Problem

Canada’s national parks are a source of pride for many Canadians, and spending time in these spaces provides enjoyment and health benefits to over 15 million visitors each year. Yet, many people with disabilities and their companions are unable to experience these benefits because of a lack of accessibility. In fact, Canada has lagged behind countries like the US and many in Europe in improving park accessibility.

Objectives

1. To identify barriers to park accessibility for people with disabilities and their companions (family members, friends, and caregivers) as well as solutions for addressing these barriers.
2. To develop a framework to help stakeholders conceptualize and describe the challenge of achieving park accessibility.

Methods

Our objectives were achieved using the following activities:

1. A national survey of people with disabilities and their caregivers on park accessibility
2. Follow-up interviews with a subset of our survey participants
3. Focus group on the design of a virtual park experience
4. A scoping review of the academic literature on park accessibility
5. Evaluating the use of machine learning for park accessibility article classification
6. A review of YouTube videos on park accessibility
7. Parks Canada website assessments
8. Park visits and accessibility assessments
9. Stakeholder consultations

Results and Project Outputs

A total of 746 surveys were included (376 people with disabilities, 371 caregivers), interviews (9 people with disabilities, 3 caregivers), focus groups, two Parks Accessibility Conferences (600 registrants in 2022 <Parks Accessibility Conference 2022> and 500 registrants in 2023 <Parks Accessibility Conference 2023>), a review of the academic literature (3541 articles identified and filtered to 44 articles that were included in our full text review) and YouTube videos on park accessibility (18,716 videos found that were filtered to 308 videos that were reviewed in their entirety). The findings from all these activities were organized into four project outputs:

1. Park Accessibility Matrix

This Matrix was populated with all the park accessibility solutions we identified. To avoid the Matrix document becoming too large, each Matrix entry was limited to only the name of the solution with reference to a section of our Park Accessibility Solution Guide (see below) where each solution is described in more detail.

2. Park Accessibility Solution Guide

Each park accessibility solution identified in this project is described in this guide.

3. Park Accessibility Assessment Tool

This tool will allow an accessibility score to be assigned to any park for each accessibility need. We expect this tool may be useful for Parks Canada to advertise accessible features to their parks as they are developed, and to help individuals with their particular needs select the best parks for them.

4. Stakeholder List

Many of the stakeholders who participated in this project have agreed to join a national network of individuals who have a common interest in improving park accessibility. These stakeholders include people with disabilities and their companions, land managers as well as representatives of organizations that provide park accessibility-related products and services. We expect this network will be an increasingly important resource as we approach the 2040 deadline.

Final Reports

Parks Accessibility Matrix

Supplementary Materials

Currently the accessibility assessments are in PDF format, we are working on creating more accessible versions