The fun factor: marketing recreation to the disabled

American Demographics, Feb, 1998 by Dan Fost

Consumers with physical disabilities are a growing market for travel, sports, and other leisure-oriented products and services. Many in the forefront of serving this market have been inspired by personal circumstances and assisted by technology. Two keys to their success are: careful attention to design and a positive attitude.

Julie Perez sees the difference when she goes to the Divi Hotels resort at Flamingo Beach on the Caribbean island of Bonaire. "It's famous for being totally accessible" she says. "The hotel brochures show the wheelchair access. The dive staff are trained and aware, and they really want to take disabled people diving. They're not afraid."

Perez, 35, of Ventura, California, is an experienced scuba diver, a travel agent--and a quadriplegic. Before she had children, she made five trips a year to the Caribbean; these days, she only gets there once or twice a year.

People with disabilities are not only scuba diving, they are playing golf, riding horses, and whitewater rafting. They surf the Internet, work in their gardens, and read.

The convergence of three trends has people with disabilities enjoying more varied recreational opportunities than ever before. First, the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has created a greater awareness of the needs of people with disabilities. "Accessibility and lifestyle are forced issues with the ADA;' says Sandy Watson, CEO of Enable, a new magazine for the disabled market. "Recreation and leisure are going to be the offspring of the forced issues."

Second, more sophisticated technology brings new opportunities to people with disabilities, from battery-powered bicycles to speech recognition software. The Internet also helps spread the word; the World Wide Web is full of tips on where to find accessible recreation.

Third, an aging baby boom and continued refinements in medical care ensure continued growth of the disabled population.

New stores, services, products, and publications pop up all the time to serve the disabled. Businesses are beginning to recognize the significance of a vast market of 52 million people who represent almost $800 billion in spending power, according to a report from Packaged Facts, a New York City research company. It projects the figure will reach over $1 trillion by 2001. "People with disabilities frequently have more resources at their disposal than marketers give them credit for;' says the report. "Moreover, their wealth and spending power are only likely to increase in the years ahead--as wealthier, spend-happy baby boomers enter the `age of disabilities'. .. and as improved access increases the employment opportunities of people with disabilities of working age." (See "Enabling Disabled Workers," July 1997.)

Corporations are "just beginning to wake up and see this body of people," says Sandy Watson of Enable magazine, published by the nonprofit American Association of People with Disabilities, based in Bradenton, Florida. The magazine, which starts bimonthly publication this year, hopes to attract advertising from mainstream corporations, and "educate corporate America that these people exist. You have a target market."

Enable features a Recreation and Leisure section that, in its inaugural issue last fall, offered features on whelchair athletes playing basketball, tennis, ant rugby ("The hit ain't real till you bend some steel"), a guide to accessible summer camps, and a primer on San Francisco for travelers with disabilities. Another consumer magazine targeting the disabled market was also launched last year, and includes regular articles about travel, sports, books, and dining out. The June 1997 issue of WE, a lifestyle magazine for people with disabilities, had articles about Lisbon, Portugal, and New Orleans, including information about sightseeing and public transportation from the vantage point of accessibility for those with mobility, hearing, and other impairments. The August issue featured a sport fishing club that caters to the disabled.

"Just because someone has a limitation doesn't mean they have less desire for recreation," says Margaret Wylde, president and CEO of ProMatura Group LLC in Oxford, Mississippi, a research firm that focuses on the mature consumer. "The demand will increase for recreation that caters to people with differing abilities."

SOURCES Of INSPIRATION

Many advances in recreational access have been inspired by friends and relatives with disabilities. A new golf course at Clemson University in South Carolina is a national model of how accessible recreation can become. The design of the course has its roots in a friendship that goes back 27 years.

Lawrence R. Allen, associate dean in the College of Health, Education, and Human Development at Clemson, first became sensitized to accessible recreation when his father fell victim to rheumatoid arthritis, had to use a wheelchair, and could no longer pursue his passions of hunting and fishing. "I felt badly he couldn't participate in an activity he had enjoyed all his life," Allen says. "That kindled this interest I had in going into the field of recreation."