Great and fair questions.
When I am thinking about access for all, my thinking is not just for people who use wheelchairs.
Disability is a broad beast and many disabilities are invisible.
eg
* 44% of Aussie adults lack the literacy skills required to ready complex stuff. How can we make information on bushwalking more accessible?
* More than 5 million Australians have some form of incontinence. How do we help them find bushwalks that improve access?
Then chuck in the mix people with arthritis, heart/lung conditions, people with intellectual disabilities, those with low vision etc.
We do have some places that are suitable for people in wheelchairs. But their general experience of nature is that it takes more time to get out of the car and into their chair than it takes to complete the walk. And the only walks that are promoted as wheelchair accessible are smooth & flat. In fact the new standard for grading walks limits the length of a grade 1 walk (wheelchair accessible) to being no longer than 5km -- WT *$&# -- (there was zero consultation or rationale for that limit). With railtrails etc we can easily have grade 1 tracks that are multiday 40km long if it was not for dumb decisions like this.
My personal view will differ from that of the policy I am helping develop - but generally speaking I think we can make great improvements by simply better documenting what walks exist - including all the facilities and barriers on the tracks.
So if I am in a wheelchair, what is the height of the gate? can I duck under it?
If I have arthritis, how many seats are there? do they have armrests? what is the biggest gap between the seats?
If I have incontinence - where are the toilets? What do the toilets look like? How busy is the track (can I easily duck behind a tree?).
I guess the point is that I want parks to stop saying people with disabilities are welcome on walks x, y and z. Rather they can say here are all the walks, here are the facilities/barriers, and lets give people the dignity to choose if it is safe/enjoyable for them to access. Much more dignified and far cheaper than even building one wheelchair accessible walk and improves access for many more people. Eg parents with prams also benefit, as will people who English is their second language etc.
Once we have got all the long hanging fruit in place (documented existing walks). Then we can do some good analysis on how small lower impact changes might improve access to even more people. EG add a toilet or seat, perhaps remove some steps. The goal is not to concrete everything, but rather find dignified ways to help more people love the places we do.
Now as I step down from my ranty soapbox (sorry) -- if you want to dive deeper into this here is a project I ran on the topic -
http://www.naturallyaccessible.org/ Hope that helps and makes sense
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