As better weather approaches, more people will be heading outdoors for sunshine, nature, and fresh air. It’s a great time of year, provided you can access the great outdoors in the first place.
“Accessibility” means different things to different people. For some, it’s about distance — living too far from beaches or forest trails. For others, it’s about affordability, including entry fees, program costs, or equipment needs. But for a large segment of our population, the challenges are more fundamental and harder to overcome. People with disabilities face obstacles to access that aren’t within their control, barriers that can only be removed through action by public agencies, private landowners, or community consensus.
Disabilities can create a wide range of access issues related to mobility limitations, sensory sensitivities, neurodivergence, and visual or hearing impairments, just to name a few. Meanwhile, outdoor spaces in Rhode Island, and across New England, are managed by a patchwork of entities, from local parks departments and state parks to private land trusts and organizations such as the Audubon Society of Rhode Island and The Nature Conservancy, each of which helps steward outdoor spaces and access. Their resources and capacity to implement accessibility solutions vary widely, and while most are subject to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), compliance sometimes only meets the legal minimum…