Barry Long didn’t come to real estate looking for a new career. He came with a lifetime of experience navigating systems that weren’t built for him.
In the early 1990s when Long was in his early 20s, he was hit by a truck while riding his motorcycle and was paralyzed from the chest down.
After the accident, he spent two and a half years backpacking around the world in a manual wheelchair “just to go see what life was like and take it on as a challenge,” he says. That successful journey launched another—a career as an inspirational speaker for companies like Alaska Airlines, Boeing and Microsoft through his company, Talk & Roll Enterprises.
Over the years, he also served his state government as a disability and accessibility consultant.
It wasn’t until 1999—when he and his wife Emily tried to buy a home—that Long encountered a problem he couldn’t power through.
“There was no way to find accessible homes, and no way to sell them,” he says. “There was nowhere in the system to show whether a house would actually work.”
Filling that gap became Long’s mission and has earned him a place among NAR’s 2026 Fair Housing Champions.
The Industry’s Shortcoming
Traditionally, accessibility hasn’t received the same level of attention as other listing details. Listings might include a single checkbox—disabled access: yes or no—but little else. More importantly, many agents didn’t want to engage with the topic at all.
That reluctance, Long explains, was driven by fear.
“Disability is the only protected class that has a physical relationship to real estate,” he says. “And because of that, real estate professionals were really nervous to touch it. They were afraid of Fair Housing Act violations and litigation.”
“In addition, there was no definition for accessibility,” Long adds. “And real estate runs on definitions. Bedrooms have definitions. Bathrooms have definitions. Accessibility didn’t.”
Let’s Fix It
The turning point came in 2015, when Long delivered a keynote for a local Sotheby’s International Realty franchise outside Seattle. During the talk, he casually challenged the audience about the accessibility issue.
“I joked, ‘Why don’t you guys fix it?’” Long recalls.
After his keynote, the president of Marketplace Sotheby’s International Realty took Long to lunch and said, “You’re right, Barry—it’s broken. And we’d like you to come fix it.”
The company went on to sponsor Barry’s real estate licensing and made a pivotal introduction to the Northwest Multiple Listing Service—a connection that would help spark meaningful change in how accessibility is represented in real estate.
“I told the MLS, ‘I don’t know anything about the back end of real estate,’” Long says. “‘But I know it’s broken, and I don’t care who broke it. It just hasn’t been done right yet.’ And they said, ‘What can we do to help?’”
Turning Accessibility Into Data
Long partnered with Tom Minty, founder and president of Able Environments, a consulting firm focused on advancing accessibility in real estate through education, standards and practical guidance. Minty had already been working on accessibility in housing, and together they zeroed in on the root problem: data.
“All real estate is data in and data out,” Long says. “If accessibility couldn’t be captured as data, it couldn’t be searched.”
Working with the Northwest MLS, Long and Minty spent more than two years building a structured accessibility framework—breaking homes down into defined sections such as approach, entrance, living spaces, bathrooms, bedrooms, utilities, visitability and home automation.
The result was a standardized feature set that agents could objectively document and buyers could reliably search—without referencing disability itself.
“We moved the disability conversation out of it,” Long explains. “We focused on accessibility features as a property characteristic, just like a bedroom or a bathroom.”
That distinction mattered. By focusing on features rather than people, agents could work confidently within the Fair Housing Act while adding real value to listings.
From Checkbox to Standard Practice
The Northwest MLS now includes more than a hundred accessibility data points and recently moved the accessibility search from a subpage to a prominent position on the main search screen, ensuring NWMLS members see that as a primary search option.
Justin Haag, CEO of Northwest MLS, says the change was overdue. “Before Barry, we had one field—disabled access, yes or no,” Haag says. “Now buyers and brokers can search hundreds of accessibility features and actually rely on that information.”
With the success in Washington, Long is working to educate other MLSs on how to replicate the model.
Training the Industry
Once the data existed, another problem became clear: Agents needed education on how to use it.
So, Long and Minty created the Accessibility Real Estate Specialist (ARES) designation—a 10‑hour, asynchronous, master-class‑style course featuring architects, builders, designers, disability advocates and people with lived experience.
“We didn’t build this so people could just get clock hours,” Long says. “We built it so people would feel comfortable, understand fair housing law and actually know how to do this.”
The course is nationally accredited through ARELLO and licensed in multiple states, with expansion underway. Several hundred real estate pros have taken it, and Long is planning a marketing push.
Broker Matt Hart, of First and Main Real Estate Brokerage in Snohomish, Wash., says the impact is tangible. “ARES gives agents a tool other professionals don’t have. It helps them serve buyers better—and market listings more effectively,” he says.
What This Looks Like in Real Life
For Chris and Jess Hanson, whose daughter Ruby has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, the difference was immediate.
Before working with Long, who is their agent, the family was renting month to month and didn’t believe they could find a permanent home that would work for their whole family.
“The work that Barry’s doing allowed us to move very quickly into a home that was perfect for our family and took very little work to make accessible for Ruby and our other kids,” Chris Hanson says.
Using the new MLS criteria, the Hansons went under contract within months.
“This isn’t just about real estate,” Long says. “This is about life. It’s about people being able to live better lives in homes that actually work for them.”
Mainstreaming Access
Long is now focused on another critical audience: appraisers. “I want appraisers to be looking at accessibility as a value add, not the stereotypical idea that it’s stale, institutional and hospital-like,” he says.
About 10,000 people turn 65 each day, according to the Census Bureau, and one in four Americans (about 70 million total) report having a disability, according to the Centers for Disease Control’s Disability and Health Data System. “So, accessibility isn’t niche—it’s inevitable.”
For agents, it’s also an opportunity.
“Accessibility expands the buyer pool, differentiates listings and helps people find exactly what they need,” Long says.
