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 amplify
their voice, ideas, and learn strategies to make our businesses more accessible, so hopefully
you can as well.
Today we are joined by Michael Wood of Inclusive Sport Design, an organization in Australia
that is improving the inclusivity and diversity of sport at all levels.
Michael, thank you for joining us.
Thanks Brendan, it's great to be here.
Super excited for our chat.
Can you tell me a little bit more about what ISD is and how it is tackling this challenge
of making sport and recreation more inclusive in your country?
Yeah, sure thing.
Inclusive Sport Design is now it's a consulting business.
It started as a blog back in 2016, really as a place for me to share information about
what I thought would be helpful for sport organizations around good practice in terms
of diversity and inclusion.
It came from my desire to have some sort of a resource like that myself when I was starting
out working in diversity and inclusion and adaptive sport that didn't really exist.
And so it kind of evolved where now I provide consulting and advisory services to sport
organizations from community clubs all the way through to national sport organizations
and I look at policy, program design, strategy, education, capability building, essentially
everything around diversity, equity and inclusion for sport organizations.
And whilst I do look at disability as an area of focus, we actually look at things across
the broad spectrum of diversity and inclusion as well.
So we take a pretty broad spectrum view of the work, which is really cool.
It's interesting to hear you say that it kind of formed as a result of you trying to answer
your own problem because my course kind of came about in the same way.
I couldn't find a resource that was comprehensive to answer all the questions I had.
So I just began making it and the best way of learning was doing my own research and
then teaching it or putting it into presentations to teach it.
So that's just kind of how our curriculum came about was to fill a gap that I identified
within the fitness space.
But was there something specific that led you to kind of move into this industry or
something I guess that motivated or inspired you to pursue this as a job?
Yeah, it's an interesting question that because the journey into the adaptive sport and inclusive
sport space was kind of, I won't say it was accidental, but it certainly wasn't a conscious
decision like as I want to work in this career, I want to work in this field.
It was sort of this sort of thing that evolved over time and came as a result of some opportunities
that came my way towards the end of my sports management degree when I was studying.
And I took an internship in the final year of my study, which was in the disability sport
education program, which was a government funded program that went into schools and
taught teachers and students about adaptive sport.
And so I worked in that as an intern for a year and that really, I guess, educated me
on what this sort of stuff was all about for the first time because it wasn't part of my
studies at all.
And then fast forward a year or two, a job came up at Swimming Australia, which was one
of the first inclusion offices in a national sport organization here that was dedicated
to disability participation.
And 12 years later, I stepped away from working at swimming after having looked at disability
inclusion, sport pathways, high performance, talent ID, classification, as well as broader
diversity policy and swimming and kind of lent my trade over that course of period of
time.
And yeah, I found that people just kept asking me how I was doing, what I was doing, coming
and showing them how we were doing the work at swimming and constantly sort of picking
my brain on stuff and asking me to help them and stealing the work or borrowing the work
that we were doing.
And so it sort of triggered me to think, oh, I can make a bigger impact here and step away
from just one sport and actually try and help as many as I could, which is sort of the journey
I've been on.
How do you get connected with those organizations or what kind of, what maybe spares them to
reach out to you to improve their inclusivity?
Yeah, that is a really great question.
Initially it was a lot of my own just professional network, you know, when you work in a career
for 12 or so years, you build a pretty good network and a bit of a professional reputation
so a lot of it's been just, you know, networks and word of mouth from people that I have
done work with.
But nowadays it's a lot to do with the drive of government funded kind of requirements,
you know, in Australia funding is often linked to diversity and inclusion activities and
outcomes and so there's an increased, I guess, motivation for sports to take action on these
sorts of things.
So that's one sort of way things happen.
The other is, you know, there's a community expectation that's building and growing here
in Australia and it's in other places as well where sport organizations, whether it's your
club or a national sport organization or anything in between, is kind of expected to be doing
this work one way or another.
And so that also places a bit of pressure on organizations to take some action and that's
usually how things kick off.
Otherwise it's me calling them and saying you need to do this work and I can help you.
Yeah, I was going to say, like, do you have to sell them on the value proposition of this?
I think most people understand the value of it.
I think convincing people to take action is key and showing them what actions they should
be taking.
That's the challenging part because a lot of times, you know, sport organizations, especially,
you know, the closer you get to grassroots, the more volunteer they are, the less qualified
they are in terms of their understanding of diversity and inclusion and the less confident
they are, particularly around engaging with people with disability.
Confidence is a real factor at the grassroots level in particular.
And so it's often convincing them and showing them what they could be doing and should be
doing rather than saying it's the right or good thing for them to do.
That's what I've found anyway.
Yeah, I mean that echoes a lot of the similar experiences I've had trying to convince gyms
or universities to improve the knowledge that their staff have on inclusivity and diversity.
It's tough in this world.
If you reach out to someone and you ask them, do you want to be more inclusive and accessible?
No one's going to say no.
But like you said, it's like getting them to actually take that action and commit to
it, whether it's financially or time-wise, to take the necessary steps to improving it.
It's sometimes tough.
Yeah, and I kind of like to think of things in terms of, particularly, you know, in terms
of the sort of solutions and services and approaches that I try to provide is, how do
you shift a person from that positive intention to meaningful action?
And because you can say, yeah, our gym's inclusive or our university sport team's inclusive or
club, you know, whatever.
But what we really need people to think about is being able to articulate and show this
is how we make our space, our club, our team inclusive.
This is how we do it.
And it's that bridging that intention to action, which is the hard part, because people will
always say, yeah, if anyone turns up, I won't turn them away.
But they're not proactively engaging and including them.
Yeah, that's what we say in our course, to be proactive instead of reactive.
When you're consulting with a team, what are you offering them or kind of what are the
components of ISD?
Yeah, so it depends.
So if we're talking about like a grassroots club or sport provider, kind of at the local
level.
So what are those capabilities that you need in terms of awareness and understanding of,
you know, if we're talking about disability inclusion, understanding, inclusive communication,
how do you connect with people in the community?
How do you adapt to modify your activities and programs and sessions to meet individual
needs?
What have you got in place in terms of policies and practices inside the organization to ensure
That inclusion is part of what you do on a daily basis.
That's kind of the focus at the local level.
When we start to look at things like national sport organisations or peak bodies who have
a more complex environment, I always start with data.
What's the environment look like within your membership?
Not just in terms of demographics or headcounts of how many people with disability are in
your membership or in your client base.
What are their experiences?
How are they engaged in the sport and what are they experiencing in terms of accessibility,
belonging, psychological safety, those sort of factors.
By gathering that data you can understand where you need to focus energy and effort
and where some of your opportunities are in order to improve because without that information,
if you come up with a plan or a strategy, which is the next step, you're kind of flying
blind a little bit, you're kind of guessing or assuming the work that you need to do.
If you gather that information you can be really targeted and specific about it.
Then you usually take them through a process of assessing their internal operations and
then look at a strategy and developing a framework for activity that addresses their inclusion
challenges moving forward.
Then building that into a continuous improvement model where they're regularly monitoring,
they're regularly reporting and they're regularly checking on their inclusion actions to make
sure that they're implementing initiatives that are going to move the dial on access
and inclusion for everybody.
That's usually the key.
In sport organisations there's also the added complexity of things like competition.
We can look at things particularly for disability and para sport pathways.
We can look at how the para sport pathway or the disability sport pathway supports participation
through to elite competition outcomes and participation at that level.
That's kind of another nuanced piece of work that I do as well.
Yeah, like you said, kind of inclusivity goes beyond just the physical accessibility.
It's also that sense of belonging.
You can't really, instead of assuming you know what an individual needs, like you said,
getting that data from them to actually guide your decisions is essential.
Have you standardised that process in some way?
Is there an operations manual or do you have to be kind of like hands on with it like every
situation?
Yeah, that's a great question.
I think there's aspects of this that you can standardise.
Certainly, I have a standardised process of what I look to assess and evaluate and collect
data on.
But it does depend on the organisation and the context in terms of where you might focus
your energies or efforts.
But I tend to think of things in frameworks rather than standard operating procedures,
I guess, because there is nuance in everything and particularly from my perspective when
I'm looking at broad diversity and inclusion, beyond disability where we also look at multicultural
engagement, LGBTQI plus engagement, Indigenous First Nations engagement, women and girls,
all the buckets, right?
And so it can be a complex process and you want to also work with an organisation to
build it into the way that they operate and their governance structures because everyone's
a little bit different.
So it's important to have that flexibility in what you do, but knowing that there are
some key principles and key approaches that are going to be universal across the board.
And when it comes to disability, a lot of it's to do with yes, accessibility standards,
communication and adapting and modifying principles and techniques.
And choice, a big thing that people don't think about often in this line of work is
choice.
They tend to sort of focus on, are we going to design one offering?
Are we going to create one program?
Are we going to generate one product and try and make that fit for everyone?
When the reality is it's actually choice.
Choice is the friend of inclusion and access.
The more choice you can provide, the more likely people are going to find an option
that works for them.
And those choices need to be adaptable.
Yeah, I know from our mutual acquaintance with Lisa Drennan, that was something that
her and I talked about a lot.
You can have those disability-only sessions if you think that, like that may be the preferred
environment for some people, but the essential component is that they have the opportunity
to choose what environment they want to be in.
And you're not just forcing everyone with a disability into one session solely because
they have a diagnosis.
So like you said, it's building the infrastructure.
Yeah, it's more frameworks because everyone's going to have a different situation.
Same in the gym setting.
Everyone's going to have different number of staff and different sizes of facilities.
So it's less so like do x, y, z and more so respond in these ways or anticipate these
concerns.
So I would imagine it's similar in the sport realm as well.
I could imagine that someone might hear this conversation in terms of like inclusive sport
and think of an organization like Special Olympics or the Paralympics as a whole.
How do you relate to those organizations and maybe how do you differ from them in various
ways?
Yeah, well, I mean, it goes back to that concept of choice, right?
And you know, inclusive sport design, we don't deliver sport opportunities for people.
We work with organizations who are delivering sport in the mainstream context.
And so we talk about this a lot with the organizations that we work with in terms of, you know, there's
a spectrum of participation options and we need to think about it in terms of a spectrum
where on, you know, one end or in one sense, we've got exclusion where people are not able
to access sport participation for whatever that reason is, whether it's discrimination,
no accessibility, whether it's cost, whether it's a self-imposed limitation of, you know,
perceptions about what sport is about, whatever those reasons are, there's people that are
excluded.
That's on one end.
And then along this spectrum, there's other choices, right?
Once segregated or specialized models, something like a Special Olympics where it's just for
people with disability.
And the context is important here too, because you might be thinking about a gym program
and a specialized option might be a one-on-one or two-to-one or three-to-one program just
for people with spinal cord injury, right?
That's a specialized program.
Super valid.
It doesn't mean it's bad because it's specialized.
It's just one of those options.
It might suit some people really well.
It might be an option that doesn't suit others.
So you need something else.
So what's the something else?
Well, you can look at things like integrated options where you've got people with disability
participating in activities alongside people without disability, either as a group or integrated
as part of side-by-side programs or those sort of things.
So that might be, you know, you've got a, maybe running a group class session in your
gym and you might have an extra instructor to work with a group of people with intellectual
impairment in the same group class as people without impairment so that they can get some
extra help to participate and keep up while the rest of the class isn't impacted by the
additional people coming in.
Then you move to an inclusion model where it's people with disability doing the same
activities in the same environments and spaces as anyone else.
And that might be the gym doors are open.
People with disability can come in, know they're going to have accessibility support
and use the gym just like anyone else.
No differences.
All the way through to what I, you know, call the belonging model, which is actually where
people with disability alongside people without disability co-design and co-create the environment
that they want to be in.
And they decide how it looks and they decide how it works.
And they set the rules and norms and culture of the activity.
And that's the belonging model.
And all of those things are choices.
And people might move through those choices or they might be doing multiple choices concurrently.
But the key thing at the centre of all of that is choice.
And that's what enables access and inclusion is being able to offer those choices and facilitate
the access and opportunity to take them up.
And so when you look at things like Special Olympics, they sit in there in that spectrum
of choices and Paralympic Games at the elite level as a competitive option sits in that
spectrum of choice, just like, you know, a gym with an integrated class is one of those
choices.
So, so gyms listening or sport clubs listening, you need to think about it in those terms
and put the participant, the customer, the client at the forefront of your thinking there.
What is it that they need and want and how do you design and deliver that so that they
can access it?
Yeah, that was beautifully articulated in a great framework.
The belonging, the belonging step of it is interesting.
That just kind of comes from communication.
When we talk about what should your first session with a new client look like, you mentioned
earlier a lot of things that hold people back at the grass root level is like confidence
communicating with people with disabilities or they don't have that experience.
So they're afraid to do so.
And it's like, so what should my first session with someone with a disability look like?
And it's really just understanding, I guess it would be considered that belonging model.
What environment do you want to work out in, how much support do you want, what do you
want to work on, what are your specific goals and then being able to curate the experience
to that specific thing that they want.
I don't see a ton.
There's definitely a difference, but between your third step of like inclusion and the
belonging model, I think the two might go somewhat hand in hand.
Yeah, hopefully.
Yeah.
So those ideas, those models, they're not fixed, right?
So there's overlap and there's sort of, it's blurred at the edges in terms of what things
are and you might find, you actually had a really great conversation in a webinar that
I ran a few weeks ago where someone shared their experience, we were talking about this
spectrum of participation and she shared this experience of the swim club that she's involved
with and she talked about in training, in squad time, they run an integrated model where
they have an all abilities squad that trains in their own lane, but alongside the standard
squads at the same time in the same club.
So they run that and sometimes that could also be looked at in terms of a specialization
model as well, although it's in the club environment.
But when they go away on team to competitions, they go as one team.
So they do, they're sitting in the stands together, they do the social activities together, they
travel together.
That's an inclusion model.
But then when they go to actually race in Australia, we have a multi-class system where,
which is sort of the pathway for Paralympic competition where lots of different impairments
will be competing and racing against each other, right?
Those events are run within the competition program alongside the standard competitions
for events for people without disability.
So that's an integrated model again when they actually compete.
So you can see that as the context changes, the choice of participation can change to
suit the needs and options.
And you know, those kids with disability could have the option to compete in the standard
races as well.
They're not, they're not fixed into the multi-class and disability specific option.
They can, they can choose the other ones.
But you see that as the context changes, as the needs change, the environment changes,
so does the participation option.
And that, that's a really good sort of way to think about it.
So gyms should be thinking about, yeah, we might run, you know, personal training sessions
that look specialized, but we also have group classes that look inclusive, but we also have
open gym time and membership options that are, you know, inclusive or adaptive that
just meet the needs and, and have all those different choices and deliver them.
So, yeah.
Yeah, it's like, it's like personal training, while it might seem like if you're just starting
to integrate people with disabilities into your model and, and you're most comfortable
doing one-to-one personal training, that's, it doesn't have to be exclusionary as long
as like, if I got a client, even, even if it was someone without a disability and they
were new to fitness, they didn't have much from like a strength and conditioning background
or fitness level, I wouldn't want to just throw them into a group class with all the
disabilities, well-trained people, just for the sake of being inclusive.
It's like, you want to make sure they have the prerequisite skills to participate safely
and effectively.
So that's where, yeah, like you said, it's very context dependent.
We can kind of look at inclusion as an experience, unless so as like a box to check.
Like you don't get to say like, I'm inclusive, like your members dictate whether they feel
inclusive.
Yeah, yeah.
So.
Yeah.
Inclusion is not a program.
It's not a session, right?
It's not a product.
It's a process and it's an experience and you've got to think about it in those terms.
And if you're saying you're inclusive and you're promoting yourself as that, be careful
because it might not be.
But the process and culture and practices of being inclusive is something that you need
to build into your day-to-day business.
Build it as core business and people will flock to that.
You won't need to promote it because people will just know.
And people with disability in particular, they're really great referrers.
So if you're doing a really great job, they're going to tell their colleagues, friends and
networks because they're in them and you'll find that people will start being attracted
to your offering because you're offering great experience for someone else.
Yeah, it's definitely an easy way to differentiate yourself within a lot of industries.
Yeah, definitely.
What is your specific model like from a business standpoint?
Are you functioning as a non-profit or a for-profit?
No, I'm a company.
So for-profit, for purpose, I guess.
But a lot of things go back into the business for the benefit of community.
I do the podcast, which takes a lot of time.
The sport is for everybody podcast if anyone wants to check it out.
That's about similar to this podcast, amplifying the voices of people doing the good work and
helping people to learn more about how to go about inclusion in their sport organizations
and practice.
And we have a lot of free resources on the website, templates, tools, downloads, articles,
that sort of thing because that's where this all starts.
It was trying to get things out there into the world that were going to benefit people
and were going to be there for the long term.
But yeah, we're a company.
It's just me at the moment, but looking to sort of build the team and expand the scope of work
and capabilities and things as we go.
But yeah, it's an interesting process to work in this space and generate profit.
With it being a solo person because my work has sometimes been pretty similar and
I try to get opinions and feedback and reviews from other people because it seems tough for me to be
establishing myself as an authority figure without the lived experience of disability.
I never claim to have all of the answers.
It's just helping people consolidate a lot of information and try to put it into something that's digestible
Do you ever worry as a single person that you're kind of developing these standards?
Or are you working with other people to come up with these criteria?
Yeah, that's a daily conundrum for someone like me as well.
That effectively represents the cultural majority here in the world.
White, cisgendered, male, private school educated, no experience of disability.
And so in my day to day, I'm always looking to make sure that if I'm working with an organisation,
I'm either bringing lived experience with me in the form of other people.
Or I'm helping them to understand the importance and value and put in place processes to engage with people with lived experience
to inform what they're doing as well.
And that's another reason for the podcast is to bring that lived experience perspective into the discourse as much as I can and amplify that.
But I am looking to make sure that I'm working with other people to understand the importance and value
but I am looking at ways to how do I bring that into the business so that I can add that as an offering to the services.
But also to bring that perspective into the work that I do and the way that I view the work.
But the other thing that people can do in terms of advice, if there's anyone out there thinking about this is,
you can build your experience and awareness and understanding by engaging with people from your target audience,
like people with disability. If you don't have the lived experience, then talk to people who do.
Get to understand what their lived experiences is so that you can build your understanding of that.
Read books, read research, read case studies, educate yourself on these things so that you can build your appreciation.
It doesn't mean that you take on that lived experience by any stretch.
It just means that you're able to be more aware and more empathetic and bring that perspective to your thinking
and shift your own biases because we all have those. I have those and it's a constant work piece for someone like me
to keep those biases at bay and try and expand my perspective. So you've got to do that.
But it's a challenging area but there's something to be said for professional expertise as well
because equally just by having lived experience doesn't necessarily make you an expert at implementing practice and policy
and working in a consulting kind of fashion. I think there's skill sets on both sides, there's value on both sides
and to be effective we've got to meld those things together when we work with organisations and even internally.
If you're leading a gym and you want to bring that lived experience perspective, hire people with disability.
That's a great way to do it.
Yeah, that was well articulated as well because it's something like a moral dilemma that I kind of go through as well
and that's why the podcast has been nice because I have these conversations and there's segments that I can pull
and I immediately think to sections of my course where I'm trying to talk about something, I'm trying to articulate something
and then a podcast guest with an SEI says something that completely confirms or kind of shifts my perspective a little bit
and I know that now I have that clip that I can reference and kind of like you said like bring the lived experience
into the professional work that I'm doing.
But yeah, like you said, I think there's, I see it a lot on LinkedIn I guess with voices in the disabled community
that are dismissing people that are kind of doing the work or at least trying to support them because they don't have a disability.
It's always a tough balance to find I guess.
But I guess if the intentions are good and we're kind of seeing concrete evidence that the work that you're doing is improving the inclusivity then
then you can at least fall back on that.
But are you hoping to expand beyond Australia? Have you expanded beyond Australia with the work that you do?
Not in terms of servicing organisations and clients but you know, inclusive sport design has a global network.
We've got a mailing list and a Facebook group community and so part of the mission is to connect and support the community
of people working in this space globally and that's sort of one of those non-revenue generating activities that we take on as part of our kind of social impact approach.
So in that regards, we're connected globally and recently just started having some conversations in New Zealand which may lead to something
but predominantly Australian for now but not exclusive, right?
One of the challenges with going into an international context particularly for the broad diversity work is that culture plays a really important part in how these things are attacked.
And different countries are at different stages and phases in terms of their awareness and understanding and acceptance around various aspects of inclusion,
particularly disability, particularly in the LGBT space.
And so to go into those places will take a bit of cultural awareness building for myself to make sure that I can be effective and I can be impactful in those contexts
but it's definitely not off the table. So if there's anyone internationally looking at addressing this work and they think we can help reach out, we're here.
There's plenty of resources. A lot of international universities and organisations actually link to our resources and refer to our content and things as part of their resources
and as part of supporting the work that they do, which is really cool.
But I recently did some work with Netball Australia and worked with the international Netball Associations in the Pacific Islands region, just north of Australia.
And we did some disability and inclusion awareness type training stuff and that was super interesting, really, really cool.
And these organisations are at just the start of getting organised in terms of professionalising their administration for the sport and Netball.
But they're already looking at this diversity, inclusion and disability participation.
But Pacific Island nations have a totally different socioeconomic structure and system and culture to Australia.
So it's really interesting. But the principles are universal, so you can get impact out of that.
Is Netball a spike ball?
Netball. So Netball is a...
Is that synonymous with spike ball?
No.
No?
It's not just like a trampoline ball in the middle.
No, no, no. So Netball is a sport that's typically played in Commonwealth nation countries, so Australia, the UK, New Zealand, et cetera.
Imagine basketball, but you don't bounce the ball, you can't move with the ball and there's no backboards on the net, right?
And it's predominantly a women's sport, although that is shifting certainly here in Australia. Men are starting to play.
But yeah, it's a very traditional Australian and English sport.
It's really big over here.
Is it? Yeah.
What are you working on now that you're most excited about?
Oh, I'm doing some... oh, so many things.
That's a good thing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a good thing that there's only so many hours in the day, right?
I'm doing some really great work with one sport organisation here around building their disability competitive sport system from scratch.
Basically, they don't have a sport pathway for disability and there's no international body or equivalent offering it.
So it's again, another kind of unique sport in surf lifesaving, which is typically very strong here in Australia in terms of the sport side of it.
So that's really exciting because we're basically building a pathway, developing eligibility, criteria, competition, programs, all the way from sort of local level to national level.
So that's a really challenging piece of work, but a really exciting one because of the impact that it can have.
The other things that are kind of exciting is, I'm working on an app around sport and leisure venue accessibility, not in terms of compliance accessibility and building standards and building code accessibility,
but broad access and inclusion around environments that people can access.
And how do we measure that?
So that's an ongoing piece of work, but it's again, super exciting to think about the impact that it can have.
And otherwise, just building some more resources and online training offerings for the community and trying to bring those to life.
As of the time of the recording, there is a new disability coaching course about to launch here in Australia that I've helped put together with the National Disability Sport Organisations here that will go live out to all of Australian sport coaching system,
which is really cool.
It's a great little program and just, yeah, aims at building those capabilities and confidence factors for coaches around disabilities.
So, yeah, a few things going on.
Do you think that latter course that you referred to would be applicable to the fitness space as well?
Yeah, I think so.
And there's probably some overlapping.
Well, there is definitely some overlap in terms of the content and stuff that is likely in your course.
Very principles based, adapting, modifying, communication, confidence building.
And to the point earlier around lived experience, we made sure that in that product,
we actually brought the voices of athletes and participants into that to share their perspectives around all of the competencies that we're addressing.
So there's, you know, video interviews with them telling it how it is, sharing their experience, sharing how inclusion affected their life and their career and the role of sport in their lives.
And that's really compelling in terms of motivating people to act.
We've wrapped up most of these recordings with the question like, what do you think has to be done to make the fitness space more accessible since that's kind of our target audience?
Yeah.
So, awareness and confidence and competency of trainers is essential.
And often a lot of it is confidence, not competence.
So that education and awareness piece, I think is essential.
And ideally, that sort of thing gets built into standard education systems.
You know, when you're doing your certifications as a trainer, it should be built into those certifications, ideally, rather than as a sort of a standalone thing.
That's just as a principle of mind.
But certainly projects, programs like yours and there's others out there are really important part of that.
Adjusting access for venues is really important.
If people kind of get to in and around your venue, then that's a massive barrier.
So that's the other thing that venues need to be universally accessible for everybody.
So if you're gyms at the top of a flight of stairs, you need to start thinking about some options to improve that access as an example.
And there's plenty of others that don't necessarily include infrastructure, environmental access and cultural access and attitudes around gyms is really important.
Something I like to think about and this might resonate with you as well is you might have all the ramps, lifts and accessibility technology on the facility.
But if someone arrives at your gym and the receptionist is rude and dismissive and doesn't believe that you belong there, then all those ramps and equipment mean nothing.
Or if the rest of the members aren't welcoming and they're ableist attitudes and they're exclusive and creating an environment that's not safe, then no one's going to come.
So that's important.
But probably the other thing is how do gyms connect with people with disability in their community?
What does that process look like?
And this is where gym owners can put their marketing hats on and start to think about people with disability as a new vertical in their customer acquisition model.
How do we attract them?
What is the offering that's compelling for them?
And how do we sell them?
And think about it in those sense because people with disability do have money.
Not all people with disability are on pensions or on support systems, some of them are, but not all of them.
There's a whole heap of impairments that aren't visible, right?
And there are nuances in how you service them.
So think about them as a new customer channel and market to them.
Yeah, absolutely.
I try not to be cynical. There was a video that was viral on social media that was about someone who owns a gym and everyone with a disability gets to train for free.
And everyone was praising him for it, obviously.
But part of me was like, that's going to just inadvertently marginalize all people with disabilities.
It's like the charity model.
You have the person who's helping the person with the disability is the knight in shining armor coming to save them.
And it's well intentioned, but it's like I said, kind of marginalizing the population.
But you can't dismiss something like that or critique it to a degree.
But I don't have a solution.
But it was just something that I came across earlier this week and I don't know exactly how to feel about it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's one of those things.
You go, yeah, good on you. You're doing something good for the world, whatever.
But the reality is gyms are commercial operations, not charities, typically.
And to be sustainable, you need to generate revenue.
And to provide a service, you need to get a good quality service.
You need to cover your costs and offer all of the same benefits that you have for your paying members.
The other thing is that it assumes that that approach is based on a medical medicalized model of disability includes disability.
Which basically says that people with disability need to be saved, serviced, protected.
And whilst on face value that might seem positive, it actually reduces people with disability in terms of their capability and value in the world.
And people with disability are as valuable in terms of their contributions and they have the same sorts of demands and expectations as anybody else.
And so you need to treat them as customers in the same way as you treat others.
Some people with disability may have limitations in terms of resources.
They may have additional needs in terms of supports.
But good businesses will understand that and they'll provide offerings that meet those needs and are priced at a point
which covers your costs and margins but also provides a decent service.
If you look at restaurants around the world, the number of restaurants that are now offering gluten free, allergen free, all these different dairy free,
all these different options to meet dietary needs, right?
If they took the same approach of saying, well, all of the gluten intolerant people can come to our restaurant and eat for free,
everyone would be like, what the hell are you doing? Charge them. Charge them more.
Because you've got to do more work.
So you've got to shift that thinking and start to say this is actually part of a product line of things that we can offer.
And there's value in that for me and the customer.
And that's okay.
I really like that as kind of like a thing to wrap up on because I think it's, we touched on like models of disability and models of inclusion.
And then kind of transition into like that perspective where inclusion is not necessarily a charitable endeavor.
It's just a matter of belonging and finding ways to support people that have different needs.
Might have a diagnosis, they might not, but everyone has various needs.
Yeah, it's got to be kind of part of cool business.
You've got to build it into the way you run your business, into the culture, practices and processes.
And if you do that, it becomes sustainable and it's meaningful.
It's really meaningful because you're doing it on a daily, day-to-day basis.
And if anyone's still struggling with that idea, replace person with disability with person of color.
If you invited people of color into your mainstream gym and said, oh, because you're different, you can train for free or you get a different treatment.
Imagine how that would feel, how that would sit.
It's got to be the same with people with disability.
They're humans, they're people, they're customers, serve them as such, understand their needs and deliver it.
It's actually when you reduce it to that, it's really simple.
That's it for this week's episode of Work. Until next Monday.