People with disabilities don't come so they're
not visible. So people don't know that the need exists. And then the cycle continues
to perpetuate itself. And so trying to, you know, that's one of the things in the app that we're
trying to do is not only like, make that information more readily available on the front end so that
we're breaking down those barriers, getting people out and going, maybe it's less intimidating for a
person with a disability because they don't have to spend energy making that phone call to figure
out only to be disappointed. They've got the vetted information in front of them. But then we want to
be able to show on the business side, like, hey, there's an entire group here that's being left
out that you're not marketing to. You know, an ever-growing population, unfortunately,
it's the only marginalized group that any person can become a part of. But with a big aging
population and the baby boomer population, we've got more and more people becoming disabled all
day. And that's also a group that still has buying power, right?
Yeah, absolutely. And we even see some unintended consequences of working with a lot of clients
with disabilities here. Like, the rest of our membership base feels like they're supporting
a community and that's doing good. It's like you kind of build up that social capital that,
like, when you're accessible, when you're inclusive, people want to support you.
It's like businesses, I guess, like Patagonia or Bombas, where they donate X to these great causes
or people buy a pair of socks and they donate a pair of socks. It's like accessibility kind of has
a compounding effect, I guess, in terms of when you help one person, it seems to impact a lot. So
really interested, I guess, in terms of how businesses, how you can demonstrate to businesses
that accessibility is a profitable thing and it's like a good thing for your business. It's not just
the right thing to do. I'd be interested, Rachel, you're in the marketing, like,
what's the marketing approach? Like, are you reaching out to people directly? Are you guys using
social media ads? Yeah, you know, right now it's just it's a all approach kind of like chaos theory,
fail forward, try every venue. And that's it's certainly it's a hard to market group to for a reason.
And we're still trying to crack that code. Right now, yeah, we're taking social approach,
a lot of like in person community building. Fortunately, for the disability population, like,
so much of the community building happens online, because online becomes such an accessible
platform. And we just still need to figure out how to, I don't know, go viral.
Are you when you say hard to market population, are you referring to just individuals with
disabilities, like, or are you marketing also to business owners and you're saying, hey, we'd love
to get you listed on our platform? Like, do you reach out to the gyms directly or the restaurants
directly? You know, in our community, it's been because the app is user driven. Right now, you
know, we're not like pulling data sets from Google, we're uploading all of our own reliable
information. It's businesses that we're going to are just, it's what's been rated, right. And so,
like the in Denver proper, you know, we're a Denver based app, but it's a worldwide app.
We've, you know, we've got partnerships in the community that we've been able to have these
great conversations with. But cold calling businesses isn't something we've done yet.
It is, we did some outreach at the very beginning to places like Mobility Works that sells
accessible vans nationwide. And it's, it's a really funny experience called calling these businesses
where you say, who is the person that can tell me, you know, every location that you have, and
you know, every location that you have, and would you like to be included on this map feature?
And we still haven't cracked that code. We thought a long time about is there's the chicken and the
egg problem of, do we spend a lot of time going after these businesses that, you know, then
does the app feel really commercial because you open it and all it is, is these nationwide chains.
And we don't really want to become the place where you go to look for the chilies that's around you.
Instead, we'd love for the community to highlight, hey, there's a, there's a
brewery on Broadway in Denver that is staffed by people with disabilities and mobility issues
that is run by a gal who is a former special educator. And their entire design is based
around this community. It's called Brewability. And those are the places, you know, we want to
highlight the businesses that are doing this in an organic way and have highlighted this community
as something that they really care about. We want to be able to send more people their direction.
And that comes from the community more than it comes from a lot of the corporate places that we
can reach out to. What is the, what's the biggest challenge outside of kind of what you already
mentioned, but like the biggest challenges with scaling. So it's maybe like a hard market to,
market to, or it's a hard population to market to. But I guess if you look at like your next 12
months, what do you think would be most effective in helping you grow or scale? I think for us,
we've just got to get it into in front of more eyes and in more hands. If you open the app right
now in Des Moines, Iowa, there are five reviews and an adaptive program that are close to you.
And so it's not something, it becomes a task, right? It becomes a task for you to do. But
we've seen that there are people that are super, super engaged and want to share this information.
One of our core tenants has been when you go to an accessible event, when you go to Crested Butte
for mountain, you know, adaptive mountain bike championships, you've got 50 or 60 people that
have a huge amount of different nuance and different knowledge. And they go to all these
places because there's not a lot of places in town, it's a small town. And so you basically
canvas everything, you find out where the accessible hotels are, you find out where all these are.
But if you go a week after that's over, you don't really have anybody to ask that knowledge moves
with that community. And unless you know somebody who was at the event that you can call and say,
hey, where did you go that was accessible, because I just don't have the energy today.
We rode 20 miles, my chronic pain is flaring up. And I don't have the bandwidth to go to
four restaurants and try to find a place where I actually fit in my chair and is welcoming.
And so for us, it's getting it to those champions and doing a good job of making it easy enough to
use so that it does have that component where you can say, oh, no, no, no, we were there last week,
a bunch of people left reviews, just scroll the map over to it and you can click through and then
you don't have to wonder whether or not it's accessible.
So getting getting yourself in front of large events that support a lot of people with disabilities
that just so they know that your app exists. And have you worked on partnering with any
organizations? I think like, what comes to mind is Team Hoyt, just because it's an organization
that I run, like, so I run marathons pushing a wheelchair, and we have chapters kind of all
around the country. So I think that's a good way to get people to know that you're not just
a country. So we have team Hoyt, Coeur d'Alene out in Idaho, and we have team Hoyt, Virginia Beach
in San Diego. I wonder if getting it in front of people like that that are already kind of champion
inclusion, they're kind of trying to promote it through endurance sports. I wonder if people
like that would be more receptive to participating. We've had some we've had some soft wins. I know
currently, Girls on the Run is working. Girls on the Run is a unique thing where all of their events
are there's there's no para division. It's just all events are inclusive. And they're
in progress of putting together an accessibility accessibility guide. And we're in cahoots with
them to make sure that we get into that guide. But then some other organizations, even with
personal connections, kind of like, well, you know, there's a little bit of what can you do for us?
What can we do for you? And there's a little bit of we don't know that we really need you yet. Like
we're not we're not making a big enough noise. We don't have a big enough of a following just yet,
that maybe either we're not being taken. I don't know that we're not being taken seriously. But
even within the community, we're hitting, you know, stops. I think in part, you know, so many of these
adaptive programs are nonprofits, and they're run with skeleton crews, right. So even just response
time with emails gets lost or the momentum, the excitement gets lost. Yeah, I'd love a I'd love a
quick problem problem solve there. Yeah, there's a Are you familiar with the Kelly Brush Foundation?
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. So they have they're working on the Active Project, which sounds like
it's something relatively similar in terms of mapping out accessible programs, adaptive programs.
So from like your standpoint, from a business standpoint, like if, if our podcasts had thousands
of listeners that were wheelchair users or individuals with disabilities, and it would
make sense for you to try to market through our podcast, but like you said, you kind of have to
demonstrate that there's value in sponsoring in events like the Kell Brush one or sponsoring a
podcast that reaches those users, it's, it's tough to go from a lean business to nationwide or scaled
one. And I say that not really knowing because I've never scaled a business nationwide, but it is
something that we're kind of working on through our curriculum. And we've had the opportunity to,
to work with people all around the country. But I wonder if at like the university level,
if they would be able to help you disseminate it, students on campus with disabilities, etc.
Yeah, that's definitely on our radar, including occupational and physical therapy graduate
programs, and just tapping into any networks that comes to mind.
It's, it's one of those funny things because it's, you know, one in 11 people in the US has a
mobility issue, according to the census data that was two years ago, right. And so, you know,
almost everybody knows somebody that would benefit from having really good information
about places that are accessible. And hopefully that would lend itself towards businesses, then
understanding, oh, this is a population where if I do make my business accessible, then I'm,
I'm welcoming this entire swath of people that can come to my business. We have talked to Kelly
Brush, Matt Tilford, shout out to him, he is taking on the active project. He's a pretty incredible
dude. So we're of the vein where a rising tide raises all ships. Our goal is not to be the,
our goal is to be the singular voice that it's easy to find. We want to be the web that you go to,
to find these things. But our goal is not to be the end all be all. We know we're a small app.
If we try to contain a huge amount of information, it's going to make things move a little bit
slower. So our goal is to, same with the adaptive projects, not to be the end all be all where you
can schedule things through the app and work through the app to get there. But to have it so
you can find it very easily, you can access the information without having to search for it with
without having to kind of go through everything. Same with gyms, I'd suppose, right? Where it'd be
so nice if instead of calling 15 gyms and saying, Hey, are you adaptive certified? You can just go
onto the map and say, Oh, here's two gyms in my area that are adaptive certified, click on it,
decide which one is closer and better for you or offers the hours that you like. And then you go
there. And hopefully you take pictures and video and re upload it to the app and share it with your
friends and help that gym gain a bigger following. But I pose this question as someone that does not
know really anything about the topic as a whole outside of what I kind of consume through podcasts
and Twitter and stuff. But are there are there AI tools with that becoming more prevalent? You see
all these companies that are incorporating various AI plugins, like, is that on your radar? Or is it
something that you think is going to contribute to your development? Have you guys kind of played
around with any of those new pieces of software that have been kind of rolled out, seemingly
weekly in the last five or six months? This is one of those areas where personally, like Rachel
is smarter at this than I am. But I really feel like it's so nuanced whether a place is accessible
or not that I would worry that if we try to use an AI algorithm, that you'd get, you know, a mishmash
of all of the information and then everywhere looks accessible or nowhere looks accessible for
a whole region, right? Yeah, it's like if you even plug a question into a Chat GPT, that's like,
what organizations support people with disabilities in this area? It's like Special Olympics pops up.
It's like, okay, that doesn't really tell me much outside of that. There's a Special Olympics that
does stuff for people with disabilities doesn't really tell me anything. So I'm sure as they
become more refined, but I don't even know the the magnitude of the software problem that some of
those things are trying to model seems incomprehensible to me, but I wasn't sure if,
if it was going to play a role, I guess, and how you grow and kind of how you answer questions.
I mean, it's certainly like, the answer is always like, maybe, right? Like technology changes so
fast, like how we will use tools in the future is, is yet to be determined. But I think yeah,
that reliability is, is the biggest piece that that keeps us from trying to pull that data.
It would be great. It would be great if we could reliably pull data and then we would be able to
pull data and then we would have, you know, locations nationwide, rather than relying on
the user input. But it just comes down to the information that this community wants is so nuanced
that it really has to be like, we have to control the disability community has to control that
narrative of what defines accessibility. Have you dealt with have you dealt with like inaccurate
reviews, like, or like inaccurate information that's been entered into the app? Well, that's
a great question, because it could be an inaccurate, right? But the since we're guiding the questions,
since we're since we've determined that rating scale, and it's not a subjective, like zero to
five stars, we hope that our information is just more objective, because you're following our
prompted questions. But with the amount of users we have on the app right now, maybe like one
location on we have one review, instead of like multiple reviews waiting, waiting that so I think
the more users we get on the app, the more reviews there are per location that weighted system becomes
really accurate. Yeah. So what can what can we do to to help role mobility become a household name
or commonplace? Not not that I have some audience that would that would accelerate you to a
nationwide presence. But what can what can like my organization that's tackling a similar problem of
like, how to create more accessible places, specifically in the fitness space, like, what can
we do for role mobility for you? I think first and foremost, the idea of having an accurate and
having a way to find a gym that's close to you that that is accessible and does want people with
accessibility in their gym. That's that would be awesome. And then I think, you know, for us, it's
that grassroots organization of each of those gyms telling five people that they know that that come
and have a real buy into the space and encouraging them to download and use the app. And then I think
one of the things that we have seen is just the longer we're around, the more people are willing
to give us a shot, because community has been burned so many times with so many, hey, this new
thing is coming out, it'll be so great for you. And then two years later, nobody's supporting it.
And I think we are very committed towards if something is wrong, we want to fix it and
continuing to have new features and have new things so that this really turns into
whatever the community wants it to be, instead of what we thought it might be two years ago.
That's our commitment is, I'm not here to tell anybody what they need. I'm here to listen
and let them define the progress and define where this goes next. That's been a tough
question to answer for me too, as we try to put together a curriculum that teaches fitness
professionals how to work with different disabilities. I don't have all the answers,
and the literature certainly doesn't have all the answers. If we go to the medical research,
it's scarce when it comes to disabilities, the feasibility of doing large scale longitudinal
studies for wheelchair users, people with CP, people with Down syndrome is pretty difficult.
It's like you can try to be evidence based, but it's hard to come up with one answer to fit
a problem that's pretty diverse. Like you said, I'm not teaching you how to train all people with
disabilities. I'm hopefully just giving you perspective as to how you can approach the
problem and how you can communicate more effectively and create better environments.
Rachel, what do you, kind of maybe as a question that we could wrap up, but like, what do you think
has to be done to make businesses more inclusive and accessible?
Well, that's a big question.
That's a loaded question. Yeah, it's a loaded question that probably, that definitely doesn't
have one direct answer, but from your perspective, I guess, like what's a first step that a business
can take to start moving in the right direction?
You know, I think it's more of like a societal question. I recently just spent a month in Greece
and one of the biggest differences I noticed from the States to the European market is, you know,
in America, we have a bit of better infrastructure thanks to the ADA, even, and it's like not even
fully enforced status, but the cultural awareness around people with disabilities, just in your day
to day passing is incredibly limited. But when I was in Europe, although the infrastructure is not
there, the social awareness is. So before I could even approach a business, maybe, and they've done
their best to retrofit, and maybe it's a ramp that's at a 45 degree angle, it's not entirely
usable, but you appreciate that like, hey, they tried to make this thousand year old building
welcoming to me. But as you approach a business, somebody is there before you can think for
yourself, maybe even a little too aggressively helping you. So, or even strangers on the street,
a lot of jumping in, in a way that people just don't interact with me in a chair that way here
in the States. So I think it's a societal shift that then hopefully puts that pressure onto businesses.
Yeah, and like you said, kind of when you refer to that graphic a while back, like,
if a business is determined, or if a business is inaccessible, they don't have wheelchair users in
it, all the other able bodied or however you want to define them, individuals don't see it as a
problem, and they just kind of perpetuate that narrative. It's like starting to open to people
eyes, I guess, as to how inaccessible so many things are. But unless, unless businesses,
I guess, make the effort to address accessibility, then a lot of people just assume, I guess, that
it's not a problem. Yeah, absolutely. We had a really interesting conversation with
a gentleman who works for the city and goes out to places. And he was working for,
I forget what the business was, but he went to them and said, hey, you're, you know, you're
completely redesigning this entire thing. You need to replace these at least one set of these stairs
with a ramp, you need to have an accessible entrance. And the guy said, but we don't have
people with disabilities. He just said, yeah, of course you don't. You have 12 steps to get to
your front door. You will never see these people because right now you can't see these people. But
that's the kind of the, yeah. It's, yeah, it's an educational thing. It's a societal
reform, like entire reform issue. So, but Joe, Rachel, thanks for, thanks for taking the time
to talk. We'll look forward to sharing more about Roll Mobility. We'll toss a download link to the
app in the show notes, and we'll share it across the different platforms. And we'll see you next
week when we start to post the podcast episodes. But really appreciate your time and the work that
you guys are doing. And I'll look forward to, I think there's definitely some ways that
AdaptX can leverage what you guys are doing and hopefully we can support what you're doing in
turn. So thanks again for joining me today. Likewise. Awesome. Thank you, Brendan.