You can find descriptions of each of our presenters below.
- Day 1 – Tuesday, July 25, 2023
- Day 2 – Wednesday, July 26, 2023
- Day 3 – Thursday, July 27, 2023
Keynote Presenters
Tilak Dutta
Tilak Dutta is a Scientist at KITE and is part of the Home and Community Team. The objective of Tilak’s work is to develop better tools to support successful aging in our own homes. Tilak’s team is currently working on this multi-year project to develop recommendations for making Canada’s national parks barrier free by 2040. The long term vision of the team is to ensure individuals with disabilities and their caregivers are able to participate in all activities offered at Canada’s national parks.
One in five Canadians over the age of 15 and one in twenty children under the age of 15 have a disability. The Accessible Canada act requires that our national parks become accessible to these individuals and their caregivers by 2040.
Tilak holds cross-appointments at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering and the Rehabilitation Sciences Institute at the University of Toronto.
Stan Leyenhorst
As an accessibility specialist, Stan provides critical input filtered through the lens of universal design. His collaborative mindset coupled with his innovative skillset offers the requisite insight into achieving inclusive communities.
Stan offers an excellent combination of management skills, sales experience and knowledge on accessibility and universal design. He has spent the last several years focused on accessibility in the built environment, performing assessments, preparing and presenting recommendations, reviewing blueprints, crafting manuals, interfacing with project stakeholders, and educating designers, engineers, and other staff. In addition to his technical experience in this field, Stan brings decades of lived experience and a first-person user perspective. Stan continues to be involved as an expert advisor with respect to accessibility and urban design.
Sonya Wilson
Sonya is a seasoned teacher, advocate, artist, climber, and is also a member of the Deaf community where she currently resides in Los Angeles, Ca. Sonya has always been a wild child of the 70’s, grew up on the family ranch in Las Vegas with Red Rock Canyon nearby. She attended Azusa Pacific University earning a BA and MA degree. At college, she took classes which focused on outdoor recreational activities such as rock climbing, hiking, mountaineering, where her passion for the outdoors grew.
Over the years, she has completed various outdoor courses via REI, National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), PCGI and Red Rock Rendezvous (RRR). She started a Deaf climbing group at RRR in Las Vegas where she also recruited and trained ASL Outdoor Adventure Interpreters (OAIs) to create a more accessible outdoor space for Deaf community. She also hosts the annual ASL Climb and Camp weekends in Joshua Tree, CA for the past 5 years. It grows every year and took on a life of its own!
Sonya’s vision is to elevate and connect the outdoors, recreation industry and the Deaf community. This helps raise awareness on what true access, equality and inclusion looks like. It is important to create a culture where these key components are a given and not an afterthought.
To learn more follow Sonya in Instagram @deafclimber
Day 1 Presenters and Panelists:
Lisa Franks
Lisa Franks is an outdoor enthusiast and adventurer. For the past two years, she has lived in her self-designed wheelchair accessible campervan and traveled throughout Western Canada and the US. She is passionate about adaptive mountain biking (aMtb) and in an effort to share that with others she founded the Saskatchewan Adaptive Mountain Bike Club. She works with trail builders and managers to identify obstacles and to ensure accessibility is considered so that everyone can explore the outdoors.
Andrew Green
Andrew is a blind lawyer and former social worker living in Northern Alberta. He and his partner have enjoyed accessing national and provincial parks across the country. The barriers Andrew has experienced to accessibility have been about the built environment. Andrew is a fan of universal design to ensure accessibility for all Canadians.
Amanda Powell
Amanda Powell is an outdoor content creator who focuses on accessibility in the outdoors. She has a goal of visiting all the national parks in the US and so far has visited 18. She tries to get out and be active as much as she can with her three year old on the trails hiking or biking. She recently opened up a nonprofit called “ EveryBODY on Trails.” To help those get on trails if that’s with equipment that is often inaccessible for those with disabilities and very expensive and a community of those that love trails with and without disabilities.
Mahadeo Sukhai
Mahadeo is Canada’s first blind biomedical research scientist, with more than 20 years’ experience as an academic researcher and educator. He leads the research program for CNIB and our two affiliate organizations, Vision Loss Rehabilitation Canada and CNIB Deafblind Community Services, and is the principal investigator for research projects to understand the lived experience of persons who are blind, Deafblind, and partially sighted in Canada. Mahadeo also leads CNIB’s international affairs work. As CNIB’s Chief Accessibility Officer, he oversees all three organizations’ cultural change efforts on accessibility and inclusion for persons with disabilities and intersecting social identities.
Maayan Ziv
Maayan Ziv is an activist, photographer and entrepreneur. In 2015, she launched AccessNow, a mobile app and website that collects and shares information about the accessibility status of places worldwide. What began as a response to her frustration when trying to navigate inaccessible places, AccessNow soon grew to become a mission-oriented social start-up. Within just a couple years AccessNow has vocalized a movement for inclusion, inviting people of all abilities to contribute to the platform.
As CEO of AccessNow, Maayan has created a powerful shift in thinking about the importance of accessibility in our world, from accessible technologies to infrastructure, public policy, media and communications. To date AccessNow has shared accessibility information in over 35 countries.
An influential public speaker who is often in the media, Maayan collaborates with private sector companies as well as government and not-for-profit organizations. She is leading a movement, challenging norms and empowering others to make the future accessible and inclusive for all.
Day 2 Presenters and Panelists:
Laura Bridges
After surviving a traumatic brain injury in 2005, Laura Brydges (M.A.) is a committed proponent of and for the hidden disability community. She has designed and shares a free digital hidden disability symbol on her Hidden Disability Facebook Page. She has conducted two hidden disability surveys, and is the author of a white paper entitled State of Exclusion: how perceptual frameworks and knowledge gaps have failed the Hidden Disability Community. Her efforts have been featured in the Toronto Star, CBC Radio, Accessible Media Inc., iHeartRadio and various blogs. When not championing the hidden disability community, Laura can be found in her art studio, walking her standard poodle, and communing with nature on local trails and in nearby parks.
Lawrence Gunther
Lawrence Gunther is a conservationist, outdoor writer, podcaster, blogger, film maker and TV personality. A life-long outdoor enthusiast, Lawrence has travelled extensively throughout Canada to experience and document the country’s amazing natural resources and diverse peoples. Having earned his master’s in environmental studies from York University, Lawrence went on to establish the charity Blue Fish Canada, dedicated to conserving Canada’s water quality and fish health. Despite being registered blind at age eight, Lawrence has leveraged his visualisation and storytelling skills to open people’s minds to Canada’s underwater worlds. His work has been recognized with numerous awards including the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Medal, and the Governor General’s Meritorious Service Medal.
Hans-Steffen Linder
Hans-Steffen Lindner is the father of two young boys, and has been married of 12 years to Tammy Baldwin. He has a BSc and a BN, and began working as a nurse in Corner Brook, Newfoundland in 2011.
About five years ago, he experienced a debilitating workplace injury, which left him with a disability. The injury took him away from his job for 5 years, and during that time, he sought new ways to access the wilderness adventures that were no longer physically possible for him. He discovered a passion for piloting drones and taught himself this new skill, as well as how to edit the footage. He began creating videos of his favourite natural places, which he started sharing with his friends and family.
Because of this life changing experience, he began to gain a deeper understanding of the ability of nature to bring us back to a more vibrant state of health, both physically and emotionally.
He has recently returned to work, and currently has a part time position as an RN, while also operating a small freelance drone videography company. Inspired by his personal experiences, his business focuses on helping people overcome physical and emotional challenges by connecting to the natural world through his nature videos.
Shira Standfield
Shira Standfield has a background in landscape architecture, playground design, and park planning with a focus on creating accessible and inclusive outdoor environments. Her passion lies in creating seamless and inherently universally accessible places and experiences for all people. As the Advisor on visitor accessibility and inclusion for Parks Canada, Shira works with colleagues across the country to improve infrastructure, services, and programs for all visitors at national parks and national historic sites. She has over 20 years of experience in the parks and recreation field, and also brings her lived-experience as a long-time wheelchair user and outdoor enthusiast.
Kate Zealand
Kate Zealand (she/her) is the Community Engagement and Inclusion Specialist at BC Parks. In her role she focuses on provincial strategies, initiatives, and projects to support inclusion and accessibility in B.C.’s provincial parks. Most recently, Kate has supported the launch of the BC Parks Commitment to Inclusion, a renewed commitment to making B.C.’s provincial parks welcoming and meaningfully accessible to all. With the launch of the commitment, Kate’s work focuses on both supporting the concrete actions BC Parks is taking to support inclusion and accessibility and the long-term and systemic shift of implementing the vision of the commitment. Kate is passionate about learning directly from those with lived experiences and finding ways to amplify the voices of those who experience barriers to accessing the outdoors to create learning opportunities for visitors and staff.
Day 3 Presenters and Panelists:
Mikhaila Carr
Mikhaila (she/her) is an undergraduate student currently pursuing her Bachelor of Planning at the University of Northern British Columbia. Mikhaila became involved with goals of improving access and inclusion in parks through her position as a research assistant with the Nature for All team. The partnership includes dedicated academics, non-profits, tourism sectors, and government that seeks collaboration to document and improve conditions to enable access to outdoor recreation and nature based tourism spaces. Her enthusiasm for the outdoors and accessibility stems from experiencing the co-benefits of her nature interactions. She envisions an outdoors that enables her to create memories, social bonds, and opportunities for healing with each of her friends and family members irrespective of ability, age, gender, or race.
Isabelle Ducharme
Isabelle Ducharme, President of the Board of Directors of Kéroul, has been involved in social integration activities for people with disabilities for over twenty years.
Her personal experience of living with a spinal cord injury since her car accident in 1988, combined with her master’s degree in tourism management and planning at UQAM university in Montreal, give her a unique perspective on the barriers faced by tourists with disabilities and on solutions to be implemented to promote tourism for all.
Mark Groulx
Mark Groulx is an Associate Professor in UNBC’s School of Planning and Sustainability and a Registered Professional Planner. Mark’s research focuses broadly on sustainable, resilient, and inclusive communities, and specifically on the importance of community engagement and placemaking in effective collaborative planning. Mark is currently leading the SSHRC funded Nature for All project. The Nature for All project includes a diverse network of academic, tourism sector, not for profit, and government partners collaborating in the development and use of new tools to document the state of accessibility in nature-based tourism and recreation spaces.
Kristen Habermehl
Kristen is the owner of Atlantic Accessibility and brings both passion and balance, with advocacy for inclusion and eighteen years of business management, to the team. As one of the lead instructors nationally for the Rick Hansen Foundation Accessibility Certification, as well as a highly sought-after accessibility assessor, she brings energy to both the learning and the application of assessments with clients such as Parks Canada, Dalhousie University, McInnes Cooper, Deloitte, Huskey Energy, Build Nova Scotia, Halifax International Airport, and many more.
Trisha Kaplan
Trisha is the National Manager of Programs and Inclusion Initiatives at the Trans Canada Trail, Canada’s national Trail network. Recognizing the many barriers that prevent full participation, Trisha manages national initiatives to remove barriers and make trail opportunities, and the trail sector, inclusive, accessible, safe and enjoyable for everyone.
Heather Lamb
Heather Lamb is a social worker with Spinal Cord Injury BC, based in Prince George. In addition to her direct work with clients, she is also the InfoLine Team Lead and part of the Access BC Team. She sits on a number of disability and accessibility committees at the national, provincial, and local levels.
Jamie McCulloch
Born in the UK and now a proud Canadian Citizen, Jamie resides in Canmore, Alberta. His first experience of adaptive sport and recreation was when teaching his sister, Claire, to ski. Following this, he worked as a ski instructor in Andorra and spent summers working as a care worker for adults with neurodivergencies. From that moment on, he knew the path his future was to take.
The Winter of 2001/02 saw Jamie come to Canada, where he has spent his time working for Sunshine Village as a ski instructor. At the same time, he saw a gap in the ski industry lesson opportunities offered and started to develop and then coordinator the Sunshine Village Adaptive Ski and Ride Program. For 6 years he lived a continuous Winter spending the Canadian Summer months in New Zealand, furthering his adaptive experience by working for Disabled Snowsports. Here, while working as an adaptive trainer, instructor, and coach, he met an incredible community of individuals.
His enthusiasm, passion and experience for adaptive sport and recreation lead him to co-found Rocky Mountain Adaptive, where he works in the position of Executive Director, developing the organization, advocating for adaptive sport and recreation, and still making time for his main passion – working hands on with individuals of amazing abilities.
Philip Oligny
As the founder of Kartus, I’ve dedicated myself to providing a simple yet effective solution for outdoor accessibility for people with disabilities. In conjunction with my ongoing role at Kartus, I serve as a lecturer in design at Université Laval, an experience that deepens my understanding of the human aspects in product development. This unique intersection of roles allows me to infuse technical prowess with empathy and inclusivity, central to Kartus’s mission. In addition, I bring my expertise to various non-profit organizations as a board member and have recently extended my passion for inclusivity by becoming a paraclimb instructor. Honored as a ‘Young Philanthropist’ by my university, my mission is to champion the cause of accessibility, especially outdoors, transforming it from a privilege to a fundamental right for all.
Cybele Sack
Cybele Sack is a consultant with a focus on inclusive design, digital accessibility, and social transformation. She’s an award-winning coach for social innovation hackathons and entrepreneurship in Canada; she has coached diverse teams with multiple events and organizations.
She is a co-author of and invited expert with the next generation of digital accessibility standards with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). She led accessible co-designs with the Inclusive Design Research Centre at OCADU. She’s a co-author of a chapter in the next core textbook for Canadian Occupational Therapists. She produces and moderates panels addressing ableism in health care for UBC’s Inclusive Campus and is a researcher on a national project on redesigning equitable post-secondary education.
She began her career as an interpreter at Point Pelee National Park and continued as a researcher with Parks Canada’s national headquarters. Her interest in accessibility at national parks was sparked by her undergraduate thesis in trail accessibility and universal design.
She has been published in the Globe and Mail, New York Times, NOW Magazine, CTV News, CBC News and TVOntario.
