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Access Hound — Writings From the Field

Accessible Media is Better, More-Inclusive Media

KOMO News in Seattle features 'Free 2 Fly' running club, pairing blind runners with sighted guides, such as Access Hound's CEO McCullough

Accessibility
Jun 23, 2026
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Brett Oppegaard, Ph.D.
Executive Director

KOMO's caption (no AD provided) A photo of visually impaired runners in Green Lake who are a part of a guided running club. Access Hound's quick description: Describing: A screenshot of the KOMO News website, which shows the headline of the story above a large horizontal photograph. A stack of three much-smaller horizontal photographs are to the right of the main image. All four color images are about this same "Free 2 Fly" story. Description: In the larger image, a woman's back is to the camera, and she faces a crowd of people, addressing them about the run they are about to do. This woman — Free 2 Fly founder Ixchel Lemus-Bromley — has her brown hair pulled into a ponytail. She is wearing a dark green hoodie and is shown from the waist up, from behind, making the crowd of runners the focal point. More than a dozen people face her and the camera. They mostly are wearing shorts or athletic leggings as well as t-shirts, with some also having light coats. They are outside with sun in their faces and grass and trees behind them. One person is raising an arm to shield the sun from her eyes. Another person is raising a hand to ask a question. In the three smaller images, stacked on top of each other, the top one shows two women running side-by-side, tethered at the waist to each other, on a paved path. The middle image shows a close-up portrait of Lemus-Bromley, from the shoulders up. She is wearing a baseball hat this time, with a smile on her face. The third of the three images is a muted version of a close-up photograph of a Free 2 Fly t-shirt, showing only the text on the red t-shirt and the person's arms. That image is covered by a text that reads "View All Photos" and is linked to a gallery with more images.

KOMO News.

Access Hound actively supports making public places more accessible, including behind the scenes, wherever those opportunities might emerge and exist. We love to roll up our sleeves (or, in the case of this story, we put on a pair of shorts and running shoes) and engage with those production processes directly. 

CEO Stewart McCullough, for example, on most Sunday mornings can be found running around Green Lake in Seattle with the Free 2 Fly club, which is a running and walking club that pairs athletes who are blind or who have low-vision with sighted guides. KOMO news recently aired a story about this club, called "Visually impaired runners find their stride through guided running club."

McCullough is just one of dozens of people involved in the club, and his appearances in the video are brief and in the background, but he's there. That's the important part. In the group photo, accompanying the online KOMO story, he is standing behind his runner, just to the viewer's right of the one person raising their hand in the image. Stewart's helping as needed, guiding a runner, just doing what he can to make the world a more-accessible and better place for people who cannot see or cannot see well. He didn't know the camera crew was going to be there. It's just something he does, like all of us do at Access Hound, every day to contribute in small and large ways to a more-accessible world.  

A text version of the story also was shared on the KOMO website, which starts like this:

"Every Sunday morning, a group of runners gathers at Green Lake to warm up and then pair up.

ʻWhen I announce pairings, VIPs raise your hand,ʻ calls out Ixchel Lemus-Bromley.

VIP stands for visually impaired person. Each VIP is paired with a sighted guide.

Lemus-Bromley created the group Free 2 Fly when she was looking for people who, like her, love to run. And like her, they cannot see well enough to run on their own. Lemus-Bromley has a degenerative eye disease called retinitis pigmentosa, causing progressive vision loss.

"I started falling when I was running and tripping over things that I didn't see," Lemus-Bromley said. "I did some races, fell like four times within one race and kept going because I didn't want to stop, but quickly realized that it was not safe for me, not safe for other people, and I needed to find a different solution."

When she couldn't find an organized group with assistive guides, she created her own. ..."

5 min read
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