Let me tell you something about attending an event as both an event operations professional and a disabled woman.
I do not just notice whether something works. I notice what had to happen to make it work.
I notice who has the information. Who can make a decision. Who has to ask somebody else. Who gets to adjust a setup. And what happens when the answer is, “That’s handled by another company.”
Because an attendee does not experience an event according to its organizational chart.
We do not arrive and say, “Transportation is finished. Now I am entering the venue operations part of my day.” We do not stop being attendees when we order coffee, approach an exhibit booth, pick up mobility equipment, or go back to the hotel.
It is all one experience. And if the pieces do not connect, somebody has to do the connecting.
A whole lot of times, that somebody is the disabled attendee.
That is what I kept thinking about at IMEX America 2026 in Las Vegas. Not because everything went wrong—it did not. Helpful people, workable alternatives, and practical onsite adjustments were part of my experience, too.
But I also encountered places where the individual parts of the event did not quite connect. And baby, those spaces between the pieces are where accessibility operations become very interesting.
The scooter was available. The journey still needed a plan.
A mobility scooter was available for me during IMEX America. That matters, and I am not going to dismiss it.
But the pickup and return arrangements were located at Bayside A, a considerable distance from parts of the hotel and event experience I needed to navigate.
That created two operating questions: What happens before I get the scooter? And what happens after I return it?
Providing a mobility device is one service. Making sure the attendee can connect their room, transportation, registration, programming, and the pickup or return location is a broader planning responsibility.
I asked about having the scooter delivered closer to where I needed it, and adjustments were made. I appreciated that.
But my event-planner brain was already asking: Was the pickup location communicated clearly before arrival? Did the plan account for the distance people would need to cover without their equipment? Who could approve a change? And what happened for someone who did not know to ask?
Those are not questions about whether the scooter provider was nice. They are questions about whether the mobility plan accounted for the whole journey.
Because if the support begins only after I reach the support, there is a missing piece.
The food was there. Could I actually get it?
Now let us talk about something as ordinary as getting coffee.
At one Starbucks location, the ordering arrangement involved steps that prevented me from using the ordering path from my scooter. An exit ramp did not solve how I was supposed to place an order.
At another Starbucks, mobile ordering gave me a workable alternative. At the food court, some items were beyond my reach, and staff helped me get what I needed.
Three service experiences. Different operating conditions.
An accessible exit does not automatically mean an accessible ordering process. A different ordering channel can provide a usable option. And an employee who responds appropriately can keep a reach barrier from ending the interaction.
I appreciated that help. But assistance is not the same thing as accessible design.
If someone has to intervene every time a person encounters a particular setup, the operation may be depending on individual judgment to compensate for a design limitation.
The question is whether a usable response has been planned and can be delivered reliably—or whether the customer has to hope the right employee happens to be working.
A food-service operator may be a separate business. That does not automatically place every detail under an event organizer’s control. But organizers, venues, and destinations can still understand known service limitations, communicate practical alternatives, and take those realities into account when directing attendees toward services.
Because telling people where to eat is easy. Understanding whether they can actually use the service is a different level of hospitality.
The booth looked inviting. The interaction was another question.
Y’all know I love a good exhibit floor. The production, the creativity, the branding, the details exhibitors spend months putting together—I notice all of it.
But I also notice whether I can actually approach and participate from my mobility scooter.
At IMEX America, I asked exhibitors whether they had been told to expect attendees using scooters. In several conversations, the answer was no.
That is what those individuals told me. It does not establish what every exhibitor received in its instructions or what training may have happened elsewhere.
Still, it raised a meaningful question about preparation.
At some booths, employees moved chairs so I could participate. At another, someone helped me manage an item so the interaction was easier. Those adjustments mattered. They were practical, thoughtful responses.
But one employee noticing a barrier is not the same thing as the exhibit environment being designed for different ways of participating.
Before the floor opens, an exhibitor briefing can address how people approach counters, reach displays, use interaction areas, find alternate ways to engage, and request help or approve adjustments.
That is not asking every exhibitor to become an accessibility specialist. It is recognizing that exhibitors are part of the attendee experience.
Accessibility does not stop at the entrance to the expo hall. It has to reach the interactions inside it.
Accessible transportation is not a detail to figure out after arrival.
Transportation is another place where boundaries between different service providers become very visible to the attendee.
During my Las Vegas visit, the limitations surrounding wheelchair-accessible vehicle options through familiar rideshare services were a concern.
I am not claiming that every accessible transportation option in Las Vegas was unavailable. I am saying that attendees need usable information about known limitations before their travel plans depend on an option that may not exist.
An attendee who uses Uber or Lyft at home may need to know whether an equivalent accessible vehicle service is available where the event is happening. That is a pre-arrival planning question—not something to discover at the curb.
Better communications can distinguish scheduled service from on-demand service, describe verified alternatives, identify limitations, and explain how attendees can plan around them.
An organizer cannot make every outside transportation provider offer a service. But it can communicate what has been confirmed, what has not, and what attendees need to know to make informed choices.
And destinations have a role in that conversation, too. The attendee does not stop being part of the event experience just because they left the convention center.
“That’s a third party” explains a relationship. It does not finish the conversation.
The scooter company handles scooters. The hotel handles its facilities. The food-service operator handles its counter. The exhibitor handles its booth. The transportation provider handles its vehicles.
Those descriptions may explain who controls an individual service.
But the attendee still experiences one connected event.
When the handoffs do not work, the attendee can end up navigating multiple independent relationships just to finish an ordinary part of the day.
I am not suggesting that event organizers have unlimited authority over independent companies.
I am saying that limited control is not the same as having no coordination responsibility.
Somebody needs to ask the questions during planning. Somebody needs to understand dependencies, communicate confirmed limitations, establish an escalation path, and determine whether the agreed arrangement actually works.
That is what I mean by accessibility operations: not a promise that nothing will ever go wrong, but a system that does not make the attendee become the project manager when something does.
What IMEX revealed about operational readiness
These observations are not a comprehensive accessibility audit of IMEX America, Mandalay Bay, every exhibitor, or the surrounding destination.
I did not inspect every facility, review every supplier agreement, interview every exhibitor, or evaluate every accessibility procedure.
I attended as an experienced event professional who uses a mobility scooter. I observed specific conditions, asked questions, experienced services firsthand, and noticed where additional coordination was necessary and where people provided effective help.
Then I looked at those experiences through the lens of event operations.
That is what a Field Note is for. It does not have to claim to be a certification report to reveal a useful planning question.
Can the attendee move from one part of the experience to the next without being responsible for connecting the systems?
That question changes what planners examine, what destinations communicate, what organizers ask suppliers to demonstrate, how exhibitors are prepared, and what leadership should verify before approving the plan.
What I would want the industry to examine next
If these experiences were on the agenda for an event operations review, I would want five things examined:
- Follow the entire attendee journey. Do not stop at a list of accessible services. Trace pre-arrival information, transport, mobility support, registration, programming, hospitality, and departure as one connected experience.
- Define the handoffs. Identify where one provider’s work ends and another provider’s begins. Confirm what information and service arrangement must survive each transition.
- Prepare exhibitors and frontline staff. Provide practical guidance, adjustment authority, an escalation path, and setups that make useful responses possible.
- Communicate what has been verified. Give attendees confirmed locations, distances, service details, limits, and alternatives. “Accessible” alone is not enough information to plan a day.
- Turn findings into decisions. Document what worked, what required extra coordination, who owns the finding, and what changes in the next supplier scope, exhibitor brief, transportation plan, or service setup.
The part I do not want us to miss
There were people at IMEX who helped make my experience better. I want that acknowledged.
I also want us to appreciate those people without asking their individual effort to serve as proof that every part of the system was designed to work.
I know what it takes to put on a major event. I have spent years managing the details that attendees may never see. So this is not me pretending events are easy.
It is me saying that the difficulty is exactly why operational accountability matters.
An attendee should not have to know which company was contracted for what. They should not have to understand the venue’s internal reporting structure, negotiate every handoff, or discover every limitation through trial and error.
They came to participate.
And when something does not work, the solution should not depend entirely on how persistent, knowledgeable, or comfortable advocating for themselves that attendee happens to be.
Not everybody will ask. Not everybody will complain. Some people will quietly decide the extra work is not worth it—and that decision may never show up in the post-event report.
So yes, I left IMEX with observations about scooters, exhibit booths, transportation, coffee, and food service.
But the bigger story is what happens between them.
Accessibility does not stop where one company’s responsibility ends. The attendee’s experience certainly does not.
From where I am sitting, the question is no longer whether an event can provide accessible pieces. It is whether those pieces work together.