The Abilities Expo was canceled due to the pandemic in 2020, but the show will go on this year, albeit scaled back.
The Houston event will run Aug. 6-8 beginning at 11 a.m. at 1 NRG Park, Exhibit E, and is free to attend. However, participants will have to sign up to try items at the assistive technology showcase.
Pasadena, California-based Abilities Expo was established in 1979 and had gone through various iterations throughout the years. When Chairman Lewis Shomer and his business partner, President and CEO David Korse, purchased the expo in August 2009, the expo only had two shows and was not doing well, Shomer said. The two new owners expanded the shows from two cities to eight (seven in the U.S. and one in Canada). Houston became one of the first additions to the expo in 2011 and was the only Texas city to host the expo until Dallas was added in 2019.
"Texas has very favorable remuneration for people with who need to get products for the disability community, so Texas is a good area," Shomer said.
The expo will be held across approximately 100,000 square feet of NRG Park, with the exhibitors taking up 80% of the floor, Shomer said. However, due to the rising Covid-19 numbers, exhibitors might only take up 65% to 70% of the floor, he noted.
Activities include a 24-foot adaptive climbing wall, creative movement classes led by the Houston Ballet, wheelchair fencing, and an assistive technology showcase led by the Texas Technology Access Program. The TTAP is a state assistive technology program housed at the Texas Center for Disability Studies at the University of Texas. The program supports aging residents and those with disabilities statewide with the assistive technology, or AT, and funding sources that will be appropriate for them.
The program also has a loan library where individuals can borrow technology to try it before buying it (AT devices range from a few bucks to tens of thousands of dollars). TTAP also has 16 demonstration centers spread throughout the state (three are in the Houston area). However, Angela Standridge, director of the TTAP, added that many of the sites are shut down due to Covid.
Additionally, TTAP has a recycle-reuse program in which used computers and dedicated medical equipment, like wheelchairs and hospital beds, are refurbished and sold for a significant discount. The state program has a contract with Project Mend in San Antonio for medical equipment and Double Click at Easter Seals in Austin for the computers.
Before the Abilities Expo came to town, the city of Houston held its own expo for people with disabilities, said Michelle Colvard, one of the Houston ambassadors for the Abilities Expo and an advocate for people with disabilities in Houston. Colvard worked for the city from 2003 through 2007, first as a commissioner on the Houston Commission on Disabilities and later as chair.
"This expo is, I think, beyond our wildest dreams of what it could be because it checked all the boxes, and we have the workshops that address issues that matter to our community," Colvard said. "We have industries there that serve our community's needs, and it's the only place that you can go and try things out, like new wheelchairs, new technology that helps you make attachments to your wheelchair and can help you move around. You can try out different vehicles that are accessible. You just don't really have that all in one place anywhere else."
Standridge said the expo has scaled back on bringing in devices due to the pandemic.
"We usually have like nine to 12 big tables full of all kinds of stuff," Standridge said. "We have to bring a few augmentative communication devices, which are tablets and computers that have voice output for people that don't speak orally. You can use a tablet computer or phone with a certain app on it or a certain software to talk. So you have to touch a picture or spell it with letters or a combination of both."
Standridge said the most popular devices statewide based on TTAP's data are communication devices and desktop imaging systems, which will be presented at the expo. Other popular items will not be present because she said the items cannot be cleaned easily in the environment.
Products that may be featured include visual impairment systems by Canada-based Humanware, augmented communication devices by Sweden-based Tobiidynavox, speech-generating devices by Ohio-based Prentke Romich Co., and artificial visual devices by Israel-based Orcam.
