Igniting accessible experiences podcast - episode 2

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  Bridie: [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome to the Accessible Tourism in Queensland podcast, where you'll hear from people with disability tourism operators, and experts in accessibility and disability inclusion. This podcast is supported by the Queensland Government. Hello, my name is Bridie I'm one of your hosts here on this podcast.

  I am a person with disability. I have Cerebral Palsy, Spastic Diplegia, and for those who don't know what that means, the muscles in my legs are quite tight, so I walk with a bit of a limp. I personally like to call it the swagger, but it is a limp and it means that I get fatigued easily because my muscles have to work so hard to operate, and it also means that my balance is affected.

  So whenever I use stairs or whenever I'm on a platform, I need to be able to hold onto something otherwise, I'm gone face first, and that's not good for anybody. And joining me is my co-host.

  Ben: [00:01:00] My name is Ben Pettingill, and Bridie, I was gonna say to you that I've never seen your limp, and that is because my personal connection to disability that I'll be bringing to all of the episodes or most of the episodes, the ones that we're co-hosting together and the ones that I'm hosting my lived experience, which was that at 16 years old, I lost 98% of my eyesight due to a rare genetic syndrome. So it was literally. Up the back of my classroom one day. Looking at the diagram, the teacher was drawing on the board. Something didn't seem quite right. It was this tiny little bit blurry, and upon getting some tests done, going to hospital, getting it checked out initially, we got told it was nothing serious.

  I woke up the next day having lost nearly 98%, and a couple of weeks after that, we eventually got the results that it was incurable, it couldn't be fixed, and I was gonna be blind for life. As I'm sure you can try to imagine listening out there, that moment, not just being told that I was [00:02:00] blind for life and losing my eyesight, but also now living with the label of having a disability changed my life in so many ways.

  There was so many barriers that I now had to face. There were so many uncertainties, so many questions, so many unknowns. But also amongst all that, there were some opportunities, but the opportunities were very dependent on the attitudes and the perceptions of the people around me, the organisations I was interacting with and all of that sort of thing.

  And at the end of the day, Bridie, you are still Bridie, I'm still Ben, and we've also got a great mate of ours and the guest on the podcast today to bring his lived experience. Michael Hughes. Michael, great to have you with us here, mate how are you?

  Michael: Not too bad. Thanks Ben and Bridie a little bit about me.

  So my connection to disability, I am a T3, T4 paraplegic as a result of a car accident that I was in when I was 18. So basically what that means is that I dislocated my spine around my chest, fractured my sternum in the [00:03:00] process. But in dislocating my spine, I snapped my spinal cord. So yeah, from just around where my nipples are, I've got no feeling or movement below there. Everything still works fine above there, but from there down, I've got no feeling of movement. So I'm a wheelchair user. Been in a wheelchair for about 18 years now, starting, to get the hang of it. And yeah, so that's how I found myself in this podcast helping us today.

  Ben: Michael, I'll throw to you first and then we'll share some of our own thoughts as well. But why is accessible tourism important to you, mate?

  Michael: I've used travel as a bit of a tool to show me what I'm capable of as a bit of a challenge to myself. Like after getting the hang of how to use a wheelchair to the point where I felt comfortable starting to have a crack at travel.

  I went out with some family around for support and eventually got to the point where I felt confident enough to start traveling on my own, which is, yeah, it's been a really big thing for me, setting myself the goal of picking a location that I want to go and experience, and then having to navigate through the process of working out what [00:04:00] that accessible travel is gonna look like. Make sure that I can have the most comfortable experience that I can, and then, yeah, getting there and trying to experience different parts of the world. So yeah, it's really big for me. When it goes well, it's always a rejuvenating experience. When I have a good holiday and it goes well.

  Bridie: Yeah, like it is for anybody with or without disability. That's why we all go on holidays.

  Ben: What's it mean to you, Bridie?

  Bridie: For me, I reckon I'm pretty similar to Hughesy. I like anyone, love to go on a holiday and as somebody like myself, I get really tired really quickly and I have to manage that. So for me, often, to be honest, I love a good adventure holiday, I'm all about a good zip line. I'm partial to a nice hike, but my favorite holiday is sitting by a pool, finding a buffet breakfast, and reading good book. And I need that time to rest and recharge like everybody else. So accessible tourism for me means that I'm able to do those things without barriers.

  [00:05:00] What about you, Ben? What does it mean to you?

  Ben: I love the tourism side of things and I love being able to experience everything that I used to be able to experience when I could see, but also doing it in a way that I feel like I'm not missing out. So I think that for me is why the accessibility is so critical. When I feel like I'm experiencing something and not missing out compared to everybody else, that's when I really love it.

  Michael: I think for me as well, Benny, that's a really big one, is because I had my life before the accident and then my life after when I can go and have an experience and go, "oh yeah, look granted, I've pushed myself up the hill to get here in my wheelchair, but I'm still experiencing pretty similar to how it would've been before". That's the kind of thing that I was talking about being a really big sort of positive experience for me. 'cause it helps me see what I'm capable of.

  Bridie: Hughesy what do you need in order to access certain spaces in order to have an inclusive experience when you're on holiday?

  Michael: For me, obviously the wheelchair access thing is a big important one. I need [00:06:00] to be able to know that there's gonna be flat paths to be able to get me where I'm going, not have any stairs if there is somewhere upstairs that there's elevators.

  All that kind of stuff and just having that awareness before I go there can make a huge difference as well, 'cause obviously we've gotta put a bit more planning into things and yeah, so just for me, if I know that where I'm going, if they've been able to give me as much information about what that experience is gonna look like, that can make the difference between me approaching the trip with a bunch of stress and anxiety or a bunch of excitement.

  Bridie: And we hear a lot from tourism providers that they wanna provide information about the accessibility options that they can offer, but we hear that they have a lot of fear around disclosing what they can't offer, what aren't accessible factors with their venue or within their facility or their business.

  How important is it to you if people are upfront about where [00:07:00] they have strong accessibility supports and adjustments and ones that may potentially need improvement and not be there yet?

  Michael: Look, that is a fantastic question, Bridie, because and I see this so often. I'll be doing a bit of research and I'll be like, "all right, try to find out whether or not the place has an accessible bathroom", that kind of stuff.

  And a lot of places I get the vibe that they don't quite have things up to scratch. Their intentions are good. They wanna get things up to scratch. And so they won't put that information in until it's what they want it to be. And for me, it's so much more beneficial if a place tells me what's not gonna be available so I can prepare and I'm not gonna sit and hold judgment against that place if they're like, "Hey, look, we don't have an accessible toilet as yet". Then I'll know to prepare to take that into account when I'm making my plans for how I'm gonna approach wherever that facility may be. Rather than going, "all right, I don't know what I'm coming up against".

  So I don't really wanna take the risk that I'm gonna end up somewhere and not be able to get to a [00:08:00] bathroom or be stuck at the bottom of a flight of stairs. If they say, "Hey, look, yep, we don't have an accessible bathroom here, but we're looking to get one. There's one around the corner", or even just saying they don't have one, so that I have to look elsewhere and I'm not hoping that they might, that could be such a big thing for me.

  I understand that it can be daunting for places to have to say, "Hey, look, we don't really have this as, as good as we'd like to". But I think, yeah, it's really as important to share what, what's not accessible as it is to share what is.

  Bridie: Yeah, great. What about you, Ben? What adjustments or information do you need in order to access your holidays?

  Ben: Information.

  Access to information, but accessible information digitally that my screen reader on my phone, my laptop, my iPad can access and read. So making sure that if you're advertising an experience, let's say it's not just on posters in and around your facility. It's not just on flyers all around the town, it's not just on [00:09:00] billboards.

  So it's in multiple different formats so that I can access it, read it, understand it, know what's involved. Then when it comes to actually participating in the experience or going to that place, having multiple formats to be able to say, provide information. Quite often if you say, going on a fishing charter or going on a scenic flight, or whatever that happens to be, you've gotta provide information, and quite often that comes in the form of a paper form, "Here can you fill this in with all your details", A waiver or whatever it happens to be. Now, I can't fill that in independently by myself. So that either means that I have to take somebody with me, be with somebody, or I lose that sense of independence because I've gotta rely on somebody there to fill it in.

  Whereas if they can be proactive enough to identify that and go, "Hey, we normally do this in paper form, do you want me to email it to you in a Word doc or put it in an [00:10:00] email? You can just type in your information and send it back", absolutely. So then that gives me that sense of independence. That's probably one thing.

  And then just adding on to what Michael was just sharing about the accessible features, I'm very similar and I have a very similar viewpoint that I would rather know everything you do and don't have and put the control on the choice back to the person with a disability by saying, "Hey, here are the three or four accessible features that we do have currently, here's five that we don't have, we know we're not perfect, but at least now you have all the information", and that makes the decisions of my planning so much easier rather than only seeing the four things that you do have. You're not telling me the five accessible features that you don't have or the five parts of your experience or facility that is not accessible and I've gotta find that out as I go. Much more frustrating creates a much more negative experience rather than knowing that in advance and preparing for that. [00:11:00] What about yourself?

  Bridie: For me with my disability, distance is a big thing. If somebody tells me a walk is five minutes down the road, well for me, that's probably 10 minutes down the road.

  But if you tell me that in metres, then I know exactly how long that is and how long that will take me. But also a big thing for myself is attitudes. We talk a lot about misconceptions and unconscious bias. I am somebody who has a visible limp and people often have the misconception that I am intoxicated or I'm drunk because of my limp, and they go to that exact assumption.

  Particularly when I'm on holidays. We're often in restaurants. We're often around bars. I've had experiences where staff make assumptions about myself, and that can be really difficult. So for me, positive attitudes is so key. Hughesy can you think of [00:12:00] any examples where you've faced any challenges or barriers when you've gone on holiday?

  And if so, what do you think that tourist provider could have done better?

  Michael: If I've been in places where I've been traveling with people and I was on a work trip with a couple of colleagues. We're all going in to get our room keys and room key gets handed out to one person, gets handed out to the next, they see me in my wheelchair.

  And then they hand the key to my colleague, they've seen me, seen my wheelchair and made the assumption that I'm not gonna be able to communicate with them so that they've turned to my colleague. And that obviously didn't make me feel that great when they could've, like I was using the room for myself.

  I needed the key. Yeah. So I think, yeah, attitudes can, be really big, 'cause you go through an experience like that and then it's easy to get stuck in your head and going, oh, these people don't really see me like a regular tourist. They see me like a bit of a burden or, and yeah, it can be easy to get stuck in your head with those things.

  So positive attitudes are really important.

  Bridie: We know people have that moment of panic. We even have that moment of panic when we [00:13:00] don't know what to say. Language is always changing and evolving. We don't know the best language to use, but I think at the end of the day, it's always important to speak directly to the individual.

  It sounds so basic, but often people when they're communicating with people with disability, like Hughesy shared. They make that assumption that they need to speak to their colleague or their companion or their support worker. Just always talk directly to the person with disability and if they can't communicate for themselves, then a support worker or the person with them will step in, but always start directly with the person, it's so important.

  Michael: I think I'd way prefer someone to be trying to be inclusive and accessible and maybe not get it right than to not try it all like they did in that scenario.

  Ben: We've probably hit a really cool part of the conversation that I think we can just share some really practical tools and tips around interacting with patrons, customers, people with disability more broadly.

  [00:14:00] And Michael, start with you, because I know this is something that people do overthink. You're in a wheelchair, do you prefer people to stand up or bend down to speak to you?

  Michael: I've never to be honest, I've never really had many experiences where they've done one and I wish they would do the other unless it's like somewhere really loud.

  If it's really loud and you're six foot six and you're standing up and you're just talking quietly, it's a little bit difficult for me to hear in those scenarios, but yeah, I guess if you're unsure, the best way to approach that for me is just go, "Hey, do you want me to duck down?", "No. All good", "Oh yeah. That'd make it easier", but like we keep touching on, it can be easy to overcomplicate those things, but much like you would with someone who was sitting in a chair that didn't have wheels, if you weren't sure if they could hear you, you'd probably just check in with them and go, "Hey, do you want me to bend down and talk a little bit closer to you?"

  Yeah. It's just the importance of asking and listening when people give you a response as well. What about you guys?

  Ben: I think for me, a really simple one is [00:15:00] until you speak, I don't know, you're there. Depending on what you say, I don't know that you're talking to me. So if I've walked into reception, if I've walked into the front counter, if I've made it to the front of the line, I don't necessarily know that I'm the front, I'm at the front of the line.

  I don't know that I'm the next person to be called forward for that ride at a theme park or up to reception to ask that question or that query. If I'm standing there with my white cane, introducing yourself by name, giving that little bit of extra direction and saying, "Hi, sir. Welcome sir. Just take two steps forward. You are next in line". I know that if you're saying that and saying take "two steps forward", you're probably talking to me. Anyone that could see will know that they're next in line and will know that they need to take two steps forward. You've all of a sudden, just by using and choosing those words, separated me from everybody else.

  Bridie: Hughesy, you often tell a story with your [00:16:00] experiences where people make assumptions about your needs and how they can help you, but may not always listen to your response. Do you have any experiences with that or do you wanna speak to that?

  Michael: There's one thing that I do get, just to go on a quick little tangent.

  One thing I always get with accessible rooms, like I said, I'll do all the research, make sure the rooms are accessible, and then I'll go in there, there'd be a handheld shower head, which makes it great for me, but it's always put right up the top really high. And then I go in there and I'm looking at it and I can see that it's there, but I can't do it.

  So little things like that where if you've got an accessible room, just taking into account the placement of things around the room. Don't put towels up on the top shelf. Those kind of little details. So I guess it's just organisations and places trying to make themself aware of what accessibility can look like and what barriers people might face.

  And I guess taking in any constructive criticisms. I had a really bad experience one time that I actually ended up working out quite good. My family and I were looking to go on a [00:17:00] vacation. My family called and asked about accessible rooms and there was someone on the call who took that and said, "oh no, we don't cater to those people".

  Now my family did not respond very well to that, they probably responded a little bit more aggressively 'cause they were pretty hurt and offended by that, as I would've been if I heard it. So they, they sent an email or something, got in touch with them, just making a bit of a complaint about that.

  And then someone from that organisation a little bit higher up, caught wind of that. And made a point of getting in touch with us, apologising to us for that circumstance, letting us know that they had spoken with that person and they're gonna put them into some disability training and offering us some information about accommodation that would be accessible.

  So it was just like we've touched on that attitude, there was a circumstance where something where I was trying to get some information about accessibility or my family was, didn't go the way that I wanted. Then it was rectified by acknowledging that. So I thought that was a really, as much as they still weren't able to offer accessible accommodation because they didn't have the facilities, they went to the effort of [00:18:00] calling and letting me know that they don't think that kind of communication is acceptable.

  And I found that to be a really positive experience for me.

  Bridie: Because we know when people are on the journey of making their businesses more inclusive, they're gonna make mistakes. They're gonna mess up, and that's okay. That shouldn't stop businesses and tourism providers in trying their best to make their services more inclusive.

  Ben: We often talk about the difference between the hardware and the software of accessibility and inclusion, and I think that's probably a really key point here. When we say the hardware, we're talking the physical environment, the ramps and rails of the facility, or that are involved and a part of the experience that you're providing.

  But the software are the hearts and minds, the interaction, the communication, the language that you are using when you are interacting with the person with disability. And quite often I've had some of my most inclusive experiences at some of the most inaccessible [00:19:00] places because the people there have been fantastic.

  And then I've had some really uninclusive experiences and really negative experiences at some of the most state-of-the-art brand new accessible venues because the people there have gone, "oh, we've got an accessible venue, we don't have to do anything else", job done. And I think. That in itself, I think we can all learn so much from, and the three of us, we could talk for days about positive experiences, about not so great experiences, what people could do better.

  But at the end of the day, for those of you who are listening, one thing I think is really important to take away and hopefully you are getting that when you are listening, is we're just three people. Michael, Bridie, myself, we're three people. Just like everybody else that either wants to interact with your business, wants to go on holidays, wants to experience what tourism and hospitality have to offer in Queensland, and yes, we might need a few little [00:20:00] adjustments.

  We might need things to be done a little bit differently, or we might do things a little bit differently in order to access and have as equal experience as we possibly can. But ask, don't assume. Involve us in that process and you're gonna open up the doors to 20% more of the population by putting accessibility, inclusion at the forefront and as a priority.

  Thank you so much everyone for joining us. Hopefully we've given some not only insights into our own lived experience of disability, some of the barriers that we've faced, experience, but also some really practical tips to support. All people with disability have a really accessible and inclusive experience when it comes to tourism in Queensland.

  Make sure you check out the other episodes as well to learn some more really helpful tips and tricks.