Maayan Ziv is an artist, an acclaimed disability advocate, and the founder of a tech company, AccessNow, working to increase accessibility worldwide. The City of Toronto Access Award winner says that her childhood had her pulling away from the community rather than reveling within it.
"I was quite ableist. And I told myself that I wasn't like them. I associated disability with, you know, awkwardness and inability to do things. And [I thought] if that's what disability was, then I didn't have one, because I didn't feel that way."
A stint at a local offering called The Independence Program (TIP) was the beginning of her leadership journey. During TIP, participants lived in a university residence for three weeks while being supported to learn about everyday tasks. Ziv says her perceptions of disability changed during that period. She'd been told that she could do anything growing up but was now beginning to see that the other side of that coin – where other participants' parents were focusing on what they couldn't do – was just as harmful.
"I realized that there's this necessary gap to be addressed, which is why are people living this way, thinking this way? And then I also met people with disabilities, who I did see myself reflected in and I did see that they had aspirations, and jobs, and amazing lives, and that they had senses of humor. and that they were like real people like me. And it wasn't just this odd stereotype, a very narrow view of what disability was told to me as."
Ziv would be a mentor for the program before heading off to X University, where she says photography took hold of her. That all-encompassing focus on her craft – what she calls an "obsession" – helped inform her approach to disability leadership and her understanding of access. Whether that was at campus events that were less than accessible or later when she was photographing celebrities. She says it was the first place where she ultimately discovered her voice.
"I loved challenging people. I loved showing up on sets where they had only seen my photographs. And they expected, you know, a white man standing, holding his camera, welcoming them into his photography studio, and they got me, and they didn't expect it […] I loved carving out that space, I loved being an artist who was changing what people considered an artist could be."
She says that part of the fun – though it would sometimes anger her – was holding space with her subjects for that hour and moving them from a place of discomfort to one of respect, understanding, and awe.
But not all of her clients needed that education. Ziv would eventually take the portrait of former Ontario lieutenant governor David Onley, with whom she credits the support and continued friendship needed to grow as a leader.
"He inspired me just in terms of how much power he had and how compelling he was when he spoke. And the presence he created when he came into a room. I'd never seen anything like that. I'd never seen a disabled person, literally, the whole room stop to just welcome him in based on celebration and not awkward."
Fast-forward to her current work with AccessNow, where she is the founder and CEO, and you find a leader who is comfortable speaking to disabled employees as much as rooms filled with thousands of people who have to start from the beginning. For businesses curious about access, Ziv says her focus is on how accessibility can be integrated at every level, rather than being shoved off to the side as a nice to have perk or specialty.
"How do we articulate an accessible experience? How do we portray to someone the opportunity to see themselves in an accessible city, and an opportunity to go somewhere that is accessible to them? And is that done in like a, here's this amazing, you know, hotel, and then go to a different web page, where you can read just about your secret, nitty gritty accessibility needs [kind of way]? Or is it front and center as an inclusive experience, where it's just seamlessly woven into what's amazing about this hotel."
You can find more of Maayan's work at http://www.maayanziv.com/bio.
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