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Today is an especially memorable day for me. It was 45 years ago today, September 1, 1980, Labor Day, which changed my life, and the lives of my family and friends forever.
This isn’t a sad story, nor is it a “feel sorry for me” story. In fact, quite the opposite. You see, on that fateful day, the last day of a vacation with my family and friends before I was to begin my first year of college, I dove into shallow water, broke my neck, and became paralyzed from the chest down. After spending seven months in intensive physical rehab at Magee Rehab in Philadelphia, I quickly realized the world was not built for people like me – a person who must use a wheelchair to go anywhere. It was 10 years before the Americans with Disabilities Act – the college I was originally going to attend was not accessible and accessible public transportation did not exist. In fact, access to most buildings and spaces was nearly impossible. Luckily a friend of mine was the Dean of a local college and she suggested I take a few summer courses and help adapt the college campus to be accessible. I was the first person with a disability to attend and graduate from this college!
Each week, throughout my four years of college, I worked three jobs – fortunate to get rides for my morning classes and then rides to my first full-time corporate job and two part-time jobs. I even had a friend who drove an MG Midget who would give me rides now and then from class! Kind of cool, and a little scary transferring into and riding with the top down in a car about the size of a twin bed! My early college years working in an office on the second floor of a building with no elevator was the beginning of my lifelong journey to help make the world more inclusive and accessible for everyone. In addition to my day job, I started my advocacy and consulting at the city level, then the state level, then to a national level and eventually to an international audience.
For more than 30 years I had the privilege to work for some of the country’s Fortune 50 and Fortune 100 companies in leadership and executive roles with some of the most amazing, smart, and talented colleagues. I traveled quite a bit during career. It was part of my role and responsibilities. But, travel for business meant lots of behind the scenes planning and coordination.
From trying to find flights that paralleled with the inaccessible corporate jet, to tracking down and scheduling accessible ground transportation, and then the back-and-forth emails with pictures from hotels to ensure the room was truly accessible for my needs, it took a lot of work. For those of you who traveled with me, you experienced a lot of this firsthand. And, for many people like me with a spinal cord injury, there is the chronic pain you never speak about but suffer through each day. Some days are better than others. And, let’s not forget that your daily routine starts much earlier than others. This typically means getting up in the morning anywhere from 90 minutes to two hours before I leave the house for my 45 minute to an hour plus commute when I worked for 16 years in Philadelphia – to get to work by 8:00 AM. After work, and many times after evening events, there was the commute home, dinner, and then a nightly routine which can take anywhere from 60-90 minutes before bed. I am not complaining about any of this. It was a conscious decision to do it all, no matter what. Just keeping it real here.
Throughout all my corporate life, my experiences about what was “accessible travel” and what wasn’t “accessible travel” took on many meanings, built my experience and credibility, and launched me into speaking up and about the need for an inclusive and accessible world on stages and screens that crisscross the globe. From cities throughout North America and Europe, to the Caribbean Islands and Central and South America, to Nepal and Bhutan, to Australia and South Africa, and Dubai and Israel, I found the desire to travel is undeniable and the lack of accessibility is typically rooted in many of the same barriers – some physical, some attitudinal, and most tied to budget.
In 2019, I left my corporate role and founded my own consulting business, Maahs Travels, to devote my full-time to my passion – doing my part to level the playing field for everyone, especially people with disabilities by working with governments, Tourism Boards, businesses, destinations, and brands to create a more inclusive and accessible world. In January of 2022, I reached out to friend and former colleague, Tony Colantonio, and shared an idea I had been working on for about 5 years – to create a “series’’ about inclusive and accessible travel. He loved the idea and this was our “birth” of what became Journeyable and the Journeyable Travel Foundation, a charitable 501 (c)(3) organization. We filmed our very first episode, The Hawaiian Islands, in May of 2023! Since then, we’ve created an amazing platform where we create content about inclusive and accessible travel and a Community where individuals, businesses, brands, destinations, and others can share their stories and advice, ask questions, and interact with each other so that travel can be more inclusive and accessible to everyone.
Travel is important for so many reasons. Science shows that travel reduces the risk of heart attack and heart disease. Travel is good for you physiologically, sociologically, and it reduces stress and enhances your creativity. It has also been shown to boost your happiness and satisfaction and lowers the risk of depression. But there are many other reasons that travel is important, for everyone. For families responsible for the care of a loved one, travel can bring much needed respite. Travel may instill a sense of freedom and independence, even when some of us face barriers and the lack of accessibility. That’s why, at Journeyable, we feel travel is something that everyone should be able to do, limitlessly! Making travel inclusive and accessible to all is at our core – it’s what we’re committed to.
So, today, I look back over the past 45 years living life as a paraplegic and the days of being told that I “couldn’t,” “wouldn’t,” or even “shouldn’t.” I traveled to so many beautiful and amazing places around the world and now have a greater respect and understanding of different cultures, beliefs and how we are interconnected. Mostly, people generally are kind and helpful and communication barriers can typically be creatively solved. We have made a lot of progress since the ADA was passed, but there is still room for improvement.
Thanks to the love and support of family, friends, colleagues, and sometimes even total strangers, I celebrate these 45 years by knowing that I “could,” “can,” and “shall.” And, I also realize there is more work to do so that the next generation will live in a world more inclusive and more accessible.
If you agree that all people should be able to travel limitlessly, please consider a tax-deductible donation to the Journeyable Travel Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization at www.journeyable.org so that we can continue with our mission to make the world inclusive and accessible for everyone.
