Disability Outdoors: A Guide to Accessible Adventure

Everyone deserves to experience trail recreation in a meaningful way, but that looks different for all of us. So how do we make the outdoors more accessible for people with disabilities? The answers are not as complex as you might think. This guide will help anyone from anywhere plan accessibility in the outdoors for groups or individuals with disabilities. Disability Outdoors is an asset for outdoor leaders, participants, and enthusiasts.

This guide covers topics like what questions to ask, when to help or not, how to be fully prepared for an outdoor activity with a range of abilities, and how to be a good outdoor neighbor to disabled people--from interactions to stewardship, information shared, invitations made, and more.

Organized around hiking, camping, backpacking, and climbing, this guide covers information and considerations relevant for the eight major categories of disability:

• Mobility/physical
• Spinal cord
• Head Injuries
• Vision
• Hearing
• Cognitive/learning
• Psychological
• Invisible

Every person experiences disability differently, and different disabilities pose unique challenges for different activities. But every single person, especially including able-bodied allies, can learn what to consider when it comes to making everyone feel comfortable, and connected in the outdoors.

Kareemah Batts is a paraclimbing pioneer and disability advocate who travels around the country and the world advocating and creating access to the sport of rock climbing and the greater outdoors. She is the founder and director of Adaptive Climbing Group, the largest climbing program for people with disabilities in the county. Adaptive Climbing Group makes climbing accessible, affordable, safe, educational, and sustainable from first-time city climbs to multi-day backcountry climbing trips and competition at the national and international levels. She serves on committees across the outdoor industry for diversity initiatives such as Access Fund, Brooklyn Boulders Foundation, American Alpine Club, USA Climbing, NYC Department of Transportation, and more, and is involved with groups across the outdoor industry including United We Climb and Brown Girls Climb. She’s one of seven women featured in the documentary film Those Among. She has been featured in the New York Times and on podcasts including Dirtbag Diaries, For the Love of Climbing, Safety Third and She Explores; named as a climber to follow by Tufas Boulder Lounge, Melanin Basecamp, and more. She was one of six advocates selected in the inaugural class of Backcountry’s Breaking Trail. Read more on Kareemah’s website: https: //www.kareemahbatts.com/aboutme