New Access to Parks Project will Survey National Parks


How accessible is the world’s longest cave system, located in Mammoth Cave National Park? The Access to Parks Project is going to find out in May.

Many national parks have wonderfully accessible features, but you wouldn’t know it from researching the parks online. To solve this problem, wheelchairtraveling.com is launching its Access to Parks Project, which kicks off in May with a two-week trek to document accessibility features of Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky, Shenandoah National Park in Virginia and Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio.

“Some parks offer very limited information,” says Olson, CEO of wheelchairtraveling.com and a para from San Ramon, Calif. “They’ll say they have a trail that’s accessible but they don’t say how long it is or what’s the grade or where bathrooms are. Our mission is to make it easier for people with limited mobility to plan a trip to parks that meet their accessibility needs and to help each park selected, to update their access information.”

The Access to Parks Project will visit 15 national parks in the next few years as well as selected state and local parks. Each park will be surveyed for the number of accessible trails, length and grade of trails, trail surfaces, scenic overlook access, access to sites, locations of accessible restrooms, accessible lodging accommodations and much more. Park evaluations will be placed online and are not an assessment of compliance with federal law. To learn more, including how to support the Project, visit wheelchairtraveling.com.


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