150,000 Lawn Signs Later: How a Toronto Family Made Halloween Accessible

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A movement that began with one lawn sign outside a Toronto home has grown to roughly 150,000 signs across Canada, all carrying the same idea: hand out Halloween treats from the driveway, not the front door.

Rich Padulo, founder of Treat Accessibly, joined Double Tap’s Steven Scott and Marc Aflalo on our AMI-tv sister show Access Tech Live — standing on his own front lawn, next to the sign.

It started with a six-year-old

“We created a lawn sign much like this in 2017,” Padulo said. “We had a little boy living on our street who used a mobility device. And we were putting pumpkins on our stairs, and we realised very quickly that he wouldn’t be able to treat at our home.”

He talked it over with his daughter Sienna, then six. “She got it right away. And from the mouth of babes, we developed the phrasing accessible trick-or-treating.” The icon a friend designed for the sign is, in Padulo’s own description, a forward-motion wheelchair with a cape blowing in the wind.

Seven families came to the house that Halloween. Their parents described mobility, sensory and intellectual disabilities that the traditional set-up quietly shuts out: stairs, lighting, sound, and a stranger appearing behind a door.

“We didn’t want any kids missing out on a very social and important experience in their youth,” Padulo said. “And that’s when we started the movement.”

Ninety per cent of it is just moving to the driveway

The ask of a participating household is deliberately small. “Ninety per cent of what you have to do as a homeowner is just treat from the street or from your driveway, really, to remove stairs and the barrier of doors,” he said.

The knock-on effects go wider than the child the sign was designed for. Children can stay closer to their parents without it feeling awkward, siblings who could not previously trick-or-treat together can do so, and disabled parents get to go round with their own kids.

Padulo was clear about who still needs convincing. “While we support the accessibility community, which represents 22% of Canada, our goal is to get the other 78% championing kids and families with disabilities.”

Halloween Villages

At the time of the interview the organisation was running nine Treat Accessibly Halloween Villages, where a street closes so families can trick-or-treat from driveways — from Halifax through Ottawa, Oakville, Toronto, Hamilton, Edmonton, St Albert and Calgary to Surrey, British Columbia.

The first was on Queens Drive in Toronto, where residents have since built hanging spiders and installed free-standing door frames at the end of their driveways to recreate the door-to-door feeling without the barriers.

What stays with him, he told the programme, is what parents say. “We hear stories about, this is a son’s first Halloween where he’s never been able to trick-or-treat, and he’s 18 years old. So our goal is really to make sure no kid has to turn 18 before it happens.”

Everything Treat Accessibly offers is free. The one thing it points people towards buying is Atticus Goes Trick-or-Treating, a children’s book written by a grandmother who saw the campaign on the news, about her grandson’s experience of trick-or-treating.

Resources

• Treat Accessibly: treataccessibly.com