Shownotes
Most people have common misconceptions about what ADA is. ADA is a disability rights law, not an accessibility law. Kent Kelly of Meeting the Challenge discusses how his company helps institutions and communities be ADA-compliant. He talks about some of the projects they’ve made and how they can teach you to comply and negotiate with the DOJ if you have to, and get a reasonable implementation plan to achieve the objectives of the law and make your community more accessible. It all boils down to being compassionate, caring about people, and doing what’s right. He says if you can’t do it for that, then at least mitigate the risk and try to avoid a law suit.
Kent Kelley Meeting the Challenge CEO, demystifying ADA accessibility with consulting initiatives for both public and private entities.
We’re here with Kent Kelly in Meeting The Challenge’s office in Colorado Springs, Colorado. We interview some of the best and brightest business owners and entrepreneurs in and around the state of Colorado. We talk about the ins and outs of running a business and being an entrepreneur inside shared by top business leaders and entrepreneurs in the state of Colorado. We talk about what to do, and as importantly, what not to do about growing, running or starting a business. We’re fortunate to have as our guest Mr. Kent Kelly. He’s the President of Meeting The Challenge, a Colorado Springs based company with 27 years of experience working on ADA accessibility, consulting initiatives for both public and private entities since the inception of the ADA. Kent, it’s a pleasure to have you.
Thank you, Bob.
What is ADA?
It’s the Americans with Disabilities Act. It was signed into law back in 1991 and then became enforceable in 1992.
For the average businessperson, what would be the evidence of seeing ADA?
It’s a disability rights law. It’s not an accessibility law. It’s not a wheelchair law as some people say. It’s not a building code. It’s all about requiring nondiscrimination against people with disabilities.
C: ADA is a disability rights law. It’s not an accessibility law.
Parking spaces, adequate space for them to get out, ramps, restrooms done properly in the gamut of things. When I was looking at your website, it said ADA accessibility on websites.
That’s the big topic du jour. Websites have to be accessible and that’s a pretty complicated concept. There are no standards right now. The Department of Justice has been working on them and has tabled them because of the complexity of it. Essentially, what it means is we can go to a website, we can order off of Amazon or whatever, we can do surveys, do about anything, pay your bill, pay your taxes or whatever. That has to be accessible for people with disabilities too. For instance, how does a blind person access a website? If we would think about it, it would be nearly impossible unless the website was accessible because they’re going to use a screen reader. This is going to tell you everything that’s there and how to navigate through the site. What we found are some major lawsuits, even though we don’t have standards that are enforceable. The DOJ is still acting and enforcing some best practices for websites. Target, Netflix, Winn-Dixie, a lot of sites, a lot of universities, Harvard, all have been under settlement agreements to get their websites successful.
Take us a little bit through your career before coming to MTC and how you came across the company.
I’ve tried a lot of different avenues. First of all, I was a commercial lender for the largest bank in Colorado Springs right out of college. I thought I was a big shot. That was a good training ground for how to interact with people, my clients that were my commercial loan customers and all. There were some pretty large transactions in millions of dollars, but over time it wasn’t appealing. You get tired of looking at financial statements and doing things that sort. I migrated away from the banking industry for a number of reasons. They’re being scrutinized by the Feds back then. There were a lot of bank consolidations and crisis. I decided, “Too stressful, get out.” After that I became a real estate broker. It was like jumping right into the fire. You learn a lot about people as a real estate broker. I worked with residential and commercial properties, but there’s something to be said about pure commissions and the taste of the dollar. You have to almost compromise your ethics to make as much money as you possibly can. That got old in a hurry. I did that for about eight years. I decided to get back into the financial arena and I became the CFO of a publishing company here in town. That was a lot of fun because I was way behind on technology and this company had a very successful website that was getting millions of page views every month because it was so successful.
In fact, they later sold their website as a forum for $10 million to American Express after I left, unfortunately. I did that for a while and there were some circumstances that caused me to retire from that position. That lasted a couple years, then I started a construction company because that’s what I first started. Through my personal experience, I realized that for a person with a disability, day-to-day routines can take hours where it takes us minutes. We started doing universal design construction and renovation of commercial and residential properties. That was pretty rewarding, but it wasn’t quite there. What sealed the fate of that career was the crash of 2008. We closed the company down. We didn’t have anything to show for all of our hard work and effort. I was languishing right then and there.
I wanted to do something that would make a difference with people because I was getting to that point where I didn’t want to chase money anymore and I didn’t want to be in that big corporate world. I wanted to be more in a company that was entrepreneurial. I came across this opportunity back when it was the Rocky Mountain ADA Center. They didn’t have a way to use all of that knowledge that they’ve learned over twenty years and all that expertise and the ability to decipher this very complex law that connects us with the DOJ. They just used it for the Rocky Mountain ADA Center. They thought that’s got to be worth some value and the way to implement ADA is through consulting projects. They brought me in as the Director of Consulting Services. I remember one of the founders said, not with me around, “He’ll never make more than $100,000 a year.” It’s not about the money, but you have to have some sustainability for a project to work.
Here we are, seven years later and what statistic that I’m most proud of is that we work with a lot of state and local governments across the country. We’ve helped improve accessibility and communities with population of 23 million people. That is a lot better than selling real estate or being a CFO or a banker or whatever. I feel like we’re making a difference with that. That’s probably what I’m most proud of because anybody could become disabled at any point in time. It’s the largest minority in the country. They have spending power of $175 million but they’re often ignored or people believe that it’s some funded mandate. On the same guy that’s out there complaining about having to spend money to make his city or business successful, he could be in that same situation at any time. What it all boils down to is you’ve got to be compassionate. Plus I’m getting older too. You’ve got to be compassionate. Care about people and do what’s right. If you can’t do it for that, then at least mitigate the risk and try to avoid a law suit or something.
You’ve got to be compassionate. Care about people and do what's right.
I think about your description of what you did before MTC, construction and CFO. It sound like you were doing your pre-course work before you came here.
Everybody says that there’s this grand plan for you and it did work out that way. The way my life changed over those years, it was perfect. When they hired me, they interviewed me maybe fifteen or twenty times. I don’t think they were quite sure about this venture. When they finally hired me, I tell everybody to this day it’s the best darn job I’ve ever had and it’s not about the money. It’s about seeing the communities become more accessible and seeing the light come on in the city council member or the county commissioner’s brain where he realizes that it truly is important. It’s not about obeying the law or an unfunded mandate. It’s about being non-discriminatory.
My one opportunity being disabled is I kicked the fat kid one time playing soccer. Broke my leg over his and so I was on crutches for a very long time. That’s a very simple, short term inconvenience, but it makes you appreciate being able to get through the door. For here, we’re in a military town, I’m paramilitary. I look at our soldiers coming back and many of the disabled soldiers. For them that’s a new occurrence and then you had the folks dealing with disability from day one. Everybody’s got an opportunity or should have an equal opportunity and I’m onboard with the ADA, at least not as an army guy. I’m not thinking of Air Defense Artillery which is what I thought first about ADA, as what we referred to. When we think about this and folks who are going, “MTC is Meeting The Challenge,” where do they typically hire up for?
The most common project that we do is to help cities, counties and metropolitan districts comply with the ADA and that’s for a couple reasons. First, it’s the right thing to do. We don’t want to discriminate against anybody. Second, it’s a law and it’s an enforceable law that the DOJ can make your life miserable if they decide that they want to come and hang out in your city for a little while and find out what’s wrong with it. It’s a risk management thing and it’s being a good steward for that community. Some of the negatives are if you don’t have a self-evaluation and a transition plan, that’s a buzzword that our audience probably doesn’t know what that is. Essentially, what it means is that everything that city provides its citizens, every program, service, whatever, is accessible. Website has to be accessible. It’s not a building code and I have to emphasize that.
Accessibility or accessible facilities do play a very big role on it. It’s also effective communication. How you accommodate people at a counselor or commissioner’s meeting that are deaf? What happens if a police officer pulls over or arrests a person that’s deaf and he doesn’t understand what the rules and laws are for effective communication? It is about facility accessibility, but it’s such a wider topic than that. That’s predominantly what we do because if you don’t have the required documents, self-evaluation and transition plan, you could possibly enter into a settlement agreement with the Department of Justice. Which means they’re going to be looking over your backs and having you do photo verification reports for five, six or ten years. It also means that they could fine you $55,000 for the first occurrence and then $110,000 for every other occurrence after that. I would say the average community that we see in Colorado or about anywhere have a minimum of 4,000 or 5,000 violations of the ADA. It’s not because they don’t care, it’s because they don’t know. It’s a very complicated law. When you have that, it adds up. The last thing people want are US attorneys running their communities.
Does the Department of Justice have a fairly active enforcement arm?
Yes, they do. For state local government, it’s called Project Civic Access. We have a good relationship with them. If you don’t have that, then they’ll make you get one in a very short amount of time. Not only that, if you have, for instance, inaccessible public rights of way with no curb cuts or whatever, they’re not going to give you any time to fix that. They’re going to say, “Three years. We don’t care how much it’s going to cost.” In one community, that was $44 million just for curb ramps.
We see evidence of that here in Colorado Springs. Pretty much every intersection where you’ll see curb work and, “What are they doing?” Then you’ll see this ramp being built in. It’s wide and it’s nice and you go, “There’s the visual evidence that that’s going on here in Colorado Springs.”
There’s another reason for that too. The Federal Highway Administration will not fund your community unless you have a public right of way self-evaluation and transition plan. We’ve seen communities where they literally had to shut down roads because they couldn’t get funding for it and they couldn’t do anything until they have those documents.
When a community goes in to be compliant, where’s the funding coming from?
The funding comes from the city or county’s revenue stream. There are funding sources that are block grants available through head and everything, but the majority of it comes through the city or county’s coffers. That’s one of the reasons you don’t want the DOJ looking over your shoulder because you’re used to a $3 million or $4 million budget for repairs or whatever, and then all of a sudden it’s $20 million or $30 million. We see that time and time again. It’s difficult to raise your taxes up that high to reach those milestones.
That’s a mental picture for our audience that is the size and shape of the issue. Who typically reaches out to you guys? What do they ask you to do and what do you do for them?
ADA accessibility: The Rocky Mountain ADA Center provides training and dissemination of information and technical assistance.
Let me briefly touch on what the mission and role of the Rocky Mountain ADA Center is because that dovetails with who reaches out to me and/or the business to have us work for them. The Rocky Mountain ADA Center provides training and dissemination of information and technical assistance. That’s where we learn everything about the law because we had to answer these questions on a daily basis. 27 years ago when that first phone call came, I guarantee you we didn’t know the answer to it. If we had to, we would call the Department of Justice or the access for it to go.
We try to establish relationships because the first inclination is that we’re the ADA police. We’re going to make their lives miserable and we’re going to reveal all of this to the public, which is required by law that they have all this rung, and they’re going to be sued by citizens, the DOJ, or whatever. That’s not the case. The case is it’s the other instance. We’re helping them manage the risk against lawsuits and comply with the law. What we try to teach them is that it’s very important to have those documents to comply with the ADA, to comply with the law, so they don’t have to have the risk and disgruntled citizens.
I think about as a community. If you didn’t know there’s a method to learn, there’s a method to get a plan, and there’s a method to start budgeting and in getting toward compliance, what’s the sense of humor of the DOJ if you’ve got your plan in place and you’re making efforts toward getting compliant, but for budget reasons, you can’t get it done in a year or practically you can’t?
The DOJ is not unreasonable. They are very sensitive to that because it happens in every single community because of the magnitude and the complexity of complying with the law. There are two avenues. A lot of times, an entity will come to me because the DOJ is auditing their community and there is ultimately going to be a settlement agreement. Since we do have a good rapport with the Department of Justice, they have vetted our trainings as the standard for them. They use our curriculum. They’re reasonable so we try to negotiate. We’re in the middle of one of these projects this very instance that I cannot disclose because of a non-disclosure agreement.
As we explained that and teach the DOJ what the circumstances are in that community, we’ve been able to increase those milestones from that frightening three years to five, maybe six years. Let’s say you get six years down the road, you’re making progress. The DOJ, you have to stay in contact and provide reports. They’re more than likely going to be understanding and give you some extra time. What they don’t like is if you just say, “Here’s what we’re going to do. We have a transition plan,” and you don’t do anything.
For the city managers and staff as they do the budgets and then whoever’s in charge of doing the road construction or the new buildings and so on, if they had the plan in place, then we go to have the building or construction bid, then they can fold that into their plan. They’re addressing future projects in their plan.
What we’ll see more often than not is if you have a plan, even if it has milestones that are outside the accepted guidelines for the DOJ, they’ll be complacent with that and they won’t enforce it. They might check in from time to time but if you’ve got that document, you’re going to have access to Federal Highway Administration Funds, Department of Transportation funds, block grants, and you’re going to keep the DOJ off your back.
For sake of illustration, I’m the ABC community in Colorado. For the sake of argument, I don’t have any knowledge or any implementation of any compliance so I make a phone call to you guys. What should I expect to see happen from you guys?
That’s not uncommon at all. I would say probably less than 40%, 30% of the nation’s cities, counties and towns have transition plans. That’s a very common occurrence. They also don’t have ADA coordinators which are required by the law and we see that all the time. It’s a collaboration. We’re there to teach you and be your partner. Teach you how to comply, teach you how to negotiate with the Department of Justice if you have to and get a plan, a reasonable implementation plan so that you can achieve the objectives of the law and also make your community more accessible and keep everything under control without having to worry about short milestones to get a lot of stuff done.
I have no idea as a community what range of pricing that could be to get an estimate of the size and shape of the problem.
If you’re talking about self-evaluation and transition plans, I am reluctant to come out and say the average project costs because each one is unique and different. What we’ve tried to do over the years is become more efficient with technology. We find that a lot of organizations and...
