Accessible Web Podcast – Ann E. Dolloff and Norm Staunton

Peter Jewett
All right, thanks. All right, welcome everyone to the accessible web podcast. I’m not sure what episode are on episode eight at this point maybe. And we are here with norm and and and George and Paige our trusted ASL interpreter. And today, the topic I’m assuming is going to be kind of a little bit different than our typical computer related accessibility discussions but we’re hoping to maybe break the third wall a little bit and talk about getting outdoors and active and sports and whatnot. So so thanks everyone for joining George, you got some BIOS?

George Heake
Yes, I do. All right. I’m very excited to have a norm banana. Normally, I’ve been talking about this for a couple of weeks and when I connected with him, I just thought it was a good idea. And and who I worked with at the Institute, has been doing adaptive racquet sports for quite a while. So I thought it was a great combination. It turned out that UNH I guess, and was a destructor for norm so it’s a small world. worked for me one summer. It’s a small world. And off has been a full time faculty in the recreation therapy program at Temple University since 2012. She is a certified therapeutic recreation specialist with two degrees in recreational therapy. She is taught adjunct at West Chester University of Pennsylvania and University of New Hampshire, in addition to her passion for teaching, and work with tech house, pa Pennsylvania’s Assistive Technology Act program, and that is nonprofit programs and agencies, which included easterseals variety club is for age, providing year round adaptive recreation programs, and summer camps for children and families in both segregated and inclusive settings. She has coached competitive swimming for athletes with physical and developmental disabilities, as well as teaching adaptive aquatics and has been adaptive ski instructor for almost 30 years. The Pennsylvania center for adaptive sports, PCA s, she lives in Willow Grove pa only because she works at Delta University, and she loves her husband, who also loves their lives there as their home and heart blog in Maine, where she grew up in answer childhood. Her preferred use of time including hiking with her dogs, seal Betty and Maxine, golfing, reading, drinking beer, and a two car garage is a home brewery with six taps and anything that puts her on in under or around the ocean. And her her better half. Steve her husband has also been doing adaptive scuba for many years as soon as it’s definitely too twofold hero team norm who’s before becoming Director of Operations for Matt, Vermont adaptive Ski and Sports in 2018. Norm was a coach, volunteer and trainer for Vermont adapted beginning in 2008. It was a contractor for an organization’s capital campaign, beginning in 2014. Previously ignored spent 20 years in a variety of nonprofit and venture industry executive positions around Vermont in the world. He attended a master’s program in outdoor education at the University of New Hampshire, where he focused his research on adventure with people with disabilities. He holds a master’s in business administration from the University of Vermont, where he focused on sustainability and nonprofit management. his spare time, norm is an avid steer sailors surfer handler, fishermen and outdoor instructor. He makes his home itself Burlington, where he lives with his partner Jen and their two labs runner type of breathing expensive as much time on lakes waterways coast and mountains as he can. Originally from Rhode Island he now considers for my home is Southport Maine today is away from home. Norma is a member of psi a. A si is in Division of adaptive education staff, and is instructor trainer candidate in adaptive paddling and kayak touring with the American canoe Association. He also holds Instructors certifications and adaptive accreditation accreditations in skiing, Telemark paddling, surfing and selling. Wow.

Peter Jewett
Couple of resumes. Yeah.

Norm Staunton
That next time we have Abigail text us something that says just send us a short bio. It’ll be a quarter that long.

George Heake
Oh, no. We’ve had longer. That was. That was perfect.

Ann Dolloff
Hi, my name is Anne. Yeah. I ski.

Peter Jewett
So Ann I guess, are the students back? Is it things ramping up for you?

Ann Dolloff
Well, yes, they are. We started classes this week. So it’s, uh, yeah, we’re back.

Peter Jewett
Are you Are there any exciting new programs or anything notable going on that you’re up to this year?

Ann Dolloff
Not specifically, I do teach a course in assistive technologies, okay. And that I teach it on five Fridays, and it’s a five hour course, which students like sign up for and then they complain about, but it really works. Like if you teach from one to six o’clock on a Friday afternoon, lots of people are available to get speak agencies welcome you to come in, you know, when there’s not COVID going on. Um, and so it’s a really like, great time. And one of the things that we’re doing is an online at Expo. Okay? That’s, that’s kind of our creative. I’m doing it with a a colleague who teaches in a different college at Temple. And we’re sort of working that out and figuring out how we’re going to do this. So it’s kind of our big project for this semester.

Peter Jewett
Is it like an engineering course? What?

Ann Dolloff
No, it’s actually for recreational therapists. It’s an undergraduate course. Yeah. And it just helps them realize, like, we do a lot of lab adaptive equipment in rec activities. But I really come at this course with all the technology that people use, from their mobility devices, to communication to devices, their daily living tools, computer access, hearing vision, so that students really understand that all of these things come with the whole person, when they come into adapted sports and recreation. And sometimes, we miss that piece of it, and making sure that people have access to everything they need.

Peter Jewett
Our last podcast was with a couple members of the Vermont assistive technology program. So that’s all

Ann Dolloff
I work, George and I worked for the Pennsylvania initiative on assistive technology, which is how we met many years ago. So every state has its own ATF program that’s federally funded. So yeah, they’re great programs.

Peter Jewett
And so what kind of opportunities are there, you know, aside from the class, for students at Temple that are, you know, trying to get out and about, and I guess probably a lot of them are learning about new opportunities with assistive technology and different sports.

Ann Dolloff
They are I mean, we’re, Philadelphia has been a funny city, because since I was a graduate student there, oh, in the 80s, which was a really long time ago. Now. I’m laughing with you. I know you are. But there’s, there’s been multiple efforts to try to unify all the adaptive sports opportunities within the city of Philadelphia. And for some reason, we’re still somewhat disjointed in that effort. But I am very active with Pennsylvania center for adaptive sports, which was founded by two good friends of mine, Isabel Vaughn and Jeff McGinnis, in the early 90s, late 80s, early 90s as a means to bring outdoor adapted recreation to an urban setting. And they were fortunate to inherit and be part of two existing programs. So they had a good base in rowing. Philadelphia is a big rowing city. So the adapted rowing program has always been huge and very, very active and a very dedicated core people that work in that program spring through fall, and then the ski program, we’ve changed mountains, but you know, that’s been in existence for a long time and we now teach at Camelback Mountain in the Poconos. So from there, they’ve then expanded other options. So one of my dreams would be as faculty at Temple to actually get by out to work with P cast to really be the person that links the university and students With volunteer opportunities within the adaptive sports, and so many of us, like norm can attest to we are so dependent on volunteers. But sometimes those recruitment and training programs and the support that volunteers need, can be really challenging and time consuming. And then along with that, students tend to volunteer to meet course requirements, and aren’t looking at long term, like those of us that have taught skiing. I mean, we keep going back, we volunteer, we do this season after season. It’s an expensive volunteer opportunity. You invest a lot of time, but you also invest a lot of money in this process. So for college students, it tends to be shorter term. And I would love to be able to bridge that and be the person that supports students brings that brings them into a program, create some short term learning opportunities, and then follow up with them that maybe we get them back as long term volunteers after graduation. That’s kind of my pipe dream. Oh, I have to talk people into pay my salary into letting me do that.

Peter Jewett
Sure. Sure.

Norm Staunton
That’s a discussion we’ve had for many years. Yeah.

Peter Jewett
knowing what’s going on in Vermont adaptive?

Norm Staunton
mean, it’s it’s summertime in Vermont. So we got a lot going on. The biggest The biggest thing happening right now is we were we were sort of chatting about it before we went live is that we’re in the process of building a new building at Sugarbush resort 4000 square feet of dedicated adaptive sport space. That’ll that’ll let us access the Mad River Valley and Sugarbush and sort of Central Vermont year round. So we’re really excited about that. That space should be open. The plan is to have it open in December of this year, to coincide with the open amount, Alan and yeah, we’re really, really excited to be upgrading from from 400 square feet in a shed 4000 square feet of a sort of dedicated space. And you don’t really have that it sort of solidifies this long term partnership that we’ve had with Sugarbush to really be it’s a visual representation of that long term learning. So it’s great. I mean,

Peter Jewett
everyone in Vermont knows you guys for skiing, but what other what other sports is this gonna kind of allow you to maybe do a better job of cover?

Norm Staunton
Yeah, so we I mean, we’re a full time year round, statewide adaptive rec organization. We we work across the state, for phases and Killington, that sort of Bolton Valley and Burlington, and then down in some sort of Central Vermont out of Mad River Valley. wintertime, definitely ski and snowboard is kind of our bread and butter. We do some other stuff. We do some cross country and Nordic, we do some snowshoeing. We have a very active veterans program that does some ice climbing and some other things. So and then in the summertime, we are we’re very active in paddle sports. We’re very, you know, canoeing, kayaking, stand up paddleboarding. We are really active in bicycling, both road biking, but also adapted mountain biking. We were one of the first one of the first groups on the east coast to bring that it’s another weird connection that anna and i have, because I work with a with a group in Pennsylvania that she knows members of that use our bikes to demo to other like, it’s it’s kind of how our industry works. Yeah, so a bunch of biking. We do a lot of sailing through some partnerships, we do some indoor climbing. But our motto is also always been like, if you’re interested in doing it, let us know. And we’ll figure out a way to make it happen. We don’t we don’t do anything in the way of team sports, but anything in that sort of outdoor rec adventure world. We’re game. And we’ll we’ll give it a go. skateboarding. You tried skateboarding for the first time. So that’s been awesome. Yeah,

Peter Jewett
that’s actually how I ended up in Vermont is I went to dmvs for my last two years of high school. Kelly brush was two classes below me. So we were we were friends back in the day. Of course, she now runs the Kelly brush Foundation, had an unfortunate ski racing accident back in college, but has done just an amazing job of turning lemons into lemonade. And you know, it’s it’s pretty crazy just how far they’re pushing the envelope. And yeah, it’s,

Norm Staunton
I mean, we work really closely with those guys are obviously our friends, our neighbors, our ski buddies, all of that. Literally. You know, the other thing that I think that it’s that it really illustrates is that there’s a real continuum out there of, of programs and have me, right so the programs that we run in Fremont adaptive are really focused on folks who are home. They’re not in clinical hospital settings. They live at home. But they’re not able to access programming otherwise, right? They they’re not independent. There are certainly programs that are focused on hospital settings and inpatient settings. And then and then there’s programs like Kelly brush and others where their focus is on look, we you already have the skill set. Now you need equipment. Now we’re going to finish that off and make you truly independent by getting you what you need to be able to go hit the Burlington bypass or the Crested Butte back country or whatever it is. And that’s, it really does take all of us It takes that entire continuum to take somebody from, you know that that hospital setting, whether it’s medical or trauma based up through full German dependents at home.

Ann Dolloff
actually know about piggyback on something with that, because I think it’s what I think’s really interesting about so many adapted sports programs. I mean, p Cass is you know, urban based, but so many other programs are more rural. And as we all know, the further you get away from those urban hubs, where our medical systems are, and so many services are, the opportunities to do things are just so difficult to find and access. And I think that’s one of the really cool thing about adaptive sports programs is, you know, they are in those locations that are more rural, we do a tons of referral, because with our ski program, being in the Poconos, we’re an hour from greater Manhattan, you know, we’re an hour and a half from Philadelphia. So we’re drawing on this huge Mid Atlantic, urban, heavily populated area. And very often, when we start people start talking about if they have a family member who’s now skiing and mastering skiing, and they’re thinking about, you know, maybe something more than 800 foot elevation that we have in the Poconos. And really looking at a ski vacation, it’s really exciting to be able to refer them to so many places today, to say, Hey, you know, go to Vermont, go to Maine, go to Crested Butte, go to Washington State there, the access to these programs will be at those places you want to go. And I think that’s like really cool.

George Heake
That’s the same around here. I been lucky enough to be on the board for all our adventures, which is adaptive recreation area around here. And the big part is trying to reach people. I mean, we’re not really urban. But you know, small, small city, small town, but getting people out and getting activities out to the rural surrounding areas, which is quite a bit is always a challenge note in almost parallels challenge of that’s returning in trying to get medical services. Many veterans have come from lower socio economic communities and stuff, and that don’t have public transit, and that hospitals are usually urban base. And, you know, how are they going to get services and stuff, but it’s almost the same way with recreation and sport. But luckily, I think it’s more starting to become more mainstream, and we’re finding out around here, it’s easier to get support for transportation or the coordinated activity at a state park that is centrally located, we’re we’re very fortunate we have a lot of good support from the state DCR, the recreational, the outdoor, the park system, as well. So we’ve been very lucky and long with veterans, which for my adaptive has a really strong program as well. We have a huge VA hospital leads, and we’re able to get them services as well. So it’s interesting how it’s kind of progressing and getting more mainstream. And one other part of my responsibilities that accessible web as director of accessibility and outreach is outreach. We’re we’re very committed in supporting the community to be aware of what services I just met with the occupational assistance group for the blind in Burlington, and how with it’s the same way that they’re they were happy to hear that we wanted to do this and do a podcast with them with the purpose of getting the word out what’s services are available. And, you know, when we were together at, at the Institute, doing a emergency preparedness stuff, it was amazing how, and I was astonished to find out every county has an emergency management group. And no one knows about it, because they don’t do anything to promote it. And when it came to being inclusive of the disability community, they had no idea who was in it, and, you know, who was able to help it. I mean, we’ve we’ve come a long way. But we still have a long way to go. And I felt that adaptive sports and recreation is is vital, especially after going through COVID and what it’s done with mental health across the board. And how important that releasing activity for your own well being, and, and also to be to help stay healthy and stay moving and everything else which, which we all need.

Ann Dolloff
I think you hit on a good point, George, I think sports and recreation are very unifying. When you find out somebody does something that you love to do to, like, you know, have your dog here with you, you know, you you immediately have something in common, and that common interest can break down a lot of barriers and assumptions. So you know, if you have skiers talk skiing, all of a sudden, it’s like, whoa, oh, go your skier. Okay, then I, you know, we have this thing, and I didn’t know and then you start getting, I like curiosity. And when people get curious about oh, well, how do you do this? And how do you do that? That’s like genuine interest. And I think that begins to break down some of those barriers too. But it sports are so unifying. And they can be polarizing, too, especially as we go into football season. But you know, compete very there. We have such passion about our sports, that I think it’s a great way to bring people together.

George Heake
Well, and like anything else, a lot of people, a lot of times don’t think they can do something. My wife, Claudia has adaptive scare. Just this tribe, this I wanted to try because of her daughter was young, and she wanted to find out about skin. And when she found out how many services were available, and she just loved it. But you know, people constantly say, Oh, it’s amazing that you can do is note the groups that are supporting us and all the volunteers. That’s the amazing part. And it was such a big, just such value to her, both for her own identity, not self esteem, but realizing that she could do something after surviving polio. And that just went on to trying a whole bunch of other adaptive sports. So we’re very fortunate to have these services available. And that’s why I thought it would be a great idea. Because I contacted norm about after going through the process of volunteering with Vermont adaptive realizing I have to learn how to ski again. What’s that? Yeah. And since you work at Camelback, that’s where I had my agony of defeat fall. It’s some like seven cartwheels in my rental skis never came out, came off. So after this ski patrol came up, they were very thankful look about how long I was. I had a beard and long hair, they were very grateful they didn’t have to skinny down. So I went properly to the lodge to relax. And I haven’t been on the slip since but I’m looking forward to

Peter Jewett
what’s the

what’s the biggest hurdle I guess, in getting somebody kind of off the couch out of their house, you know, finding these people and then and then getting them there for the first time. And then I guess, you know, like George’s saying skiing is hard, right? And a lot of this stuff can be I’m sure I challenge you. I’m trying to work myself back into like mountain biking and it’s it’s, it’s tough. So, so what do you do? Like how do you identify people that you know, you may not even be aware of that or in the community that could use this? How do you get on there for the first time and then you know what kind of supports are in place to to make sure they come back and it’s not just a one and done because you know what? You get good at it, that’s when it gets really fun. Right? Once you’re, once you’re comfortable using this new equipment, I’m sure and you’ve built up the endurance, and you have the skills. I mean, that’s where people really, I’m sure take off and have that sense of independence. So So once that kind of look like,

Norm Staunton
you know, it’s I think there’s, there’s a lot of overlap between the question that you just asked, and, frankly, the work that you guys do, right about trying to make technology accessible about making websites accessible, you know, that the easy part for us and and, and I would suspect the same for you. Like, once somebody’s there in front of us, we’re good to go. Like, it’s, it’s over, right, like we’ve done the hard part at that point. There’s nobody, we can’t get out on the slopes, literally, whether it’s slopes or row boats, or canoes, or like, it doesn’t matter, okay, he can figure out how to do that part. If somebody has the interest. that’s doable. It’s it’s generating that spark, it’s generating that interest, and, and making sure that that athlete has access, there isn’t a barrier to their knowledge of like, Oh, yeah, this is a thing, right? It’s similar to George, what you were just saying about your wife, right? It’s like, as soon as you know, it’s possible then getting them there as easy. And and yes, there are there are additional barriers, there’s money, there’s transportation, there are other things that we work around and try to get creative with. But But the bottom line for us as on the coaching end of things on the on the sort of therapeutic end of things, it’s like, the easy part is the scheme, right? the easy part is the paddling, the hard part is just reaching out to those folks. And so we do a ton of work, you know, doing outreach, trying to get information out there, I think, and sort of alluded to it, too, we do a ton of like referral kind of stuff. There’s not a lot of sort of territorialism in the adaptive swarm world. You know, yes. Okay, cool. Like Vermont’s our home, and we’re a little bit like, we’re a little touchy about Vermont. Like if somebody is going out west, I don’t I don’t hesitate. Oh, somebody lives in Boston, we don’t hesitate. There’s always somebody that we know, there’s always a program, we want to make sure that as many of those barriers that we can cut down to somebody having access to a program to having access to a sport, they can they want to do that we that we cut those down. And that’s that’s what it boils down to. for us.

Ann Dolloff
I think sometimes it’s just letting people know that those opportunities exist. And I, you know, I, I ran children’s camps for years, and I would literally get phone calls from like, well, I never knew you were out there. And I was running a camp had been in the Philadelphia area for 40 years. At that time, it was like, and my question was, have you ever wanted to send your child to camp before? Well, no. Okay, then, why does he know about us if this isn’t something you want to do? So sometimes, you know, getting that information to and then getting people interested in Yes, you can and come try it. You know, you don’t ever. So you do a lot of that. And I think to keep people coming back. I think like so many things, it’s so relationship based. bonding with the volunteers having consistency in the volunteers, most of the people I teach with, I’ve been friends with now for 25 years because of our volunteering with adapted skin. So you know, you come back and you see the same faces. And through those same faces, you meet new people, and you you develop the relationships, so that whole returning to the program, and then how we run our lessons and getting people feeling confident, safe and competent. That this is something they can do. And where are they at and just starting there. I mean, we’ve had people we’ve spent three hours within a lesson and we’ve never gone down the slope, and we have others we’ve taken immediately up to the top of the mountain. So you know, we’re constantly assessing where someone’s at, what their personal goals are, what their skills are, and then trying to literally hook them into getting excited about whatever activity is we’re doing. And I think those personal relationships really come back and I think that’s why it’s so many of these programs have pretty good consistency with their staffing and volunteer face because that’s so important.

George Heake
And it’s been my impression of people that I talked to within adaptive sports and recreation that a lot of it is word of mouth in the benefit of word of mouth, especially within various disability communities is that it’s coming from a fellow trusted source. You know, we can stand on it. correns Oh, Doctor, this is who the hell are you? And people have said that. I said I work at Temple. So, I mean, did you find that that’s still currently is the main way of getting the word out is by word of mouth.

Ann Dolloff
I think that’s a huge piece. When you alluded to veterans, that’s one of the things we’ve learned about working with vets, vets need to hear it from other vets. Yeah, yeah. That’s been a big piece that, yeah, even even somebody else who might, you know, have the same diagnosis or use the same adapted equipment might work. It’s a bit of a crapshoot. But boy, you tell me, another vet, says they’ve done this. So I think there are different groups that do that, and value that word of mouth from each other. But you know, caregivers have that same word of mouth, sharing it among parent groups, and across, even in more institutionalized settings, sometimes can really get people excited, like we’ll have people come up from, you know, a residential facility, and go back and talk about it. And staff will be like, Oh, my God, this was amazing. And that will get excitement too. But yeah, I think that word of mouth, really is huge. And when you hear it from somebody, you know, who moves and talks and works bodies work like yours does, then it’s there is some greater validity to that referral. Yeah, yeah,

George Heake
I remember, doing some kind of community presentation down in Philly, is probably emergency preparedness. And I remember and I think was right around Templeton in North Philly. And I remember having, and I was saying, you know, check with this. And I had a senior resident, come up to me, says, darlin, if it’s not on the bulletin board and cafeteria. I don’t trust it. I said, and that made me think that how important trusted sources of information are? What in? And you and Steve have been doing it for 2530 years? Have you seen that? Have you seen anything change in terms of getting the word out? Or it’s always been the same challenges of going through agencies and community advertisement and stuff?

Ann Dolloff
It’s sort of a double edged sword, too, because we have limited capacity to serve numbers. Yeah, oh, you know, we might get I we can’t serve all the requests, we get some of those we have skiers who want to come every weekend. And ski. And we have, and we but while we want to serve them, you know, that’s going to impose upon those people that are coming for the first time and may not call until the beginning of December, when they’re thinking winter. And then the person that wants to come all the time comes, you know, is calling in August to book their lessons now. So that capacity to serve versus you know, the those who want services is always a bit of a scheduling nightmare. As my colleague with P. CASS, Judy Morrison would say it’s a nightmare. But, so I think we have to sort of be careful, because they’re even serving all the people who want to come and access our services. Sometimes it’s really challenging because of our volunteers, the number of volunteers when they can volunteer the equipment that’s available, what we think somebody needs for equipment when they’re there, what instructors use, what equipment, and what skill sets the instructors have to teach, because not everybody teaches every modality in adapted skiing, we have people who are amazing teaching blind lessons. I am and I have a nephew who’s severely visually impaired, I mean, I suck at it. I do things like oh, it’s been very helpful when somebody needs to make a left turn. And I do you know, turn left when you’re supposed to be turning right. So that’s not my area. And we have others that, you know, teach moto ski and biking and sit down lessons. And don’t do particularly well teaching to track lessons for kids with intellectual disabilities. So that there’s that matching process to when you start looking. And I’m using skiing as the example but any adaptive sport so how do we match the needs of the individual with the skill set of the volunteer instructors and the equipment that’s available? So yeah, we keep getting the word out. We keep telling more and more people. And I gotta say one of the other things I think skiing especially does really well is because we are included in major resorts. People just see us Yeah, and come up and say like, Oh my god, I have a neighbor. I have a nephew. I have, you know, my mother, um, whatever. How do I learn about this? How do I get involved? How do I get them in your programs? That’s a huge piece that happens every single lesson.

Norm Staunton
I think there’s a bigger cultural piece going on there too. And that, that the sort of change in perception over the last 25 years about athletes who have disabilities and what they, what they can do, or what, what they what they’re all about, I think it’s been really remarkable. I mean, I mean, right now, right, we’re celebrating the opening of the Tokyo Paralympic Games, full full MVC coverage, unheard of 20 years ago, right? You’ve got you’ve got athletes who are now doing cutting edge stuff that, frankly, able bodied, non disabled athletes cannot do, they’re just not capable of and, and so there’s this, there’s been a shift in perception around like, this sort of secluded, you know, programs for people with disabilities, athletes with disabilities are sort of off to the side. And now things are coming around. And there’s this much more sort of inclusive sense of things where, just as Dan said, like skiers are skiers and we respect skiers, paddlers are paddlers, and we respect good paddlers. And so when you see, you know, somebody like an athlete, like Trevor Kennison, who’s a, who’s a moto skier, who goes and backflips off of corbetts, at Jackson, that that makes headlines, not in the adaptive sport world, but in the sport world. And there’s an element sure of sort of this inspiration and like, you know, kind of like, not seeing it for what it is in the broader context. But within those subcultures of sport, people are just, they’re just blown away. And they recognize, you know, style and skill for what it is and not for what the piece of equipment or the lack of a limb or the lack of a good inability is

Ann Dolloff
well, we’ll recognize that flippin Amano scheme was crazy. Yeah, I’m sorry. It was it was like, I remember when the first kid was using his wheelchair in a skateboard park. Yeah, yeah. The three wheels in tiger. Yeah. Yeah, I remember I thought watching that having worked with kids and run camping programs was bless his mother. Right? Because you know what, she had the lead, there were injuries, he broke bones there was there was a lot of damage to his chair. You know, she had to let him take that risk. Right. And I was, it’s impressive. So

Peter Jewett
let me let me ask you this, then, like, let’s talk progression seems like that’s kind of what we’re talking right. I mean, that’s what sports is, is progression. But in your time in this space, and maybe, you know, particularly to people that tried one of these sports and it was, you know, they, you know, they had a bad time skiing, and they, you know, said okay, never again, I’m not going to do that. How have you seen you know, this, it sounds like the skills are naturally progressing, which is going to happen, anytime athletes are challenging each other and having fun and you know, I mean, that’s, that’s part of it, right? is like one upsmanship and trying to be the best at what you do. But how, how have the how’s the equipment improved in the past 1020 years? I mean, I’m seeing stuff I’ve never seen before, right? And we’ve got runners that have legs, prosthetic legs that can make them faster than human legs, right? So So let’s talk about how the equipment’s improved and then how have the venues and the physical spaces improved.

Norm Staunton
You know, I think pick your sport and there are there are things happening there are people pushing those boundaries. what’s what’s really interesting to me and in a lot of those is, there’s there’s sort of a cyclical nature to it too, right? That take take mountain bike, be your mountain bike, right? So, you know, 20 years ago, adapted mountain biking was quad buggies, gravity driven, no, no cranks, brakes, and it was all lift serviced. And athletes said, that’s great. But that’s not the kind of riding I want to do. And so we saw this progression of equipment towards sort of cross country style equipment into kind of modern full suspension style equipment, with cranks with with all of the sort of accoutrements that you would see on a modern two wheeler. And then a bunch of athletes started riding them and saying, Wow, this is awesome, but there are trails out there that I can’t access because this bike is too wide. And so now they’re going back to adapting two wheelers with buckets and full suspension, so that they can ride downhill courses with able bodied, for lack of a better word, with their able bodied counterparts. And they’re putting up times that are competitive. Yep. And so it’s there’s this real cyclical nature to to any of these things where it’s like, Look, you start with that spark, you start with that drive and interest. So I want to try this. And then as you progress, what you find is like, you wind up coming back to those same things, you come back to the same places, and some of the, you know, trying to try to be as similar and as competitive and and doing away with handicapping. And I mean, that specific sense of like sport handicapping, doing away with those things, so that everybody is competing and playing on this level playing field, it doesn’t matter if I was firing cord injury, or if I don’t process information the same way. I’m sending it.

Ann Dolloff
Yep. Yep. And that’s how we look at at at those assistive devices, it levels the playing field, and allows everyone to participate. And I think that’s the really cool thing. But I think so much of the innovations come from participants themselves. And anybody that’s mechanically minded, I’m one of those people, I can tell you, it needs to be this, but don’t ask me how that works. And then people start going, Oh, well, you do this, you do that you do, blah, blah, blah, like I’ll, when I assess my doing my assessment on a skier and matching them with the equipment, I’ll be like, this is what I need to have happen. And then I go get somebody like, you know, an engineer instructor to come over and say, Hey, here’s what I need, fix this. And then he goes, Oh, okay, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and then things are adjusted. So, you know, you you match those individuals who think mechanically, with the needs of somebody who can say, No, I need it to do this, I want it to do that. And great stuff happens. I mean, the buy ski, which is, when that came out in 1990, revolutionized sit down skiing, because all we had was the Moto ski, which is a bucket ski on a single ski, which really is for individuals who have really good upper body strength, coordination and balance. So for anybody who has impairment affecting their trunk and their arms and their balance and stability, it was a, it was a very challenging ski to be in. And the by ski came out, and it literally was designed in a guy’s garage in Colorado, who said, I have friends that the model skis not working for, there’s got to be a better solution. If we make something with a wider base, that’s better balance where somebody can lean, it’s got to work. And I think we still have one of the original skis we ordered. We don’t teach on it anymore, by the way. It was from 1991. But I mean, that’s that was, I remember seeing it and going, we have to have this, I need to teach people in this ski, this is what we need. And it just has and the design of that ski today is amazing.

Peter Jewett
How often do you see kind of these, these DIY hacks? It seems like that’s kind of driving it and you know, like the guy in the garage or, you know, the, you know, the person that Vermont’s adaptive or whatever, bolting something together to fix a unique situation. But how often? I mean, are these turning into commercially viable products? Are we seeing like, you know, track or, you know, like canoe companies? Are they? Are they starting to embrace this as a viable business model?

Norm Staunton
I’m not sure I would go so far as the last thing that you show. I mean, the reality is that the the marketplace for any one of these things is very, very small. We are that the entire industry, all of the sort of technological advancements are driven, just as answered largely by guys in their garages. Yeah, I mean, literally, today, it’s driven by guys in their garage. Now, some of those are legitimate companies that have worldwide influence, but they’re still building in their basements or their garages or have two guys on a payroll, and they take orders once a year, and that takes them a year. But so we’re talking about companies that build you know, single digits to double digit pieces in a year, not a track that’s putting together 1000s of bikes a day. Sure. You know, but that said we do there is a lot of experimentation, there is a lot of sort of play. It’s a it’s a really delicate balance. So I’m guessing I’m going to get a grip out of and about some of those two because like, what we try to do is evaluate changes and adaptations based on some like sound principles. And and be creative. Without letting some really hokey stuff kind of come through. And so what we generally look for is like, Look, we want somebody to be safe, we want somebody, we want the equipment to function in the way that it was designed. And in this day and age a little bit, we want to make sure that some of the liability for that design stays with the company that designed it, and not with me as a really dangerous guy with power tools. And, and, you know, so but but within that, there’s a lot of room for creativity. And again, sort of pick your sport. You know, one of the things we’ve been playing with just as an example, like, you know, we started this adaptive skateboard program, we’re certainly not leading the way on that, but but we’re certainly one of the early adopters. And we’ve been playing with like, Okay, wait a minute, maybe maybe skateboards not really the way to go, maybe what we need is handles on those skateboards to turn them into more like scooters. And so there’s always this this sense of sort of, like, let’s play, let’s experiment, let’s see what works. I mean, there’s a, there’s a garage full of equipment that we don’t use anymore a couple of miles down the road of like, yeah, it’s just we just don’t use it anymore. Right. And some of its 40 years old, and some of its stuff that somebody designed, and we all thought was going to be the answer to all the problems. And it turned out it wasn’t, you know, and so we’ve moved on to other pieces.

Ann Dolloff
Yeah, the cost is, you know, prohibitive on some adjustments, I mean, going back, and just again, using skiing as an example. miskeen is already an expensive sport, right? If you’re buying mass produced equipment, and now you modify it, and have that produced, where some company is accepting the liability is, you know, working within the construct of their business plan to manufacture, produce and sell. And because the market is so tiny, especially for as you start going, Okay, here’s a, a mano ski for somebody who, within all the people who are disabled, there’s a small percentage that are going to use a moto skate. And all those people who might be able to use them on a ski, there’s even a smaller percentage who percentage who are actually going to ski so it just drives the cost up. And everybody begs for it. Yeah, I remember listening to a manufacturer one time with the state assistive tech Technology Act programs, were asking for donations, we were at a national meeting and the the rep stood there and said, We would love to be able to give everybody a donation as a sample products. But you know, you’re competing with, you know, the letter from the parent pleading their case for their child. It’s, we can’t, we don’t have a profit margin that allows us to just donate the way so many people assume that we have, and that that’s a real problem with the modified equipment and recreation and sport, especially, which I think makes the programs we all work with so valuable because we are buying them they’re available for use in our programs. Sometimes we loan things out for people to use on their own, that that gives a Nether sort of perspective of accessibility to these devices, because just out of control in terms of their costs, but

Peter Jewett
are there any kind of like programs to help people afford these I mean, the same way that they would be able to afford, you know, health care devices and whatnot, are there? Are there government programs to help subsidize this? Or is it like, you know, the medical care is one thing and then this is kind of fun stuff that no one’s gonna help you with, if you want to do it, you got to, it’s like buying a pair of skis for me, you know, you got to go out and buy your skis and got, I

Ann Dolloff
think one of the things in the assistive technology world, there are foundations that will provide either no interest or low interest loans, like Pennsylvania has the Pennsylvania assistive technology Foundation, and they will work with you with a no interest or low interest loan to get the devices you need to do whatever it is you want to do. But it is a loan. Right? Um, you know, nonprofits are struggling today. That’s norm well knows. The COVID I don’t think was a friend in terms of fundraising efforts and outreach and resources to then turn around and support people get the things they want. So I think that makes it even more important to have organizations like Pennsylvania center for adaptive sports and Vermont adaptive sports to be there so people can have access to what

Norm Staunton
Yeah, you I think I think the only thing I would add to that, though, is that one of the other things we’ve seen change over the last 2025 years is that the body of research and the sort of level of professionalism in recreation and the benefits of recreation have come a long way. And so we’re starting to see, not maybe not to a level of sort of buying model skis and buying mountain bikes, but we’re starting to see insurance carriers saying, look, participation in these programs is important. And it’s worth something, we’re starting to see, you know, the value of that from medical professionals from pts, OTS, doctors. And so as that continues to progress, we’re gonna see more of that sort of stuff, where equipment I think, becomes more accessible, where where programs become more accessible, because someone else is doing cost avoidance through your participation. Right, right. I think that’s really interesting. So that goes,

Ann Dolloff
if we could value preventative medicine in our healthcare system, right, we could really value that that participation in physical activity leads to better health and wellness. Yeah, I mean, I laughed every time, you know, one of those news stories or something would float around on social media of during COVID. Like, getting out in nature is good for your mental health and well being. Well known that for 50 years. Yeah, Ani of knowledge and recreation and about indigenous cultures have known it for 2000 years and right, like, our body of knowledge, and there’s evidence that says, if you’re physically active, oh, you have better health and well being if you’re socially connected, you’ll have better health and well being, you know, if you participate in the out of doors, you have better health and well being. If we could only find a way that we could prescribe that, Oh, my God, wouldn’t that be wonderful?

Peter Jewett
I mean, our perspective with accessible web is that, you know, where things are progressing, and things are always gonna, hopefully, trend towards the positive. And that, you know, it’s, it’s encouraging to see the, the changes, and the companies coming to us that genuinely understand why they should be doing this for the right reason. And I think that, you know, it’s, you guys are saying the same thing, that people, I think they always inherently knew it, but there’s also, you know, if you can put the money and you can show the value behind it, and they can run that up to the shareholders and make the case that, you know, it seems obvious to us, but, but hopefully, that, you know, the trends in the data and science, all continue to, to push towards making everything more inclusive, because obviously, it should be worried about five minutes left, either one of you want to give a pitch on how people in your area can can find you get involved, either, you know, from from a volunteer standpoint, or just like getting out on the slopes, trying out some assistive technology.

Ann Dolloff
Sure, so Pennsylvania center for adapted sports be just Google that you’ll get connected and on our website will be all the information. If you are interested in skiing, we generally start booking lessons after the first of October. Again, it’s that matching process and resources balanced with demand. So it’s quite a scheduling challenge and not knowing exactly how the permit health challenges are going to progress into this winter. But we are hoping to be open full time with full with no restrictions, maybe a mask, but no restrictions on numbers coming into our programs. But Pennsylvania center for adapted sports.

Norm Staunton
And I’ll do the same Vermont adaptive Ski and Sports. We are statewide across the state. Just Google Vermont adaptive or adaptive skin sports. We’re always looking for new athletes, we’re always looking for new volunteers here. Yeah, so so by all means, up at the top, you’ll see in the bar hit the hit the get involved and the drop down will take you wherever you want to go. But I guess I would in that spirit of sort of like representing the industry and doing referrals to anybody who’s interested in any of this stuff. One of the best places to check out is the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee, and an organization called move united which is sort of the parent organization of adaptive racking in the US. If they’re if you’re looking for a specific sport or a specific program, there you go, in your state in your city. Those are two great places. To start and yeah, so when you’re looking for the for the para, you know Judo program you’ll find it or para fencing or whatever. Doesn’t matter. It’s sure there’s an adapted cornhole league. I mean, we we do international baci competition in special. Oh, why can’t we do cornhole? I didn’t know cornhole was an international competitive event. Recently. It should be somewhere in adapted cornhole League,

George Heake
which regular cornhole was on. There was a collegiate competition on ESPN, I almost fell off my chair. Well,

Ann Dolloff
that’s I just discovered that the last couple months like seriously, people, when you drink,

George Heake
it’s pretty much what I said. I mean, we we sit around and watch bass fishing, why should we sit around?

Ann Dolloff
And the last thing is, I have to say, I have never met anybody in adaptive sports that doesn’t have an incredible sense of fun. And an amazing sense of humor. Yeah, it really gets us through the problem solving and the challenges that come along with using anything any adaptive equipment.

Peter Jewett
Well, Ann, Norm thank you so much for joining us today. This has been awesome. It’s been it’s been a nice break, not that we don’t love talking tech and talk in laws and whatnot. But this is this has been a really, really fun podcast. So thanks for joining us. Oh, thanks for having us. And I’ll norm I’m right over the mountains over in Huntington. So I’ll gotta come ski with us. Yeah, I’m gonna I’m going to go on the website on my submit my name right now. So I got I got plenty of time and always looking for an excuse to get on the hill. So look for me on your on your get involved form. But thank you both.

George Heake
All right. Thank you.