Have you noticed any changes in United Airlines? We did...

We hadn't traveled on United since mid 2012, and were surprised to find several new changes since the UA-CO merger when we traveled to Florida this last week.  The combined companies' united front seems to be shifting their image nicely, well, for the most part. But change is inevitable, and for the most part, usually good. Here are some of the changes we noticed...

First, although we didn't have it on any of our flights, the inflight magazine states that Wifi is being added to 300 planes this year, with goals to have it on 500 planes by 2014 - for more on that, see united.com/wifi. This is no small feat, since many airports don't even have it, including the hub we transferred through: IAH/Houston Int'l, as well as the two smaller regional airports of HDN/Hayden-Steamboat and RSW/Ft Myers Beach. Personally, we're not quite sure why Wifi isn't a standard free service yet for all companies' customers like it is at many hotels (including the one we stayed at in FMB). Heck, if Starbucks can do it across the country so should you. Hats off to United for working towards that.

Next, United's mobile app has greatly improved.  In addition to online check in, mobile boarding passes and general information regarding your reservation, the app has been linked up with the favorite Points Inside app to show interior maps of airports, searchable by name. It also shows live up-to-date information on flight delays, arrivals, and even time updates on where your plane is coming from. This proves handy for the seasoned traveler, keeping them more informed than the gate agents even (a notable downside actually). Our flight from IAH to RSW was delayed due to the incoming equipment (plane), and the gate agent couldn't tell us why. With a few clicks, we knew that the equipment was coming in from San Diego and had left 20 minutes late. We deduced that due to the tailwind we'd caught on the way to IAH, the SAN flight would do the same, and sure enough, we left IAH on time.

Also updated is the inflight magazine map which now includes a paw print to mark the location of SARAs (Service Animal Relief Areas), now it just needs to be added to the mobile app - those using SARAs are usually blind, and can't read the inflight magazines, nor (we're assuming) do the gate agents.  Hopefully voice-activated mapping for the blind is coming soon.

Early boarding announcements and protocol keeps changing for the better as well - and United has adopted the "We will now be boarding people with special needs and disabilities" along with the honored men and women in uniform.

We'll be in Chicago in May for our annual disability advisory board meeting, and we'll update you more on that then!

For now, way to go United.

Read this - Demo on using a Heart Machine

If you only read one thing this month, this might be the most important by far!

We have all walked by the Red Cross sign in airports indicating where a heart machine is located. Do you know what is in them and how to use it?

Try this video and see what you think. http://www.heartrescuenow.com/

If you pick the wrong choice----the man dies----choose wisely. You may save a life.

We're sharing it with all our outlets with the hope that it'll save lives (maybe mine, yours or someone you love)!

Way to go VisitScotland.org!

Since visiting Scotland in 2004 (and Andy lived there in 1997), we've been getting VisitScotland.org's updates and watching this country take Universal Design and Accessible Tourism by the horns!  And now they've announced an awesome event: The Accessible Tourism Conference!  Way to go Scotland!  For more information, visit the landing page here.

The conference, which will take place on 12 March 2013 at the EICC in Edinburgh, is one of the key events on the program for Scottish Tourism Week.

Presentations will be delivered by high profile figures including:

• David Grevemberg, CEO,Glasgow Commonwealth 2014
• Caroline Casey, Founder, Kanchi 
• Mike Cantlay, Chairman, VisitScotland

Craig at Edinburgh Castle - Accessibility Friendly! (2004)

Access Anything - new image! - and big thanks to our Web magicians along the way!

Access Anything has a new web template for the new year!  But it made us want to extend our deepest thanks to those who have helped mold our presence on the internet over the past decade... without you, we wouldn't have had such an impressive following!

In early 2005, our dear friends Kurt and Kim Malueg at TripstreamMultimedia were generous to help with setting up our very first website and in doing so, truly laid the foundation of Access Anything's image on the World Wide Web!

At that point, we had developed our logo and were in the very final stages of publishing our first guidebook, and we had decided, through a business development process with our amazing business coach Travis Greenlee, to choose blue for our theme's coloring.

When (much to our chagrin) Tripstream moved from Steamboat to Wisconsin, we welcomed JDB Technology Solutions into our family (2008), and they hosted our site for the next three years, assisting us in building an online store so that we could sell the various items that we were promoting from our guidebooks to the accessible Eureka Freedom tent and various other items we used and tested, some of which were presented on our product testing blog.

In late 2010, our old friend Aaron Bailey stepped in, newly at Elink Web Solutions and eager to lend a hand with switching AccessAnything.net into a Word Press platform that we could manage ourselves. As a result, our site also became interactive, with widgets for our YouTube and Flickr pages and various blog RSS feeds.  We were updating the site so often that this gave us control to do this ourselves!

And welcome 2013!  Because Access Anything has taken a backseat in our busy lives and is an online resource only (and therefore has no income generally) we have moved it over to Weebly, where Andy's small Web business resides.  Thanks to Aaron's hard work on a great initial design with Word Press, the layout is virtually the same, so all the usual places for your favorite links are still reliably at your finger tips!   Access Anything will continue to be an online resource for Travelers with Disabilities for as long as we are adventuring ourselves; peers still send us their links for the Resource page, Blog post ideas and content, and we still love posting our images and videos for the readers to see that it is truly a magnificently expanded world for Go Anywhere, Do Anything!

We have great gratitude for all of these amazing people who have helped us along the way. It's been a wonderful decade of change, growth, inspiration, adventure, and learning. Thanks to all of those who have been a part of this with us!!

Check out the new digs:
http://www.accessanything.net

Ten years of adaptive travel went by in a blink...

When we first started this quest in 2003, after returning from a trip to Alaska with a completely jaded viewpoint of accessibility, there wasn't much out there for people with disabilities (PWD) looking to travel, or more specifically, for us, adventure travel in a wheelchair.  There were pockets of information at the many adaptive programs throughout the country and the few medical and rehabilitation centers, but as for guidebooks, travel agents, and paths to follow, there were only a handful back then.

Times change quickly however.  The landscape is completely different now.

Back then, we felt a calling to help change the horizon, and began writing our guidebook on Colorado in 2003.  Ten years later, there are countless guidebooks on traveling with a disability, even one written by Rick Steves.

Soon after our guidebook was published in 2005, we joined the network of the Society for Accessible Travel and Hospitality (SATH), who at the time, were THE central hub connecting all the few spokes of the accessible travel wheel. It was eye-opening for us to meet travel agents from South Africa, Ireland, Egypt and New York who specifically catered to PWD.  Again, the list was short.  But in this decade, that list has expanded so vastly that we gave up trying to keep up with our Resources page.  Now when you search "access travel" on Google, you get a world of information on any location you desire. ANY.  What a blessing!

We've watched adaptive travel magazines and websites come and go, change titles, change editors, change content, all trying to keep up with this once-completely-new and now vastly-growing market of the travel industry.  The statistics of this market are staggering; we heard them at our first SATH conference from the Open Doors Organization (ODO) and knew immediately that this was the company we should keep our eye on.  In just a few years, we would be working with ODO on many projects, trainings, and educational pieces to help shape that horizon and landscape before us. Also a cherished blessing!

We were torn between the travel industry and the adaptive sports industry, paving a local path for accessibility here in Steamboat Springs, while traveling to events throughout the country networking, selling our guidebooks, and watching the industry grow.  We were regulars on the Abilities Expo circuit for several years, we still attend the amazing No Barriers Festivals (bi-annually since 2007), we were invited to join the Continental Airlines Disability Advisory Board in 2008 (now the United Airlines Accessible Travel Advisory Board), and we helped ODO train 8000 Amtrak Employees with their Handling Customers with Disabilities trainings in 17 cities throughout our great country in 2011.  All the while, forging out a place for Steamboat in the headlines: consulting with Haymaker Golf Course on purchasing a SoloRider adaptive golf cart (2003) and Steamboat Ski Area on purchasing an accessible gondola car (2004), starting our adaptive sports camps with Adaptive Adventures (2006), working with countless favorite local businesses like Cafe Diva on improving their access and recreation companies like Wild West Balloon Adventures market to these visiting customers.

It soon became apparent we might have to choose between the two worlds of travel and recreation as they pulled us in two different directions.  As STARS took over our adaptive camps in 2010, Craig was hired as Program Director, and I had to make a choice: continue Access Anything or follow my own path that has always included writing, photography, sustainability, and metaphysics.  It was a bittersweet choice because after decade of helping to expand this amazing industry, it would be hard to walk away.  Yet I am, and I know it will continue to improve, grow, unify, open eyes, doors, hearts, and pocketbooks... all for the better, for which, we will still benefit until Craig no longer needs that ti-lite wheelchair, hopefully someday within in our lifetime.

What will the next ten years look like for adaptive recreation and accessible travel?  I can only imagine... and hope.

Happy Holidays to our global network, may 2013 and the next decade be a bright one for all of us!!  Thanks to all of you mentioned above and those not mentioned (you know who you are!) who have helped us through this amazing decade and who have helped make Access Anything the online asset it has become. We will always try to keep this site live for those who want to Go Anywhere, Do Anything!
- Andy Kennedy


2012 Highlights: 

• For skiing highlights this year, follow us at In the Deep, although I don't get to follow my monoskier as much as I used to, we still both love to post when we get powder!
• Follow our videos on our YouTube page
• And for our 5th annual holiday video of where we've been check out our BipTV page