Miami strives to become a top global tourist destination for people with disabilities
Matias Paillot, a tourist from Argentina, knew his way around a sailboat. He trimmed the ropes with ease, while a light breeze pushed the small sailboat away from the fingers of the marina and into Biscayne Bay.
“This is where I feel most free and independent,” Paillot said. “We’re all moving around this small space in the boat, everyone is equalized.”
Paillot was born with spina bifida and uses crutches or a wheelchair to get around. He’s on his seventh trip to Miami. Why does the 44-year-old psychologist keep coming back here from Buenos Aires for vacation?
“This is one of the best tourist destinations for people with disabilities,” he said. “The weather is amazing, it’s easy to get around and feel accepted, and there is an amazing community ... that allows people to get on the water.”
Paillot was sailing last week on Biscayne Bay thanks to Shake-A-Leg Miami, a nonprofit sailing and water sports program for people with disabilities ranging from paraplegics and quadriplegics, people visually and hearing impaired, to people on the autism spectrum. The organization is one of several that has worked tirelessly to make Miami’s waterways accessible to all locals and visitors with help from local government and charitable donations.
Indeed, the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau, Miami-Dade’s destination marketing agency, has made disability tourism a pillar of its marketing strategy. The bureau is hoping to capture a new corner of the tourism market and be known as one of the world’s most accessible beach destina
tions. To help attain that, the county tourism agency has launched marketing efforts, published guides on Accessible Travel in Miami and is organizing free workshops for hotels and tourism businesses about best practices for accessibility for visitors.
“For us, it’s no longer about doing the minimum to meet ADA [Americans with Disability Act] requirements, it’s about going above and beyond to become a more welcoming destination for tourists and business travelers,” said Rolando Aedo, the chief operating officer of the regional convention and visitors bureau. “It’s not only the right thing to do, but we feel there’s tremendous business opportunities.”
Beyond making sure visitors have the ability to enjoy water sports and other activities, that includes things like making sure there are automatic doors and sensory rooms for neurodivergent people at places like hotels, restaurants, museums, and hotels providing beds that can be adjusted to different heights. Miami International Airport has such a sensory room for travelers with autism.
Aedo noted that Miami airport was voted the overall winner of the Airport Accessibility
Award in 2021 at the sixth annual global Airport Passengers with Reduced Mobility Leadership Conference. He also said Miami visitors bureau representatives have been attending the TravelAbility conference to learn how to make many more places in Miami-Dade that tourists visit more accessible for every visitor. TravelAbility is an organization working with the travel industry to improve travel experiences for people with disabilities.
“We talk a lot about the diversity of our destination and we want to market to a diverse audience,” Aedo said. “This sector (disabled visitors) of the tourism market wasn’t on our radar, but it is now.”
Part of that Miami visitors bureau’s disability tourism marketing strategy has included social media influencers to help share the message about Miami-Dade. Last year, the bureau sponsored a trip for Cory Lee, a wheelchair user from Tennessee who runs a travel blog called Curb Free with
Cory Lee. He went on Shake-A-Leg’s Impossible Dream, a 58-foot universally accessible catamaran, which splits its time between Miami and touring up and down the eastern seaboard.
“It was my first time in Miami and I was really surprised. I fell in love with the city and am itching to get back and see more,” Lee said in a recent interview. “Sailing on Biscayne Bay was one of the coolest travel experiences I’ve had in a long time. It was something you are unable to find in other places.”
The Shake-A-Leg sailing nonprofit was founded by Harry Horgan, a lifelong sailor from Rhode Island. He dedicated his life to making the ocean accessible after an injury from a car accident when he was 22. He started Shake-ALeg in Rhode Island in 1986 and later in Miami in 1990. Today, the organization has water activities and camps that are mostly free for people with physical and intellectual disabilities, low-income youth and military veterans.
“We launched a movement and a community around disadvantaged people and people with disabilities being able to sail independently,” Horgan said. “We’ve built a community around a shared common goal to help people experience Miami’s beautiful waters, feel more confident and live a good life. Water has that magical healing quality.”
Miami Beach’s warm sand and calm waters are among the most accessible in the country, according to the TravelAwaits newsletter that targets travelers 50 and older, thanks in large part to Sabrina Cohen, a Miami Beach local. Cohen has been a disability rights advocate since she was in a car accident when she was 14. Cohen had worked in fundraising for stem cell research, until one day she got stuck in the sand in her wheelchair in 2012.
“It was like an epiphany,” she said. “It took six guys to get me out of the sand that day, so I approached the city and said we have to do something about this.”
In 2016, Cohen’s foundation launched monthly Adaptive Beach Days during the summer. She’s purchased a wide range of equipment and enlists help from lifeguards, firefighters and physical therapists to assist people with mobility issues enjoy the beach, Miami’s most popular attraction. She estimated that the beach days are a 50/50 mix of tourists and locals, with 25% of the visitors coming from elsewhere in Florida and the other 25% coming from the rest of the United States and around the world.
Cohen and the city of Miami Beach have made the beach accessible in other ways: motorized and manual beach wheelchairs are available to rent for free in South Beach and there are nearly two dozen beach entrances with hard surfaces suitable for wheelchairs. She helped the city design a park — Sabrina’s Playground — on 63rd Street and Collins Avenue, where there’s a ramp to go up the slide, specialized swing sets that offer more secure seating and a hard ground surface instead of mulch. Cohen’s foundation also recently started monthly wheelchair tennis at Flamingo Park in South Beach.
Her foundation is raising money to build an Adaptive Recreation Center, which is slated to open on 53rd Street and Collins Avenue. It will have a rooftop pool deck, a fitness center with classes and storage for accessible beach equipment. The ambitious plan has been in the works for years, suffering setbacks from “political football,” but got a big boost in 2021 when Miami Beach approved $2.5 million in funding for it.
“What I try to get people to understand about universal design is that it’s good for everybody,” Cohen said. “Wheelchair users, cane users, strollers, bicycles, even going to the beach with a cooler. It’s better for everyone.”
Anna Jean Kaiser: 305-376-2239, @annajkaiser