Nature: The Most Accessible National Parks in the USA

When the National Park Service (NPS) was created, disabled visitors were hardly considered. With rough trails, stairs and steep pathways, the great outdoors was largely off-limits to disabled people.

In May 2012, an Accessibility Task Force was created at the NPS with the goal of improving accessibility over a period of 5 years, from 2015 to 2020.

Over that time, many improvements were made, both to the physical infrastructure in America’s parks, but also to the scope of information shared with disabled visitors. A new understanding about what it means to be “accessible” also took root.

“Accessibility means something very different to a person who is in a wheelchair than to a person who is blind,” says Jeremy Buzzell, who manages the National Park Service Accessibility Support Program. “I don’t talk about [accessibility] specifically by saying people with mobility devices can do things at this park. That’s only an aspect of accessibility.”

To read more about the accessibility improvements at national parks and which have the most to offer disabled visitors, see the article from Conde Nast Traveler.