Park Accessibility YouTube Scoping Review
Canada’s national and provincial parks are a source of pride for many. Yet, these spaces remain surprisingly inaccessible to individuals with disabilities and their families. There is an urgent need to develop new accessibility standards to improve the design and maintenance of these spaces. YouTube offers a rich source of perspectives that can help determine how these spaces can be made more accessible, as you can see from the video above.
The objective of this project was to conduct a scoping review of YouTube videos that discuss barriers and facilitators to park accessibility.
We found ~19,000 videos that were narrowed down to 308 that identified barriers or facilitators to park accessibility. These videos fell into two broad categories: people with disabilities describing their experiences and webinars/conferences/panel discussions on the topic of park accessibility. Each barrier/facilitator identified was categorized into themes and sub-themes including: social, physical, sensory, financial, wayfinding, policy/governance, informational, and adaptive equipment. The most frequently identified barriers/facilitators were related to physical barriers, the role of policy/governance, and access to adaptive equipment.
The ultimate goal of this project is to create a compilation of key video clips that will be shared with land managers and policy makers to raise awareness of barriers to accessibility and how they can be addressed.