Sioux Falls Convention and Visitors Bureau
Sioux Falls, South Dakota
Multiple times in recent years, the Sioux Falls Convention and Visitors Bureau has been a top-10 finalist for the National Organization on Disability award, which highlights the work of city officials, nonprofit organizations and businesses to increase accessibility in their local area. While increasing accessibility is a matter of making a plan and implementing changes for meeting venues, for CVBs like Sioux Falls, it is more a matter of connecting and communicating.
“Something we do well in Sioux Falls is to champion open communication between the city, venues, hotels, attractions and restaurants regarding access, hospitality and transportation for all visitors,” said Krista Orsack, director of marketing for the CVB.
The city of Sioux Falls has its own Disability Awareness Commission, and the CVB maintains “open communications with city government and city officials as relates to the visitor industry and sends out quarterly emails to the entire industry when things come up.”
In addition to maintaining these relationships with the local industry professionals, the CVB aims to be a one-stop solution for incoming planners to get information regarding accessibility in Sioux Falls.
Mesa Arts Center
Mesa, Arizona
The Mesa Arts Center opened in 2005, and when Lee Brown became its ADA and front-of-house coordinator 10 years ago, she was met with a fresh, compliant venue but the need to start from ground zero with a soft accessibility program.
When the center opened, signage was one of the major all-around complaints. “Our demographics skew mature, and they can’t always read as well, so there was a lot of education, and we got involved with different departments,” said Brown, who received the Community Asset Award from LEAD in 2014 for continually promoting accessibility initiatives in her organization and throughout the region. “Signage is not just an issue for people who can’t see it, but also because of height differences. It started as an ADA thing, but it became great customer service.”
“One of the things that we do is we really try to train our staff to include all of the different kinds of situations they may run into,” Brown said. “We train for basics in audio description, ASL [American Sign Language] and mobility devices. One thing I’ve noticed everywhere we go is that it’s just a matter of training, training staff and volunteers.”
