This City Life

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Posted 4 years ago  
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Are Canada’s parks really accessible?

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When designing parks for the 1 in 7 Canadians who have a disability, the first thing that comes to mind is wheelchair-accessibility, but Brad McCannell, Vice President of Access and Inclusion at the Rick Hansen Foundation, wants city planners to get beyond this mindset.

While cities are making more wheelchair-accessible park facilities and trails, according to McCannel, more work needs to be done to create universal access for people with all forms of disability, such as hearing impairments, vision loss, and developmental disabilities. He makes a point of noting that 70% of people with disabilities do not use a wheelchair.

“There are seniors who can’t run as far or reach as far, but are not viewed as ‘disabled.’ We need more than wheelchair-accessible paths, we need to take a holistic look at what it means to have a disability and still enjoy parks and recreation.”

The Government of Canada states that because of its complexity, there is no single “operational” definition of disability. The most widely accepted definition is provided by the World Health Organization:

Disabilities is an umbrella term, covering impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions. An impairment is a problem in body function or structure; an activity limitation is a difficulty encountered by an individual in executing a task or action; a participation restriction is a problem experienced by an individual in involvement in life situations.

Like the rest of us, people with a broad range of disabilities choose to live in cities for easy access to services and amenities such as parks, which are critical to their health and well-being. But, are Canadian cities doing enough to make parks accessible?

You can read the rest of the article here.

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Banner photo by Thomas Bullock