Accessibility effort still ramping up!

Two years until the Paralympics, the initiative to make resort accessible to all is still a work in progress

Editor’s note: Three years ago, five years before the scheduled start of the 2010 Paralypmics, The Question published a two-part series of articles on accessibility in Whistler. Titled “Wheelchair bound in Whistler,” it started with Editor David Burke taking a rolling tour around the resort with three-time Paralympic sit-skier Stacy Kohut, looking at accessibility issues from the seat of a wheelchair. Significant progress has been made, though not everyone — Kohut, for one — has been satisfied with the pace of the work. With the Paralympics just two years away,

The Whistler Question revisits the issue this week.
David Burke dburke@whistlerquestion.com

In a two-minute video clip coming soon to a TV near you, Paralympic sit-skier Brad Lennea and Resort TV host Deena McCauley will take viewers on a tour around Whistler with a unique twist.

In addition to showcasing the slopes of Whistler and Blackcomb, the new library, Meadow Park Sports Centre and the like, it will do so not only from the perspective of able-bodied bipeds, but from that of a wheelchair-bound person such as Lennea.

The clip, which will also be shown on the new information kiosk in Village Square, is just one of the many public education tools initiated by the Whistler Accessibility Project Advisory Group (WAPAG), of which Lennea is a member.

Another such tool: A new barrier-free route map, available on both the Resort Municipality of Whistler’s (www.whistler.ca) and the Whistler for the Disabled websites (www.whistlerforthedisabled.com), and as a handout from municipal hall, Tourism Whistler info centres and from Village Hosts.

Lennea, a member of the Canadian Disabled Alpine Ski Team, suffered a jaw injury during pre-season training that has prevented him from competing in International Paralympic Committee (IPC) World Cup races this winter.

Lennea is the first to admit parts of Whistler are challenging to navigate in his wheelchair. For example, instead of entering Village Square through the “front door” — i.e. via the breezeway from the Taxi Loop — he and others with mobility challenges take the long away around, past the Conference Centre and Tapley’s. The other option is to roll down from Skiers Plaza.

In spite of those challenges, Lennea knows how good he and others with mobility challenges have it in Whistler compared to those in most other mountain resorts. “As a ski racer in a wheelchair who travels around the world, it’s pretty tough out there travelling most of the time, especially in ‘old’ areas of Europe and such,” Lennea said last week. “I think Whistler is far ahead of most places already in terms of accessibility.”

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Though some aspects of the effort to improve accessibility in Whistler Village have taken longer than he initially expected, Whistler is well on its way to becoming the world’s most accessible winter resort, Kevin McFarland said last week.

A parks planner for the Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW) and the man leading the charge on accessibility, McFarland said that with the two-year countdown to the start of the 2010 Paralympic Games having taken place yesterday (March 12), he’s confident the community will be ready to welcome the world’s top Paralympic athletes.

New signs pointing the way to the nearest wheelchair ramp, the resort’s new teletypewriter (TTY) phones and greater access to information for those with mobility challenges or visual and hearing impairments are just some of the more obvious signs of the ongoing effort to improve accessibility.

Much of the work is being carried out with guidance from WAPAG, which gathers once a month to assess accessibility efforts to date and make recommendations for future upgrades. But McFarland said at least some of the progress is largely the result of individual effort, particularly from Hugh Tollett, creator of the Whistler for the Disabled website.

Tollett, he noted, has also spearheaded the effort to have two TTY phones, for use by hearing-impaired people such as himself, installed in public spaces, and is working with Telus officials to get perhaps seven more, ensuring that there’s at least one in every commercial part of the resort.

“Hugh Tollett has just been heroic in his efforts,” McFarland said.

Two of the capital projects still to come: A new, two-stage wheelchair ramp at that logistically challenging entrance to Village Square from the Taxi Loop, and access for the disabled, possibly involving an elevator, to Skiers Plaza from the Gondola Transit Loop.

These and other upgrades were first identified in an accessibility audit done in 2003, McFarland said. He said he expects work on the Taxi Loop ramp system to begin just after Labour Day.

“It took perhaps a year longer than I would have thought to get all the processes in place, but I can now turn to the physical change kind of stuff,” he said.

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For almost two years, Stacy Kohut, the three-time Paralympian, was a regular participant on the WAPAG. Among other things, he was one of the first people to be photographed for a series of public service ads that appeared in local newspapers and elsewhere, driving home the message about accessibility.

But Kohut stopped going to the meetings about a year ago. One reason he quit was his own impatience with bureaucratic processes.

“It seems like that’s what I’m good at doing, is being an impetus for something, but I can’t stand around and watch people fumble over the small details. It’s painful for me to watch,” Kohut said.

“I had to say goodbye to it all, and in a lot of ways I’m happier.”

Among other things, Kohut said he grew impatient seeing obvious impediments — he mentioned specifically the Taxi Loop issue, which he had pointed out during that initial tour back in 2005 — not being fixed. He’s also puzzled over the fact that while the new, $11.2 million library has a wheelchair ramp out front, universal design was not incorporated into the design of its entryway.

“There is a ramp, but there’s no universal design implementation in the entranceway. If you’ve got two people in a stroller, you both can’t pass each other on the ramp,” he said.

“Universal design tends to avoid stairs,” Kohut said. “This is world-class, cutting-edge stuff, and I’m finding out that Whistler isn’t as world class as we say we are.” McFarland said he was not involved in the design of the library entranceway, but added, “I know there were a lot of grades they were dealing with there, including the underground parkade access there. I know that if I was to grade that site, there were a lot of things to respond to there.”

In a Question article three years ago, Kohut said, “I would really hate to see a bunch of plywood scraps in a parking lot somewhere after the Games are done. The legacy should be permanent, lasting and real.”

McFarland said those working on the upgrades are fully committed to that objective. He said that through Whistler 2020, a number of different RMOW departments now have a mandate to strive toward accessibility.

“If you know the nature of the Village, you know a plywood solution isn’t likely to happen,” McFarland said. “The Games provide this amazing deadline, and there’s such a great value in having those sorts of deadlines. By incorporating standards and ways of doing things into the municipal process, we will make sure that the changes are not temporary.”

•••

When it comes to accessibility in Whistler, the Hugh Tollett fan club’s legions appear to be growing. In addition to McFarland and the B.C. Rehab Foundation, which last October rewarded his efforts with a Standing Ovation Award at a gala in Vancouver, Stacy Kohut is another such convert.

“I definitely think what Hugh has done is great, and what’s more important is the spirit of what Hugh has done. He’s just gone out and done it,” Kohut said. “I love that go-get-it approach.”

Through his efforts to get TTY phones, Tollett has helped drive home the point to many that accessibility isn’t just about physical access. It’s also about access for the visually and hearing impaired.

But Tollett, who started developing the Whistler for the Disabled website on his own six years ago, isn’t exactly getting rich helping to keep prospective and actual Whistler guests informed about accessibility in the resort. He keeps adding new features to the website but has had little financial reward.

He has made preliminary inquiries to both the RMOW and Tourism Whistler (TW). RMOW officials have asked for some revisions to his application for funding through the Community Enrichment Grant program. TW officials said their budget was set for 2008, but encouraged him to come back in 2009.

“I am staying hopeful,” Tollett wrote in an email interview.

“Right now with no funding, it is my only reward when someone tells me, ‘Thank you for helping me out and/or my family,’” he wrote.

Tollett, who said he’s had lots of support from individuals and organizations, including Whistler Blackcomb and Chelsea Walker of the Whistler Adaptive Sports Program, said that in addition to providing information to prospective guests, one challenge he sees for Whistler is actually outside the resort.

“So many disabled people… cannot afford to come to Whistler because of the lack of transportation that even prevents them from coming up for the day from Vancouver. It takes 48 hours’ notice to book a Greyhound bus that is accessible for a wheelchair. Whistler Transit is still not fully accessible. It is a hard sell right now because of those transportation issues.”

•••

McFarland stressed that two years before the Paralympics, a number of initiatives are still in the works. One is an initiative being led by Tourism Whistler to supplement its “Peaks” accommodation rating system with a rating for accessibility.

Dave Clark, TW’s senior manager of visitor services, said the criteria for what constitutes an accessible property has been completed and TW officials are now gathering the information about the various properties.

On TW’s website, Whistler.com, guests can now find a rating for each accommodation provider, with “five peaks” being the highest. When the system is running, probably by the end of the year, the listing will also include a notation stating that a given property has met the criteria for physical accessibility — that is, there are no physical impediments in getting to one’s room and that at least some rooms are accessible to those in wheelchairs, with walkers, etc.

“I think in the future we want to get to a system where it’ll be rated — fully accessible, partly accessible, not accessible, that kind of thing,” Clark said, adding that after the hotel sector is completed, TW officials want to establish a similar system for food and beverage providers.

Said McFarland, “If you get families travelling with certain accessibility needs, when hotels are competing for that guest, it’s a powerful motivator.”

While Clark said providing similar information about accessibility to the visually and hearing impaired is probably a ways off, McFarland said he’s working on providing the the technology for the blind to take a walking tour of Whistler Village.

A Quebec-based company called Trekker makes a device that’s equipped with Global Positioning System (GPS) technology and provides voice prompts telling the user where he/she is and what’s around him/her.

“As you walk down the Stroll, it would tell you where you are in the Village, that you’re approaching this intersection — it’s like a continuous audio message as you’re walking,” he said.

As McFarland envisions it, the units would be available to borrow, free of charge, at visitor centres.

The RMOW is also working to implement a new parking standard requiring that handicapped parking stalls always be placed in pairs. “That way someone using one space is knowledgeable enough to know not to crowd the other space,” McFarland said.

The bottom line, he said, is that accessibility is and probably will remain a work in progress for some time.

“Some of the things that I do — like having those little signs at the bottom of stairwells installed — I still make mistakes with the level of sign placement,” McFarland said. “But it’s just awareness. We’re still not there yet, we still make mistakes, but now we know that this is what we need to do, and we’ll do it better.”