How one Ontario family turned an accessible Halloween for one child into a Canada-wide goal to make trick or treating safe and open to everyone
Editor’s note: This story is part of an occasional series, Families with a Cause. The families featured have been propelled for a desire, for one reason or another, to tackle a social or health issue. If you know a family whose altruistic endeavors are making Ottawa a better place, please email traceytong@gmail.com.
A Treat Accessibly Halloween Village. Photo Courtesy Treat Accessibly
With the goal of thrilling, shocking and frightening more kids than in the previous year, a Stittsville neighbourhood will be going all out this Halloween.
The efforts of the Baywood Drive residents are more noble and kind than they sound. The families involved are just some of ones involved in the Treat Accessibly Halloween Village movement, growing across Canada every year.
The seed for Treat Accessibly was planted in October 2017, when founder Rich Padulo and his daughter Siena, then six years old, were putting pumpkins on the stairs outside of their Long Branch, Ont. home.
Siena noticed a family with a boy using a wheelchair across the street and asked Padulo how the child would trick or treat at their home because of the stairs. “It didn’t seem fair that he couldn’t trick or treat like everybody else,” recalls Siena, now 13.
“The realization was overwhelming,” Rich told Parenting Times. “I felt the weight of what a parent of a child with disabilities must feel everyday. In the span of seconds, I felt sadness, humbled, angry, pain and resolve. I felt I had a purpose and a job to do.”
That night, Padulo, his wife Natasha and Siena discussed ways to make their home accessible on Halloween night. With the help of Siena, family friend Pat Lore designed a sign with the words “Accessible Trick-or-Treating” and a wheelchair icon, and within 36 hours of the seeing the little boy, the Padulos’ front lawn had a five-foot-high, double-sided sign — produced free of charge by a local printer.
On Halloween night, visitors included seven families with children with visible disabilities. “There are children and adults with ‘invisible disabilities,’ so we don’t know how many families benefitted from the experience,” says Padulo. “But we do know every single parent that visited that night, disability or no, walked away with a broadened perspective — not only about accessibility at Halloween, but accessibility everyday.”
They didn’t stop there. In ensuing years, the family built on their goal of providing a safe trick or treat environment to children with and without disabilities, and the idea for a Treat Accessibly Halloween Village was born. After consulting parents and experts in accessibility, the Padulos developed a concept that included entertainers (sound-level appropriate DJs and magicians), costumed production and event management staff, décor and abundant treats. The event would be held on a weekend during daylight hours to make it more convenient and accessible to kids and their parents, he says.
It took some outside help: armed with a list of logistical requirements, RE/MAX Agents scoured Toronto for potential neighbourhoods to approach, and Canadian Tire provided décor and funded all the staff and costumed entertainers to create a “Disneyland-level pop-up experience,” says Padulo. “Kinder swooped in with enough treats to ensure every home would have enough to give handfuls to thousands of kids.” The first Treat Accessibly Halloween Village piloted in Toronto in 2021.
“We wanted to do this on a street because to date, accessible Halloween events were always inside, or in a parking lot,” says Padulo, a live event producer who has since been appointed to the Ontario Accessibility Advisory Council. “While wonderful in intent and execution, it is not a traditional experience and often excludes children without disabilities,” he says, adding that it’s a missed opportunity to have “a shared experience with all kids.”
All three sponsors signed on to return the following year, and with the goal of bringing Treat Accessibly Halloween Villages to nine cities across Canada, Padulo travelled across the country to sign on neighbourhoods, including Baywood Drive in Stittsville.
The experience of helping to run a grassroots initiative has been educational for Siena, who in 2021 won the Rick Hanson Foundation Difference Maker Award in Ontario for creating awareness for accessible inclusion through Treat Accessibly in her school. “I’ve had the opportunity to gain an understanding about many of the daily barriers that children with disabilities face, not just during Halloween, but in their daily world,” she says.
The Padulos’ goal for Treat Accessibly is to have official Treat Accessibly Halloween Village events across the globe by 2030.
Although he’s looking ahead, he often thinks back to that first Treat Accessibility event. If one child with a disability had benefitted, Padulo says he would have considered his efforts a success. “That is all Treat Accessibly ever has to do to remain successful,” he says. “A child helped, a parent feeling included and broader awareness for inclusion created. We just have to work together, starting at the community level.”
All Treat Accessibly Village photos courtesy of Treat Accessibly
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Corporate support
Treat Accessibly is not a charity and does not seek funding from government or payment from Treat Accessibly Halloween Village participants. Treat Accessibly lawn signs, official Treat Accessibly Halloween Village events (nine locations with over 30,000 attendees to date), the Treat Accessibly website content and social media are funded and championed by RE/MAX, Canadian Tire and Kinder.
Experience Treat Accessibly in Stittsville
Who: The homeowners of Baywood Drive in Stittsville
What: Treat Accessibly
Where: Baywood Drive, Stittsville
When: Saturday, Oct. 5, 1:30 p.m. to 4:40 p.m.
Why: “The attendance [at the Stittsville event] more than doubled in 2023 and we plan to make 2024 even bigger,” says Rich Padulo.
How: Register to attend Stittsville Treat Accessibly later this fall at treataccessibly.com.
Be a part of the Treat Accessibly movement
Any house (or apartment or condo that are accessible compliant with functioning elevators) can be a Treat Accessibly home, if the homeowner is able to set up and operate a treat station outside and at ground level with no obstacles. “It is not the home, it is the homeowner,” says Rich Padulo.
- Call your local RE/MAX office and ask them to order a Treat Accessibly lawn sign from RE/MAX Canada, or pick one up from a local Pet Valu after mid-October, or print two copies of the printable lawn signs from com/register-for-a-free-lawn-sign.
- Place the sign on your home’s front lawn at least a week before Halloween to give families and caregivers plenty of time to plan their trick-or-treating route.
- On Halloween evening:
- Create a treat station in your driveway, garage or front lawn with easy access via sidewalk
- Refer to the tips and tricks section of the website for ways to communicate with children regardless of the disability
- Have a selection of edible and non-edible treats
- Keep pets indoors
- Ensure pathways are clear
- Avoid strobe lighting
“By being outside your home, learning our interaction tips and having an open mind,” says Padulo, “any homeowner Treating Accessibly is able to permit parents to stay close to their children without making the children feel different from other kids.”
By the numbers
1 in 6: People in the world who identify with a disability
30,000: Treat Accessibly’s sign goal for 2024.
200,000: Number of Treat Accessibly signs distributed as of 2023
400,000: Children and youth in Canada who currently identify with a disability
8 million: The number of Canadians who identify with a disability