Remembering Mike Prescott, accessibility champion
Many of our you will recognize Mike Prescott’s name, as he was the Project Manager working on the Accessible Organizations Project, and connected with most, if not all of the 780 public sector organization grappling with how to comply with the Accessible BC Act. In his role there, he worked to build sectoral partnerships and was generous to a fault with his time, knowledge, and encouragement.
He provided resources, gave advice, and connected many of our readers to Untapped Accessibility for more hands-on support.
For those who don’t know his whole career history, we’ll say that as important as he was in ensuring success for the public sector, that was only a small part of his vast career as a disabled scholar and changemaker.
Untapped Accessibility tried to nominate Mike for an Untapped Award in 2023, but he politely and humbly declined. This year, we asked again, and he consented. We were glad to have the chance to celebrate him and an entire career dedicated to making the world a more accessible place for all.
We are sad to hear that Mike Prescott passed away recently.
Based in Kelowna BC, Mike Prescott was an accessibility professional and academic with decades of experience making BC a more accessible province for all. He balanced technical, policy, and community engagement skills to build and sustain communities. He was a Doctor of Philosophy and an awesome dog dad to Gabby, his Burmese Mountain Dog.
His community work included contributions at the national, provincial, and local level. He spent time as Chairperson for the City of Richmond Advisory Design Panel, as a member of the BC Cancer Agency – Patient Family Advisory Committee and member of Accessible Standards Canada’s committee developing standards related to outdoor spaces.
In his professional life before the Accessible BC Act, he was Manager of Accessible Tourism at 2010 Legacies Now, where he was responsible for designing, developing and managing a strategy for promoting BC as a premier accessible travel destination.
Mike spent time as a postdoctoral research fellow in Geomatics at Laval University and Gerontology at Simon Fraser University. He received his Doctor of Philosophy in Rehabilitation Sciences (Ph.D.) from the University of British Columbia in 2021.
One of his most popular publications, Towards a conceptual framework of navigation for people who use wheeled mobility devices in the community was published in 2020 and has been viewed nearly 700 times and cited more than 20 times. The publication focuses on the challenges people with disabilities face because our transportation systems and infrastructure have not been built to meet their requirements.
He is also published in disability community magazines like Transition Magazine, where he has shared his experience travelling with his wheelchair and provided policy advice on how our communities can address climate justice in emergency planning.
We are so grateful for all of Mike’s contributions to the accessibility movement. Rest in Power, Mike. You have left an important legacy.