President
Richard is a retired attorney and disability rights activist. He began his career in employment law following his graduation from Stanford Law School in 1966 and retired in 1999 as managing partner when the firm had 400 lawyers across the country.
As a result of a spinal cord injury in his youth, Rich is unable to walk and uses a scooter for ambulation. In retirement, he has devoted his time to advocacy on behalf of the disabled.
In 2000, Rich was appointed by President Clinton to the U.S. Access Board and served a four-year term during which he participated in deliberations regarding the Recreation Guidelines, which include the access rules for golf courses and accessibility in fitness facilities
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In 2005, he formed Mobility Golf, a non-profit corporation with a mission to improve access to golf courses for people with a mobility impairment and developed mobilitygolf.com, that maintained a searchable database of golf courses with adaptive golf carts. That same year, Rich organized a class action lawsuit against Marriott International that resulted in a judgment requiring Marriott to provide two adaptive golf carts at every golf course it owned or managed.
In 2005, Rich worked with Congressman Sam Farr to request the Department of Defense (DOD) to provide two adaptive golf carts at each of its 174 golf courses, allowing disabled veterans and the public, access to these adaptive carts. DOD refused! After three years of effort including an Act of Congress there are now adaptive golf carts at DOD golf courses.
In 2009, Rich traveled down the California coast, stopping at dozens of fitness facilities and found that not one of them contained adequately accessible fitness machines – neither for cardio nor strength training. That same year, Rich formed Mobility Fitness, a non-profit with a mission to have accessible exercise machines in all fitness facilities.
In the following years, Rich became certified by ANSI as a standards developer and organized a consensus committee that developed a safety standard for adaptive golf carts, surveyed and studied the impacts of visual impairment on access to fitness machines, made presentations to the Department of Justice and the Department of the Interior and drafted legislation requiring the Access Board to issue guidelines with requirements for fitness facilities to provide accessible exercise equipment. This resulted in Senate bill 2888 being introduced by Senator Harkin and House bill 5541 being introduced by Representatives Farr and Duckworth.
In addition, from 2010 to 2018, Rich served as a member of ASTM International Universal Design Committee to develop standards for the universal design of commercial fitness equipment to increase access and user independence by people with a disability. Standards have now been published for treadmills, elliptical trainers, stationary upright and recumbent exercise bicycles and upper and total body ergometers.
Most recently, Rich recruited dozens of organizations that serve populations set to benefit from increased access to fitness machines to sign on to a letter to Senator Tammy Duckworth. Together, these organizations represent the interests of millions of Americans with varying physical and developmental challenges/abilities. The letter was submitted to Senator Duckworth in September of 2018 and Rich continues to do outreach to spread awareness and secure additional organizational sign-ons.
In October of 2018, Rich co-authored a section of the RESNA/ANSI Standard for Inclusive Fitness with Bill Botten of the Access Board. These new standards recommend the number and types of accessible exercise equipment that fitness facilities should provide.