Marina accessibility – What’s in it for you?

Last January the Marina Operators Association of America gathered boating industry representatives and associations, government officials and other interested parties for a two-day training session in Washington, D.C.
The participants came to learn about the education program MOAA was planning, in partnership with the U.S. Access Board, to teach marina owners and operators across the country about new guidelines for accessible boating facilities.
The partnership was a first for the Access Board, which had never partnered with an industry to help deliver the facts about federal guidelines to its members.
Participants at the January meetings learned about those guidelines, then pitched in and helped craft the message those present wanted to deliver. Attendees also worked to develop the tools to help that message hit home with the target audience – including a 74-page manual, now in print, that explains what marina owners and operators must do to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Twelve months have passed since those meetings in Washington – MOAA has merged with the International Marina Institute and the two organizations are now known as the Association of Marine Industries – but the work to spread the word about accessibility guidelines continues. The AMI has funded 12 seminars around the country that have reached about 1,300 people and will continue to sponsor more, with the goal of educating 3,000 people through its workshop program.
Obviously, marina accessibility is an issue AMI takes very seriously.
Mari Lou Livingood, Director of Program Development for the Association of Marine Industries, is in charge of the workshop program. She believes it is important to teach marina owners and operators more than just the basic nuts and bolts of how the guidelines work and what marinas need to do to comply. She wants marinas to understand that becoming more accessible provides more opportunity – for them.
“If I were a marina owner I think I would want to know why I should do this,” Livingood, says. “I do think that there is a little bit of a bad attitude. I’ve done about five of these seminars and there’s always someone like, ‘Why do I have to do this? Why do the feds always have to come to me and make me spend the money to accommodate just a few people?’
“Well there really aren’t just a few people. It’s really quite a sizable group. I think it’s important for them to understand that it is not just about complying with a new federal law. It’s about increasing your opportunities to serve the wider audience and generate more revenue. That’s the bottom line.”
AMI Executive Director Jim Frye, echoes those sentiments. In a recent letter on the subject, Frye writes that there are about 55 million disabled Americans today, and that providing the facilities for the members of that group who would like to enjoy boating could open doors for all concerned.
“In these times when using the phrase ‘water access or boating access’ is so fashionable, an emphasis on providing access to this entirely new customer base is surely one way to grow boating,” Frye says.
Background
AMI’s Resource Booklet does a good job of explaining how the present guidelines came to be, the story of which basically began when the Americans with Disabilities Act, a federal civil rights law, was enacted in 1990 to prohibit the exclusion of people with disabilities from everyday activities.
The United States Department of Justice adopted enforceable standards – known as ADA Standards – for the design and alteration of facilities covered by the ADA.
An independent federal agency called the Access Board – with about 30 staff and a governing body of representatives from federal departments and public members appointed by the president – is responsible for developing the accessibility guidelines that serve as the basis for the ADA standards. Those guidelines are known as ADA Accessibility Guidelines.
In September of 2002, the Access Board issued a supplement to those guidelines covering newly constructed or altered recreation facilities – including boating facilities and fishing piers. Although the DOJ has not yet adopted the supplement as part of its ADA Standards, the Association for Marine Industries believes that adoption will happen soon.
“I think most marina operators do understand that the ADA Guidelines, although they still haven’t been adopted by the Department of Justice, are going to be enforceable probably by the end of the year,” Livingood says. “There are very few lawsuits that have happened in the last 10 years, since [the ADA] has been promulgated, so I think they are aware of it but I don’t think they understand it totally.”
Livingood says the two most important things she tries to teach marina operators in the seminars are about the path of travel and “if you touch it, you fix it.”
That latter phrase refers to a provision of the ADA Guidelines, which stipulates that if an existing boating facility makes any change that alters its usability, the ADA Guidelines will apply to the area being altered.
“There is a path travel concept that they have to use also,” Livingood says. “If you park in the parking lot of a marina and you walk from that parking lot down to an acceptable boat slip, from the parking lot to the boat slip is the path of travel. That has to be accessible.”
Copies of the ADA Guidelines are available online at www.access-board.gov.

A Unique Perspective
Like some marina operators, Harry Horgan heard a lot of rumors about huge costs and outrageous measures boating facilities would have to take to become compliant when the ADA Guidelines were first announced.
But after attending one of AMI’s workshops earlier this year, Horgan believes the steps some marinas are being asked to take are not burdensome at all.
“To actually see the ADA specifications that have come out for the marine industry are really exciting,” Horgan says. “All their suggestions are really reasonable. I think it is great [AMI] is taking a lead on this. I just highly encourage all marina owners to make their places as accessible as possible, and look beyond whatever the physical costs are. Because in the long run, it’s only going to improve your facility.”
Horgan has a unique perspective on the issue.
He is the executive director and founder of a program called Shake-A-Leg Miami, which operates the largest adaptive sailing program in the United States, designed, as it’s mission statement says, “To bring hope, confidence, social integration, independence and fun back into the lives of people with disabilities and their families.”
And Horgan, a lifelong boater himself, is also paralyzed.
“Disabled people have basically checked [boating] off, they’ve said, ‘Oh no, I can’t do that, I’m crippled,’ or ‘I went down there and they said, No, we don’t take disabled.’” Horgan says. “It’s just a lack of knowledge and if that changes, [boating facilities] will find that more people with disabilities will come. And their money is just as good as anybody else’s money.
“People with disabilities have been excluded because of lack of access. But they are drawn to boating like any able-bodied person, because of the love of the water, the healthy aspects of it, the sport of it, the social aspects of it. It’s a lifestyle.”
Horgan says every year about 5,000 people go through Shake-A-Leg Miami’s 13,000 square foot facility, which includes a marina that is home to dozens of sailboats. Half of those people are disabled.
“We hope we’re seen as a customer factory and set a standard for community accessibility and that the people we are teaching to sail and the families that are learning to sail are hopefully going to buy boats,” he says.

Learn More
Livingood says only three seminars have so far been scheduled for 2005, but she would like to be able to sponsor several more. A grant to fund enough workshops to educate 3,000 people about the ADA Guidelines is being used to pay for the gatherings, and Livingood asks people who would like to arrange meetings to call her.
“What I do is I find the trainer,” she says. “They need to come up with a location where they are going to hold the workshop and then identify the people that are going to be attending. We pay for, if there is rent, food, any technology is used and then we pay for the trainer to travel to the workshop. So it’s totally free for them, they just have to make a commitment to have at least 30 people there, so it is worth our while.”
Livingood says she would still like to see seminars held in Michigan, Arizona and Chicago, among other places.
But through her efforts, those of AMI and the Access Board and those of Harry Horgan, word is being spread.
“I see the biggest barrier as attitude,” Horgan says. “You have to want to do it. That’s No. 1. The ADA can only dictate it so far.
“I knew boating as an able-bodied person and as a disabled person, and frankly with the right attitude – and what ADA has put forward is a great guideline for the industry to follow – boating can be accessible to anyone.” – Jonathan Mohr