As temperatures warm up and school lets out for the summer, lots of families are looking for indoor places to go. But for some families, especially those with kids with developmental disabilities, those indoor places can be challenging. That’s where Melanie Issacs and her nonprofit come in.
Isaacs is the founder and chief inclusion offficer at Pal Experiences. The group makes videos of places — from museums to sporting events to restaurants — in an effort to help make them more accessible for families who’d like to go.
Isaacs spoke with The Show more about this and they started with how she describes her organization.
Full conversation
MELANIE ISAACS: Yeah, we are a not-for-profit, and we partner with venues to make them more accessible and inclusive for guests with developmental disabilities. So, just as a ramp helps a guest who moves differently, our tools are designed to support guests who are processing spaces differently.
MARK BRODIE: And one of the things that I think is particularly interesting about what you do is, you’re not asking necessarily the places that you are, you know, showing folks about, you’re not asking them to change anything about their space or what they do or how they do it. Yours is mostly like a preparation for potential visitors, right?
MELANIE ISAACS: Exactly. Yeah, it’s — the real tool is knowing what to expect. Uh, so there’s a lot of power in foreshadowing. So, we make videos, that use video modeling, which is a decades-old technique commonly used in behavioral therapy. And it helps decrease anxiety by showing guests what to expect before they go.
So, you can be at home and you can watch this video that shows, you know, where you’re going to park, what security is like, what’s the crowd like, will I smell popcorn? You can learn all of this information ahead of time. So, there’s less anxiety-provoking surprises once you’re there. Um, you know what to expect and you can plan accordingly as a family.
MARK BRODIE: I’m curious about the phrase you just used there, "no surprises there." How significant is that for potential visitors to a place that you’re looking at, you know, maybe someone who has sensory issues or or some other kinds of kinds of anxiety issues?
MELANIE ISAACS: Yeah, definitely. Um, one of the first things I found when I started this organization was doing research was 70% of families with autism are socially isolated. And that’s looking at one diagnoses out of hundreds that our tools serve. You know, but we really wanted to understand why. Um, what makes it hard to go out? And every person is completely unique. But some of the most common challenges for families are anxiety over new experiences, sensory overload and challenges with communication. So, each of our Pal tools addresses one of those, um, obstacles.
MARK BRODIE: And most of the places that you have, I don’t know if you call them reviews or or made videos of, previewed maybe is the way to say it, are, you know, museums or, you know, sort of amusement places, aquariums, places that people would go. I’m particularly interested in the fact that you made a video about an urgent care center, which I would imagine for a lot of people, whether or not they are on the autism spectrum or they have anxiety issues or sensory issues, like that’s a kind of can be kind of a scary anxiety-inducing place for just about anybody.
MELANIE ISAACS: For sure. Yeah. And you’re right, we have a lot of fun experiences in our network, but we’re getting more and more requests from families for places you have to visit, you know, the grocery store, the dentist, the urgent care. And most people get a little — a little anxious when they have to have these experiences. So, um, all of our tools are based in evidence-based best practices to support people with disabilities. But we use universal design, which means that it’s built for some, helpful to many.
MARK BRODIE: Trying to make videos of places where people have to go, I would imagine that’s a pretty big undertaking, because, you know, every bank looks different from another, every grocery store is laid out a little bit differently. Like that seems like a pretty heavy lift.
MELANIE ISAACS: It is. There’s no shortage of potential partners. Um, but with our videos, we try to focus on those core elements. You know, we’re going to park the car, we’re going to get a cart, there will be other people there, the light might be different. We try to focus on some of the things that are more, consistent across experiences and then highlight those sensory inputs, and then those kind of expected behaviors and, you know, typical procedures.
MARK BRODIE: So, I’ve got to ask about your background because, based on on some reading, it sounds like this was not the direction that you thought your career was going to be taking you.
MELANIE ISAACS: That is definitely true. Yeah, I fell in love with the ocean at a young age, and I’m from Wisconsin, so that was through aquariums. So, I was on this trajectory studying marine biology, working at an aquarium. But I met a family leaving work one day on the train that changed my whole life.
When you work someplace like an aquarium, you know, folks can be pretty curious. And a father and a son approached me, and the dad started asking me about sharks and what we fed them. And as we’re chatting, his son was getting more and more excited, you know. At first, he was rocking a bit, then flapping his hands, eventually jumping up and down.
So, I asked him what his favorite part of the aquarium was, and he never said anything. But his dad quickly interjected and said, "Oh, we can’t go. Um, my son has autism." And they got off the train at the next stop, and I spent the rest of the commute, you know, just sad. You know, here was this family that clearly wanted to go have an experience and felt like they couldn’t.
And I started thinking about the word accessibility and how massive it is. Both of my uncles had muscular dystrophy, so I was always really aware of physical accommodations. But this family didn’t need a ramp to access the aquarium. They needed — they needed something else completely.
MARK BRODIE: And how did you sort of go from that conversation and thinking about how, you know, there’s sort of different kinds of accessibility to doing what you’re doing now and really trying to help folks sort of get a sense of what to expect when they go to a particular place?
MELANIE ISAACS: Yeah, so it was a big shift. Um, I was working on my thesis at the time and I switched from, you know, cephalopod behaviors to tools to support kids at the aquarium. So, I learned a lot along the way and really tried to identify those main, um, challenges faced when going somewhere new. And found that there is so much power in foreshadowing and previewing and modeling. So, we started with a video and of course, we’ve refined over the years, but there’s nothing like a video to foreshadow what’s going to come next, and it’s been amazing to see the impact it has for kids, for adults, for families.
MARK BRODIE: Sure. Well, so you mentioned that the videos have maybe evolved a little bit over the time you’ve been doing them. I’m curious in what ways, like what kind of feedback have you gotten from from viewers to say maybe, "Hey, could you could you maybe do this?" Or, "Maybe if you change the way you do this slightly, that could that could make this more effective."
MELANIE ISAACS: Yeah. Um, I think the first one, I got so excited, you know, it felt like it was an hour long. Um, so we’ve really adjusted things there. Um, so now we keep them about 5 minutes, um, and we use a technique in behavioral therapy called video modeling. So, we’re always starring an individual with disabilities in our Pal videos. And this is a behavioral therapy technique where you feel inspired and, uh, motivated and more confident if you can identify with who you’re watching.
MARK BRODIE: All right. That is Melanie Isaacs, founder and chief inclusion officer at Pal Experiences. Melanie, thanks so much for the conversation, I appreciate it.
MELANIE ISAACS: Thank you.
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