Frankenmuth

19 Welcome. It's a word we're proud to use in Frankenmuth, a place where we welcome millions of guests to our beautiful community every year. A place where we want everyone to feel welcome. And in recent years, that simple word has led us to learn and explore efforts to ensure we are being intentional and committed to what it means to be welcoming to all. In 2023, the Frankenmuth Convention & Visitors Bureau (FCVB) sent Director of Operations, Lydia Walker, to a National Conference called "Travel Ability" to dive deeper into the conversation about making travel more accessible and welcoming for all. Frankenmuth has a long history of implementing plans that welcome people with needs that are outside the standards of ADA (American's with Disabilities Act). In fact, the Frankenmuth 2000 plan that included the streetscape we know today, implemented wider sidewalks for easier access for people with mobility devices and strollers. The FCVB also worked for many years with a company called The Disabled Traveler to analyze and be more transparent with hotel room specifications for those who need to know details such as bed heights, which side the transfer bar is on, and more to make their travel plans. The FCVB continues to work to set a higher level of accessibility in Michigan's Little Bavaria and become a leader in Michigan accessible travel. This past winter, Travel Michigan and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) offered a grant to CVB's across the state to improve accessibility features on travel websites or to assess/audit the community's accessibility to create a bigger roadmap to making travel more accessible throughout Michigan. The FCVB was awarded one of these grants and is just beginning to embark on the assessment journey. The objective of the Accessibility Audit is to increase the knowledge of accessibility within our destination to help us continually improve our inclusion and accessibility efforts. Frankenmuth has chosen to work with the leading experts in travel accessibility at Sage Inclusion. Sage Inclusion has identified Seven Keys to Success in accessible travel that will be addressed in the audit: Be Accessible, Show Accessible, Talk Accessible, Lead Accessible, Standardize Accessible, Involve Accessible, and Market Accessible. As the audit covers each of these keys to success, the following five main disability categories will be taken into consideration: • Mobility including wheelchair users, mobility scooter users, and slow walkers • Vision including blind and low vision • Hearing including deaf and hard of hearing • Cognitive including sensory • Allergies including food allergies The Accessibility Assessment will take place over a number of months and will give the FCVB detailed insight about what we are doing well and where we need to improve. The audit results will be used to help bridge the information gap that exists between destinations and travelers looking for more detailed information. Additionally, we look forward to feedback that will most likely lead to tougher conversations about what improvements we can make on behalf of the community or together by helping our individual businesses to make progress. The report is not expected to be complete until the Spring of 2025, but the process itself will begin to help build awareness of this long-term effort. This type of initiative is not something that gets put on a shelf when complete. Once we have awareness, it has the power to impact all future discussions to continue to make our community a more welcoming and accessible place to visit, work and live. Welcome to Frankenmuth's Accessibility Efforts By Jamie Furbush, President/CEO of Frankenmuth Chamber & CVB

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