Jack McMahan will be speaking in LD chapel Thursday, February 8th in the Casady Activity Building. He is in a wheelchair, the result of a biking accident. Mrs. Vick's fourth graders have been, and will continue to work with a professional web developer, Yam Chavist, every week in her classes to create a website for Jack's new initiative.
McMahan is the President of Crossing the Chasm, LLC, an accessibility management consulting company where he specializes in helping municipal and private facility owners and managers evaluate, build, and adapt effective accessibility solutions.
He is also the Executive Director of AccessWorks, Inc., an Oklahoma nonprofit company that helps architects, city planners, and recreation facility owners and managers, design, build and fund universally designed recreation and leisure facilities and programs for people with disabilities.
An avid outdoorsman, McMahan sustained a serious bicycle accident in 2004 that left him a quadriplegic. After years of physical rehabilitation, he looked for ways to return to the outdoors, to get his power wheelchair off sidewalks, onto trails, and into authentic nature experiences. Finding accessible recreation facilities was more difficult than he expected. Leveraging his entrepreneurial spirit, he launched an intensive study of applicable municipal, State and Federal laws. He began studying municipal parks, recreation centers, children camps and museums throughout the United States, where the collective wisdom of facility owners and managers, local architects and city planners helped him assemble practical tools, techniques and tangible examples of success. To gain technical mastery Mr. McMahan studied applicable accessibility laws alongside the elements of program access, access management and concepts of interpretive planning and universal design with experts from the National Center on Accessibility, The National Park Service, and the Smithsonian.
McMahan’s unique, holistic approach is based on the application of an inclusive interpretation of ADA Title II/III and Section 504 of the1973 Rehabilitation Act. As a person with a disability, he recognizes the challenges of physical and programmatic barriers first hand. While many architects and planners interpret these Acts to mean primarily that physical barriers must be removed, he understands that compliance with the Act calls for a broader understanding of mobility, sensory and cognitive disabilities coupled with the application of a variety of customized tools, techniques and management practices to assure that all people have an equal opportunity to enjoy the benefits of intended programs, activities and services.
To broaden his perspective, he built a network of people with other disabilities and professionals who serve people with disabilities. Collectively this community helps CTC understand what people want, what works, and why. As a result, his evaluations combine the technical requirements as defined by various acts alongside practical recommendations that achieve results.
Jack will speak about: service, disabilities, and he will recognize our fourth graders!
Website Content
Here is the website Mrs. Vick's class has created so far :
Tag: Access…an opportunity everyone should have
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