All right, welcome to the AdaptX podcast where we have discussions with individuals who are
building inclusive and accessible products advocating for inclusion or selling an adaptive
sports. Our intention is never to speak on behalf of those with disabilities, but rather amplify
their ideas and voices so more businesses can benefit from their lessons. Today I'm joined by
Brad McAnnell. Brad is the Vice President of Access and Inclusion at the Rick Hansen Foundation
where he is responsible for the content and integrity of the Foundation Certification Program,
the RHFAC. Brad also helps the Foundation support disability causes nationally. As a leader in the
field of accessibility for the past 30 years, Brad has extensive experience in the application
of universal design across the built environments, providing accessibility consultations for
businesses and organizations, including the 2008 Beijing Olympics and Paralympic Summer Games,
Rogers Arena, Richmond, the Olympic Oval, Vancouver International Airport, and the
University of British Columbia, just to name a few. So you might not want to listen to me talk
about accessibility, but you should listen to Brad. In this episode, I'll try my best to stay out of
his way. So Brad, thank you for joining us. Yeah, pleasure's mine. Accessibility wasn't your first
career. You started in the television industry, if I'm not mistaken. I did. So I've had two complete
careers now. Over 25 years in the television production business, and now nearly 30 years
as an accessibility and working around the access issues nationally and internationally.
What initially drew you to the television industry and kind of what led you to transition into the
roles that you're in now? Well, I started it back in the, this was probably, I just turned 70, so
hard to believe, but I literally came out of high school. I was thinking about going to university
and trying to decide what to do next. And I literally stumbled into a new place called City
TV. They were building a new television station in Toronto. And I just marched in there and told
them that I thought they were crazy to try to start a television station without me. And they
looked at me and said, why? And I said, well, because I'm young and enthusiastic and I want
to do things. So they actually hired me as an office boy. And the chairman of the company,
Moses Neimert said, if you're still an office boy in six months, you're fired.
So it's up to you. And he threw me the ball. And six months later, I was working in the studio as
a floor director and then a cameraman. And I became a pull-on director, producer, writer. And
in 1977, I formed Western Video, which is the largest production company in Western Canada for
10 years. And I was doing all that. It was all successful. We're having a great time. Television
is a great business to be in. And then my old friend, Rick Hanson, phoned me sometime in about
1990 and said, hey, I'm doing the largest Congress and exposition on disability ever held. And I want
you to produce it for me. And I thought, well, this will be fun. It combines a couple of my passions.
And so I got to work with some of the most amazing people in the world of disability.
And I had any exposure to it up until then. I kind of lived in my own little world where
television business didn't have a lot to do with either the advocates or promoting anything in
particular. But at that conference, I met Justin Dart, who was one of the founders of the ADA in
the US. And I met Henry Enns from Disabled People's International and Laurie Beecham from
Independent Living Movement. And I suddenly realized what was going on out there. I had
blissfully unaware. But when I started to see what was possible, there was 2,700 delegates from 93
countries around the world. And it was a very, very big conference. But it really turned my head
around because at the end of the day, when I was talking to Justin, he said to me, you're exactly
what we need. You understand communications and you understand disability from a lived experience
perspective. You need to start carrying the flag. And so I switched careers right then and there.
So somewhere between 1977 and then 1990, when you had this exposure to Rick's work,
you were in a car accident in 1980?
I was, yeah. And about 43% of people with spinal cord injuries end up there because of
automotive accidents, vehicle accidents. And I'm one of them. I'm also one of the ones that got
saved because around the world, there's clusters of disability. And there's lots of reasons for that.
But in Vancouver, especially in the lower mainland, there's a large percentage of
quadriplegics. And that's directly a result of in 1980, they brought in the paramedic service.
But an ambulance arrived, certainly, but with a paramedic on board, people were getting saved to
traditionally never made it. You break your neck. Your mother used to tell you, slow down,
you're going to break your neck. And she meant you're going to die. Well, most people died back then.
But the two things that came along with the paramedic service and the invention of a whole
series of antibiotics and drugs that help people with renal failure. Renal failure is the biggest
killer of people with disabilities up until then anyway. And so it was one of those situations where
I was in a car accident. Technically, if you're not in the hospital in two hours,
if you break your neck, then you're probably not going to make it. I was six hours. But I had some
great care. My timing was perfect and from the medical community being ready. And I survived.
And so I thought, I got to take this next step here. And maybe it all does happen for a reason.
And so I'll take this flag and start waving it. And it was interesting to me because when I finished
Independence 92, that large conference we were talking about, I actually thought I drifted back
in my television world. But the phone started ringing and it was corporate customers saying,
we heard you. You're right. We want to do this. What's the right thing to do? I thought, okay,
I'll do a couple of little consulting gigs on the side and just try to get these guys going.
But for the conference, we needed 242 wheelchair accessible hotel rooms.
And just for the wheelchair users, we had 2,700 other delegates. And so I went to the hotels and
said, okay, we need 242 wheelchair accessible rooms. And they said, great, we've got seven,
seven in the entire lower mainland. And so we had to figure out how to make them accessible.
And not only for people with mobility impairments, but people are blind, people are deaf,
people on the neurodiversity community. We had to find ways to making all these hotels work.
And the result of that was I became something of an expert in creating meaningful access to the
built environment. So when the conference started falling and saying, hey, we heard your message at
the conference, how do we do this? A couple of things came off my desk and I thought, okay,
I'll do a couple of these, but more and more came and I suddenly realized there's a business here.
And I can combine that with Justin Dart's inspiration, say, I need to communicate,
I need to help people understand the issues. And so I married those two things. I married the
communication career with a lived experience and added that to the real practical application of
neurodiversity. And how do you make things accessible? And 1992, that was Canadian barrier
free design and I never looked back. I've stayed in this field ever since.
So there's about a decade between your accident and your introduction into this line of work.
Did you resume in the television industry? Did you take a hiatus from working after the accident?
I needed a year. It was actually a year to the day because I got back to work. And that
was a tough year. Sometimes people introduce me as a, and I hate, we should talk about language a
little bit as we go here, but one of the things that happens to me often is people would introduce
me as someone who suffers from quadriplegia. And there's so much wrong with that.
The problem is if you think I suffer from quadriplegia, then you'll treat me differently.
If you think I'm suffering, it evokes this image of someone who's frail and troubled and not going
to make it, suffered from disability. I just hate that introduction because when I broke my neck
for that first year, I suffered. I definitely suffered. It was a rough, rough ride. You have
to learn everything all over again. You have to learn how to get dressed. You have to learn how
to walk. Now you're walking in a wheelchair, but you have to learn all that movement stuff. You have
to learn how to get dressed. You have to learn how to eat. You have to learn how to go on a date.
You have to learn how to steal a kiss. In a wheelchair, it's really hard to get in. You
can't just do that movie theater thing where I just lean over. You've got to find a way to do
everything all over again. And it was brutal. It was painful and it hurt like hell. But that was
43 years ago. So when somebody introduces me now as a person who suffers from quadriplegia,
I'm like, no, I'm not suffering at all. To tell you the truth, I have a wonderful life.
I have a beautiful home and a lake in the middle of nowhere and a beautiful wife and a fabulous
service dog. I'm not suffering. So I hate it when people equate that because I'm not suffering.
Was there a point in your recovery where you became more comfortable with your new situation
of using a wheelchair? One question we've asked some of the guests with SEI on other episodes is,
were you always adamant on walking? I see that as one big trend with a lot of injuries.
Everyone focuses so much of their energy and attention on the idea of walking again,
whereas they might be able to adapt to a different lived experience just in their wheelchair.
Yeah, that's the immediate thing. And we all know we're going to walk again. But it's a Hollywood
idea that if you want to bad enough, if you really, really want to, if grandpa's in the well and you
have to get up and say that you somehow overcome a spinal cord injury, it's that Hollywood idea.
Hollywood idea, and it happens to all of us. And in fact, I spend quite a bit of time
talking to newly injured people and it comes up every time. But you very quickly get rid of that.
You very quickly realize walking is the least of your worries. You know,
I give me bladder control, give me bowel control, give me an orgasm. I don't care about walking.
Give me control of my own body again. Those are the things that interest me. And I got there very
quickly. I didn't spend a lot of time looking backwards. I looked before. I tend to do that
anyway. The glasses have full kind of thing. But at the end of the day, what's important for me was
to get out, get out of the hospital, get out of rehab, get back to work. And having said all that,
I'm actually the luckiest guy in the world. I can demonstrate that in a couple of ways. Number one,
on September 24th, it was a Wednesday, I bought disability insurance. As a cameraman, I thought
I should have some insurance in case something goes wrong or break a leg or something.
So on Wednesday, the 24th, I bought disability insurance. And then on Friday, the 26th, I broke
my neck. And so I had the financial stability that I needed. I also owned a co-owner in the largest
production company, Western Toronto Upkin Canterbury. And so I had a job. Now that's a really big deal
as a wheelchair user, being employed as a person with a disability, one of the hardest things to do,
just to get that chance. Now I own the company, so I was going to get the chance. And I had a million
friends and a million girlfriends, people in my life who really wanted to help me. And so I had
everything going for me. The luckiest guy in the world. It's going to happen anyway, it's going to
be to me. Now, okay, let's take this ball and run with it. So I didn't spend a lot of time in the,
oh, poor me stuff. That's, I should say that, I know a lot of people get locked into that idea
of I'm going to walk again. But it's really a Hollywood idea. And it's a really,
when we did the Paralympics in Vancouver in 2010, one of the things I asked the media to not do
was not ask what happened. It's always like the second question media wants to know. Here's
Brad McKell and well, we just did it a moment ago. Here's Brad McKell and he broke his neck in his
car accident. In this context, it makes sense because we're talking about disability issues
and all the rest of it. But if you're interviewing a Paralympian about, you know, marathon
wheelchair races or whatever it is, it shouldn't matter how I got here. Whether it was a car accident
or when I dove in a pool with no water or I broke my neck skiing, whatever it was, what should matter
is what I'm doing now, what I'm achieving now, where I'm going forward as a Paralympian,
all the amazing things you do beyond that. How you got there is immaterial. But the other thing
to remember is when you're talking to someone with a disability and you ask them how it happened,
well, for some of us, it's the most traumatic moment in our lives. For some of us, it's a complete
disaster. And so it's like you want me to share the most incredibly traumatic moment in my life
just as a casual conversation. And, you know, it's like, sure, I'll tell you how I broke my neck,
great, if you tell me about your hemorrhoid operation. You know, it's just like, why does
that matter? What is the cause of my accident? And you able-bodied people, well, we call you
tabs because you're only temporarily able-bodied. Doesn't matter if you're a face-planet whistler
when you're a teenager and you end up in a wheelchair or you're 85 and you need a walker
and hearing aid, you're going to have a disability. You know, the question is when and for how long.
So the bottom line on all this stuff is it doesn't matter how I got here. What matters is how I dealt
with it, how I moved on. That's the important stuff. But sharing the most traumatic moment,
I can do it because first off, it's a long time ago. And second, that's, color accidents pretty
common. We didn't get any details there. But for a lot of people, as soon as you ask them that,
you're taking them to a point in their lives that they've been trying to get away from since it
happened. Yeah. In that Paralympic space, is that kind of synonymous with like the inspiration
narrative of, and you kind of, like you mentioned, like sensationalizing and kind of Hollywood
portrayal of disability. Do you see issues with how media and literature portrays disability that
kind of perpetuates some of these narratives? Oh gosh. Honestly, the media only has two stories.
The first story is, look at that guy, poor bastard. The second story is, hey, look at that guy,
he's a hero, poor bastard. It's always the same thing. They always want it to be sympathy.
What do you think needs to change to maybe address that?
I want empathy. I don't want sympathy. I don't want preconceived notions about what I'm capable of.
As soon as you start that, down that path, then a weird thing happens with you temporarily able-bodied people.
It's physical, it's mental. You walk up and your head's tilt a little bit and your voice goes up
here somewhere and you wonder, how can I help? Can I help? What can I do to help you?
And we think, well, you can let me punch you in the face. It's a visceral thing that happens
and it's because you're human. It's because you care. If I tell you a story about me breaking
my neck and you don't feel some kind of empathy at least, then what the hell's wrong with you?
But going down that path and discussing the details of it and how that affects anything,
what's that got to do with anything? I would have been fat, but I'm noticeably short at this point.
It's none of your damn business.
How do you think people can better learn to interact with individuals with disabilities
and kind of communicate with them?
Oh, it's really simple. We call it just ask. Just ask.
People tell me all the time, what's the best way to help a person with a disability?
Just ask. You okay? Can I help you? Anything you need? It's really simple. Just reach out.
Mother taught you not to stare. When you see a wheelchair user or someone with some kind of
disability, don't stare. It's always funny to me because when I go to a crowded place like a
terminal, people are so busy not staring, they run over me or they trip over me or they look the
other way. The problem is it's that social stigma. Part of the problem too is not having the right
language. Understanding as people with disabilities, we are people with disabilities.
It's a really funny thing. If you think of me as a disabled person, the person who enters your mind
is undisabled. That little sympathy trigger happens. If you think of me as a person with a
disability, I know it sounds silly, but it changes the whole way you interact with it.
That simple little piece. Now, some people like to be called a disability person. That's
self-identifying. That's totally valid. If someone says to you, I prefer to refer to you as a
disabled person or a part of the creature, that's totally fine. But as an opening comment or opening
salvo, as an able-bodied person especially, I want to be referred to as a person with a disability
because when you refer to me as a person, you think of me as a person and it changes the way
you interact with me. It literally does. Yeah, it seems like the language and the terminology
that people want to be referred to by is different for everyone. It's tough when you enter, I guess,
a situation or an interaction when you haven't had any conversation with that person to, like you said,
the first key is to ask, but it's not always the easiest thing to start off a conversation with.
How, it might not even be something that you need to even ask. How do you want to be referred to as
you don't need to really have those denominators to begin with? No, you don't. When I say just ask,
I mean just reach out. I mean there's a person in there and people talk, don't stare. Mom said,
don't stare. So you don't. The fact of that is you don't do anything. A lot of people can't even
look at me. They look away, they talk around me and I get that it's uncomfortable, but what you guys
have to understand as tabs is that your day is coming. Number one, but number two, it's not about
a few wheelchair guys. We're talking about massive numbers of people. In Canada, 24% of the population
already reports having a significant disability. Certainly, it's similar in the United States.
The numbers percentage-wise, not totals, but percentage-wise, we marry each other quite often.
I don't know the US stats as well as the Canadian ones, but that's 24%. The thing about that is it
hides a number because all of us have at least one other person in our mind. A mother, father,
sister, brother, lover, even if it's a paid caregiver, even if it's a paid lover, we have
one other person in our mind that also benefits from that interaction, the accessible environment,
the welcoming environments that bring us all in. So the number is not 24% affected by what we're
talking about here. It's 50, 60. I have more than one person in my mind. So 60% of the population,
70% of the population that really benefits from a barrier-free approach, welcoming environment,
and having you as able-bodied people understand that we're everywhere.
I read one of the reports that the Rick Hansen Foundation put out that said that 21% of consumers,
I believe, have disabilities, and that's representing over $100 billion of spending
or around that figure. So if you were trying to communicate the importance of accessibility to
a business owner just from a key stakeholder standpoint, if you offered a 21% increase in
market size to any business, they would be foolish not to take it. So maybe we can briefly talk about
how accessibility benefits everyone, not only those with disabilities, but also those without,
and how businesses can kind of make some steps towards being more accessible and inclusive.
Well, that's actually what's happening. There's a bit of a revolution going on right now because
up till now, it's always been a social issue. You want to create access for people with disabilities
out of compassion, out of recognition that they're people and they need help.
What's happening now, those finally businesses and industries realizing there's a real return
on investment here. Remember that I mentioned before that we're not alone. I did a big pitch
to a major airport here in Alki, Canada, and I made the economic argument. When I got in the room,
they thought I was going to talk about the social benefits of being accessible, and there's lots of
them and they're important. But I went the other way. I talked about the economic issues and how
it can affect them and the airport operator moving forward. And at the end of the meeting,
it was at the end of day and I knew one of the board members there, and I invited him down for
a beer down in the main concourse. I knew that the only bar in the whole airport had two steps up
and it went about six feet and went down two steps. I still don't know what those steps were for.
But I knew that I couldn't get in there, but I invited the vice president of corporate affairs
down with me. And when we got to the steps, I said to him, look, Michael, I just wanted to make a
point here that when they lose my business, they also lose your business because you're not going
to go in there without me. And people with disabilities like anybody else want to travel.
We always travel with somebody, but we like to travel with other people, of course.
So when they lost Michael's business, they lost mine. So the numbers automatically doubled.
And Michael looked at me and he gave me a line that I've been using ever since.
He said, so you're telling me that a barrier for a person with a disability is a barrier to making
a profit. And that's the simple truth. The numbers are so high now. And most of the numbers don't
include the real driving force here, which is seniors and over adults. Those numbers are going
right through the ceiling. And the thing about seniors is they don't have a disability. They
have multiple disabilities. Hearing loss combined with mobility impairment or cognitive vision,
any combination you can think of and it's not limited to one or two.
So not only do they have multiple disabilities, but they're in complete denial. You know,
my eyes are fine, my arms aren't long enough. Or my personal favorite, I can hear fine if you stop
mumbling. Those guys, they're not any of the stats, but they are your customers.
And more importantly, they're your employees. We talk all the time about the aging population,
but industry is just now figuring out, wait a minute, that means my workforce is aging.
And I need to hang on to those guys because number one, there's not enough people coming
in behind them to take some of these jobs. And number two, it behooves me to understand who my
customers really are. You guys are in the fitness business. You tend to have younger,
you know, more active people. It's better nature to go into the gym. I think there's a real
opportunity here for to understand this aging process. What's happening is people are aging
out and they'll leave your gyms and they look for other ways of having that same fitness level.
Yeah, I mean, at least a third of our revenue comes from either those with a diagnosed
intellectual or physical disability, or like you mentioned, aging population that come to us
because they recognize that we work with people with disabilities and we're likely empathetic
and willing to make modifications specific for them. So if any gym could immediately get a
one-third bump in revenue just by being more accessible and inclusive,
there wouldn't be so many gyms going out of business, maybe.
What business can say no to 30%, 40% of the customers? It's just not reasonable. And sports
and fitness have always been a key part of rehabilitation. It drives the whole process.
Without sport, something as simple as a volleyball game or playing wheelchair basketball,
it not only helps you physically because of the fitness level, but it also helps you
physically because of the fitness level. But it's that social key, it's that interaction.
There's something going on here. Life goes on. Yeah, we talk about accessibility being more than
just the physical environment. I mean, a sense of inclusion by definition is environment where you
feel a sense of belonging. So when you look at like practical applications of UDL, you're looking
beyond just the physical environment as well, right? You're looking beyond ADA standards.
Oh yeah. The ADA was groundbreaking when it came in, but the reality of the ADA itself hasn't been
updated since 2010. And so that creates all kinds of problems. It calls for things like TTY,
telephone type, or what's it also called? It's called TTY and TDD. It's been gone so long,
I can't remember the acronyms, but telephone device for the deaf. ADA requires businesses
to have that, public terminals at least to have that. They don't make those anymore.
When email and texting came along, it blew all that stuff out of the water. For the deaf community,
it was the greatest thing that ever happened to have texting and email. But the ADA still requires
it. So you can't build an ADA compliant terminal building right now because you can't get TTY
machines. The fact that it's so far behind is problematic. The great thing about the ADA is it
broke a lot of ground. It got a lot of attention. It got people thinking in the right terms.
But the problem is it's completely behind. It's the nature of codes though. Codes are always behind.
It's an average of seven to 11 years to change a code and get it implemented depending where you
are, who you are. Which means codes are always seven to 11 years behind the need. And so that's
problematic. That's why we created the Rick Hansen Foundation Accessibility Certification Program
to bring people up and understand that a code-made-on-access strategy really only addresses
mobility wheelchair users more than that. And so if you're addressing only mobility issues,
then you're missing about 70% of the rest of the community of people with disabilities.
And that means you're missing 70% of the return on investment as a business owner.
So you have to understand it's not about a few wheelchair guys. It's also about hearing loss,
people with vision loss, people deaf or blind. They're all separate disciplines. The neurodiverse
community, as you well know, is a massive group of people. And the accommodation to make their
lives better isn't very difficult really. There's lots of little things you can do.
It's just a matter of understanding who your clients really are. It takes three things to
create meaningful access. First, you have to know who your customers are, who your clients are,
who people with disabilities really are. Second, you have to understand that access is a management
decision more than a design decision. Architects, planners, facility operators will build anything
you want. It runs the owners and operators one at first. And the third thing is you have to
professionalize the delivery of accessible design. It can't come from advocates anymore.
We have to have pros in the field, accredited professionals that the industry can call on and
rely on that information just like they would any other consultant, roof consultant or environmental
consultant or whatever it might be. Having those three things in place means you deliver meaningful
access. And meaningful access is the whole experience. If you have an accessible washroom
and nothing else in your facility works for people with disabilities, that's not accessible. It might
be COVID. But if you want to have meaningful access, it's the whole situation. From the moment you
get out of your car or off a bus and walk in the building, it's the perception desk, it's the flow
through the building. It's do you have emergency exiting? You know, the code works really hard
at getting people with disabilities into facilities and doesn't care at all about getting us out in
case of emergency. There's no requirement for emergency egress to be accessible. Now, the next
time you're standing in front of an elevator, you see that little plaque that says in case of fire,
tape, stairs, where's the little plaque that tells me what to do? There's no little plaque. I'm on my
own. You mentioned meaningful access. I think in the literature that's sometimes referred to as
usability as well. So we talk a bit about that in the course that we teach where you can't just
meet the ADA standards. Like the experience goes beyond just getting into the building.
What is your certification program like? Because I think I'm interested in learning about it because
we're trying to do something a little similar in terms of like road races. So we're trying to come
up with standards for 5Ks, 10Ks, half marathons and like give race directors a manual essentially,
more or less to make sure their registration platform is accessible, make sure when you arrive
at the event, you have everything you need to participate, even like encouraging more people
with disabilities to participate in events like this is a challenge in and of itself. So I'm very
curious as to how you guys went about developing your program as well as how you implement it
and maybe even like a little bit like the transient nature of it. Like if you give someone
an accessibility grade one year, but then they regress or they progress, like how often is that
score or grade modified? Under the our program, the RXFPC, we reevaluate every five years. So
you have to have your certification updated every five years and the whole purpose behind the
RXFPC when we first created it was to understand that we didn't need another code. We needed a
reference code but we didn't need someone arguing that the door should be 36 inches versus 32 inches.
That argument, that code approach, that prescriptive approach, it's just too limiting.
What we decided to do is come in and provide operators and owners with a sheet that tells them
what they've got now. It's a snapshot, it's almost like a financial statement. Here's your facility
right now, here's who it works for, here's who it doesn't work for, but not to be the code police,
not to come in and wag our fender and say all the things you didn't do right. Sometimes there's great
things and one of our things that our program does that I really like is we reward innovation
points. Sometimes people do some really innovative things and I think you need credit for that,
you need to understand that. But what you really need to understand is that access,
when someone says to you they want their building to be accessible, the next question on your mouth
has to be accessible to who? To people with wheelchairs, people who are blind, people who are
blind. Who? Are you trying to get the whole community or you're focusing on one? Do you
understand that even within that you say well I want to be wheelchair accessible, you want to be
wheelchair accessible to the high functioning paraplegics like Rick Hanson or you want to be
wheelchair accessible to me or my mother who can't use a one in 12 ramp. One in 12 ramp is too steep
for us. You have to understand those kind of moving targets. So the RHFAC came along and said
okay we're going to assess a building built in 1938. This just happened actually, the Saskatchewan
Legislative Building and so it was built in 1938. All the doors are 28 inches wide so the clear
space inside is 26 so you can't get a power chair through the front door. Does that make it
inaccessible? Well not to people who are deaf, not to people who are blind and not to high
functioning paras and there's a tiny little chairs but at the same time it's not accessible to a lot
of people. So we just put it on scale of one to five. Typically code would be three. Rates are
really great, you know sliding motion control door would be five and then below that we wonder
is ones or twos and we literally get a weighted scale on it. So when we look at your building we
break it up into eight different parts. You know the cemetery facilities, emergency egress, interior
circulation, signage and wayfinding etc etc and we break it all down and we literally have a train
accessor. Remember this is not a checklist. The only people who can use the RHFAC system are people
who have taken the course and passed it and then been adjudicated by a third party, in our case
Canadian Standards Association. We say yes you write this exam and yes you do know, yes you are
accredited. That person now takes the RHFAC template and lays it over the building and says okay
here's where it works, here's where it doesn't work on a weighted scale. If you get 16% of the
available points then you're considered certified accessible if you get over 80 or certified
accessible gold. But there's a lot of ways of getting there. It's not a fixed, you know what
works for a rec center is not going to be the same criteria for a library and what works for
a library is not the same as for a fitness center. So what we did is we recognized that every business
is different and how they approach this is going to be different but what they need to know is
a snapshot of a facility right now, who is it working for? Are your doors wide enough
for the most people? You know it's the acoustics in your room working, do you have emergency exits?
All that stuff is laid out so after you've done a, after the access assessor has done a complete
review of your site and rated those things on that scale then they come up with a number
and somewhere on this scale is where you're going to be and for example, again I'll use a
Canadian example but if you built a retail office space or even a school or multi-family
dwelling, if you built that to meet all the code requirements of the Ontario Building Code,
which is probably one of the strongest codes in Canada, if you made all of those accessibility
requirements you'd land about 40% on our scale because they don't consider other issues,
mind, heart, hearing, neurodiverse, they're so focused on mobility because that's the nature of
codes. So our job was to create a reference standard that can lay over anybody else's
standard whether it was ADA, whether it was an international building code which California uses
a lot, Canada we have CSA, we have accessible standards Canada, we have all kinds of different
standards and that's part of the problem. Everybody was using different standards, different codes
and so they're arriving at similar conclusions but using different language and different
methodology and we came in and said no, no, let's everybody do it the same way, let's everybody use
the same language, let's say everybody use the same methodology, let's everybody have the same training
and now everything we do is measurable because we're all talking the same language. Before, well
anywhere you go now, if they've probably done a really nice job and they met all the code
requirements in their area but their language is different, their methodology is different,
so it's not measurable. I can't compare their building to mine because I don't know what
standards they used. If everybody was using the RHFAC which is our goal and we've rated over 2000
Dolby's now and we've got 500 and something people trained in our system, by having common language,
by having common methodology not only can we address the issues because you know things that
get measured get funded but not only if we do that but we can change the culture around this.
Our object of our exercise for us was never to create a whole bunch more access consultants,
there's lots of them around and really quite good ones. I used to be one, I used to compete with
all these people, I know they're really good. That wasn't the game, the game was to try to change the
existing culture. The important thing was to take existing architects, planners, building inspectors,
carpenters, farmers to people doing the work and helping them understand the reality of disability
and who people with disabilities really are and how to make this work and seize that return on
investment. We've seen a lot of people lately, a lot of employers and they're wringing their
hands and they're clutching their pearls because they can't find enough people to work.
That whole work ethic has changed a little bit but for us at Doug's it's not as good. We know that
57% of our community is unemployed even though we're highly skilled, most of us are highly educated.
If you're looking for an employee that's dedicated, a problem solver, someone who can
go with the flow, personally with a disability is the perfect answer because we do that every
morning just to get out of bed. Having that accessible premises opens up the customer side
certainly but it also opens up the employee side and that's a huge benefit to owners and operators
anywhere no matter what business you're in. There was a lot of gold in there. Are there
prerequisites for taking your course? We have several courses. We have courses that are entry
level that there's no prerequisites required. We're going through a big change now and some of these
names will change in the full spring of next year but right now we have something called Accessibility
101 which is basically an introductory course on universal design and why, what's the point, and
the whole idea of the practical application of universal design. I mean universal design isn't
a thing on its own, it's a concept, it's a way of approaching a project. We have Accessibility 101
and that's an online course but we have the pro courses which are RHFAC so if you want to end up
either being an assessor or having that knowledge within your company. There are prerequisites for
that so you have to have experience in the built environment whether that's as an architect, an
engineer, construction site worker because we don't have the time to teach you how to read drawings,
we don't have the time to teach you how to read codes but it's about a 48-hour online course
available right now or you can attend it in person in post-secondary schools right across
Canada so there's eight locations now but that's how you know that's the general approach but the
idea is quite simple is to get that common language, common methodology and if we're all
singing the same song then we can now address the issues. Yeah that's definitely something I'm
interested in purely from like a learning experience. Was there a process of like validating it
or did you consult with a lot of people kind of like a Delphi research project? Oh man yes
right from day one to what we did eight years ago now, hard to believe it was eight years ago,
but eight years ago we started the process and then we got you know the first rating system on
paper and it was the idea was let's look at every all the other efforts around the world from
Australia to Iceland's doing amazing things, Ireland's doing amazing things, the New York
standards is quite good, it's developed by the Idea Center out of Buffalo, really good standard,
all code-based, all prescription prescriptive rather, you know saying the door should be
36 inches or this you know all these fixed heights and fixed things but what we wanted to do is make
sure we didn't miss anything so we reviewed all those things and tried to bring it into our world
which was not prescriptive but rather just reference and when we did that we ended up with
a questionnaire that an assessor would take to the site would be with over 1300 questions long
and that's just completely impractical so we vetted that and got it down to a pilot stage then we took
it out and we tried to pilot it in a few locations and then we brought the whole thing back and we
sat down with pretty much every major organization of and for people with disabilities in Canada
and we went through it line by line and heard their comments on it and many people said you
need to add this or you should take away that or but the whole community got involved and so we
took that then and that became another version of it and then we formed the technical committee
which is made up of the people with lived experience people who are and even broader
than that people with architectural experience people doing the actual work in the trenches
and so that committee is I think 48 people from all walks of the actual practical application side
and they have direct input and we updated from there and then we formed an advisory committee
from industry you know municipalities large project management companies I think there's
13, 14 on that committee so getting direct input from the people how to implement the change
you know in our in our community we forget that when we you know create these new codes and raise
that bar higher and higher we always forget to invite the people of the table who are actually
paying for it and that's the industry so we made darn sure that they had direct input into our
program and when we did that it was amazing what happened they suddenly started seeing the return
on investment stopped seeing it as you know more red tape more bureaucracy more frustration because
we can't do what we want to do because we have to meet all these access requirements and instead saw
the opportunity that you know from the time brought to the table by bringing more people into the
business more people into the employment side and a miracle happened and they you know they
if you build it they will come well they started to see it and so we we that's always are ongoing
those committees meet three times a year I think maybe four and that implements concept because
access is a moving target you have to stay on top of it you know what was important for accessibility
in the 70s it's taken for granted now and we're looking at we're looking at other areas whether
it's neurodiverse or environmental sensitivities or whatever it might be access isn't a thing you're
over with accessibility it's not black or white there's no yes or no nobody's right nobody's wrong
and in fact when you do something for one group you often create a problem for another you know I
I had a problem at these airport terminals they're big glass tile buildings and they just get so
noisy it's crazy so we put carpet down dampen down the noise really help people with hearing loss
well that was great we help people with hearing loss we made it harder though for people using
wheeled mobility devices so anybody using wheelchair pushing on carpet it's going to be
harder for them so did I create a barrier or did they take one away but when we looked at it was
well you know for every person that using a wheeled mobility device in an airport terminal
there's about 4 000 people who are hard of hearing so the importance of getting that sound level down
was really critical so the greater good for the greater number of people universal design that's
what you're trying to strive for now it doesn't mean you just don't you know forget the you know
the wheelchair guys you find a better way you know what we ended up doing was a concept called path
was in a path so we cut out pieces of the carpet so there's bare floors you can roll along and that
sort of solved both problems but there's no my point is there's no yes or no there's no black
or white it's not like other areas where you know sustainability where it's off gassing or it isn't
for us it's a totally gray environment so when you're building accessibility in your facilities
you have to understand that no matter what you do you're never going to get it making for
100 for everyone it just doesn't work that way you can't make any facility 100 accessible for
all people with all disabilities at all times and all weather conditions and all opportunities
it just can't be done so should businesses steer away from referring to themselves
as accessible or kind of like at what point do you get to say that you're accessible or
how can i communicate to you as a wheelchair user that i want you in my gym if i don't have some
verbiage online that says inclusive accessible etc be specific you know you can say you're
wheelchair accessible you know say what you are but something like we're accessible or fully
accessible fully accessible is one of those phrases we always laugh at you know if you say
you're accessible it means you have a ramp if you say you're fully accessible it means you have two
ramps bottom line on it is be accurate be real don't be afraid often businesses are afraid to
say well i'm not accessible to people who are deaf because that opens them up to in your country
maybe maybe legal action maybe get sued under the ada or whatever it is but they're hesitant to do
that but the more information you provide the better it is you can say you're wheelchair
accessible you can say that you know special considerations for people who are uh sight impaired
you can say that do say that just don't pretend that it's all things to all being fully accessible
means nothing in our community because we know you don't know what that means yeah that's good
advice and just like you mentioned it's a moving target so would you want to see a business be
reactionary to like every client's concerns like how would you want us to handle in access no i
definitely do not want you to do that i want you to i want you to understand that this is a business
opportunity like any other one and i want you to sit down and figure out over the long term
what's the best thing for your business well how's this going to work for you guys you know i worked
on mega projects like the 2008 beijing olympic games which is the largest paralympic event i think
ever held i did 2010 games in whistler and i've done tiny little bakeries and even a baggage part
one time the thing they all had in common is they understood what access meant to their organization
it's too big you can't fit everything in and everything doesn't apply to your organization
understanding how access will benefit your organization developing a long-term plan
that's what the rhfac really is it gives you a one sheet to look at and say okay uh here's what i
have to do i'm weak in washington i'm strong in signage i'm weak over here so now you can it
becomes a planning tool so what i want to do is to understand what's happening to the demographics
you know you guys are running gyms and in your case you're a large percent of neurodiversity
congratulations by the way that's a real beat but understand that you know just understanding
that your clientele is getting older and what's that going to mean and i'm making all kinds of
assumptions here but if i'm running a gym a conventional gym and typically it's going to
be younger people who are highly fit and maybe bodybuilders that kind of that kind of crew
but understanding they're going to age out and they're going to stop using your facility
so why not capture that why not have your facility develop over time to accommodate older adults and
seniors because the exercise patterns will change but what we don't want to do is we don't want to
lose those guys as customers but if you if you keep presenting yourselves as this great place for
young able-bodied males then you're going to lose them eventually they're going to move on and they'll
end up in senior centers which is the other end of the spectrum which nobody really wants to do but
it's at least it's it's some kind of exercise it's some kind of something but i want you to use
all these stats as a business as a planning tool i don't understand where the demographic is going
to take your clients both new ones you know as you become more accessible you can get new clients
but how do you keep the ones you got why you you accommodate them you know as people get older
again i'm just making all kinds of assumptions here but often when i've been to fitness centers
and gyms it's really loud and older adults and seniors hate loud so what can you do about that
well you can plan to change the acoustics of your facility but do it as a plan i don't want you to
say well i got i got a client who's low vision so i'm going to suddenly change everything in the
building no you should say okay there's a client with low vision coming my way i think that's the
tip of the iceberg how can i as part of my whole planning process as part of my working in a long
term prospects for my business what can i do so a year from now can i make the washrooms better
you know a year from now can i improve the acoustics make it part of your rural business plan
because the demographics are changing and if you're going to keep up with that if you're
going to stay in business and what you have to do is understand that change and accommodate it but
do it as a part of your ground don't don't knee jerk those you know if you got a chance to get a
blind guy oh i'm going to use a blind person i'm going to change everything no you don't but use
that as a as a as a motivator but make it part of your business plan it's got to be part of the
long-term planning that doing this stuff as a knee-jerk reaction has been part of the problem
yeah i think that answers a question that we've wrapped up a lot of these episodes with which is
kind of what do you think needs to be done to make the fitness industry more accessible and it sounds
like having a long-term plan understanding the needs of clients understanding the evolution
of your clients and kind of retaining that lifetime value of your customers
understanding their needs that's exactly right the lifetime value and what they bring to the table
and fitness and sport is such a critical part of of staying healthy staying active but staying alert
don't make it inaccessible because it's focused on young men
god bless young men but no it's not going to do it yeah well brad it's been an honor to have you as a
guest this platform has introduced me to some incredibly interesting and uh
insightful people that i feel very fortunate to get to talk to so thank you for joining me today for
what i think has been uh probably my most informative episode in terms of uh notes
that i've taken throughout the conversation so i really appreciate it well i'm so happy to be here
you're it's a very deep well you're coming here and uh if there's an opportunity to revisit this or
maybe dive down on a couple of things i'm happy to do that and uh i'm happy to be here
maybe dive down on a couple of things i'm happy to do that too but um my thought my parting note
will be if you build it they will come and if you don't build it they won't come
thank you for listening to the adaptx podcast our effort to amplify the ideas of our guests and
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