#accessible parks

[delicatelysublimeforester]

Beyond Boundaries: Creating Inclusive Outdoor Spaces

[scurvyboy]

Im watching Trailer Park boys rn and Stan is so ricky coded what the hell

he really is and i think about it all the time

another one for the occasion:

[wiisagi-maiingan]

I love tornado survival guides. "Shelter in a basement or interior room without any windows. But if you're in a mobile home, just fucking die I guess lol"

[incognitopolls]

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[reasonsforhope]

By the time Sue Shusterman turns away from the bench at the overlook and back toward the trailhead, she knows the paddleboarders are out in force 300 yards away on the gleaming blue surface of Chatfield Reservoir.  

She knows the high runoff waters have flooded the roots of Chatfield’s willows and cottonwoods, and that the first spring-green layers of the foothills rise to the west like soft fabric. 

How she acquired these life-affirming memories is at first a mystery, since Shusterman is blind and is heading back toward the parking lot making her usual sweep of the path in front with her ever-present white cane.  

But then a friendly voice emerges from the phone that Shusterman is pointing toward the path from her other hand.

A little to the left to stay on the paved path. Looks like there’s a trail all the way down to the beach, about 75 yards, if you wanted to go. I’ll just be here watching, let me know if you need anything. 

The voice is from a live, trained human guide FaceTiming through Shusterman’s phone camera on the Aira ability-assist app. Sight-impaired people have been using Aira’s guides to make it easier to do anything from navigating an airport to filling out an online job form. Now, all 42 Colorado state parks like Chatfield are geofenced to allow any visitor to use Aira for free to stroll the trails with a helpful set of eyes. 

The Aira guides seemingly effortlessly offer what a blind hiker either needs, or wants. If there’s a dangerous steep drop-off on the right, they warn. If the hiker would rather know if the sneezeweed is in bloom or the sailboats are luffing through a turn, Aira offers that instead.

For Shusterman, trying Aira as an outdoors adventure for the first time, the allure was simple: “Independence.” 

“So she’s doing, I think, a phenomenal job of including the necessary safety things, but the perks of the scenery, too,” Shusterman said, as she paused during a conversation with an Aira guide based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. “She’s doing great.”

State accessibility officials recently announced the expansion of Aira to state parks grounds, after previously providing Aira free for other state-related functions such as navigating a government building or getting help on an online site or filling out forms. Colorado cannot control the cellphone signal, though, so parks officials encourage visitors to try Aira at a familiar or close-in park space before ranging farther afield with it. Popular parks like Staunton or Golden Gate contain pockets where signals are not strong. 

For consumers buying access on their own, Aira costs about $50 for 30 minutes of assistance a month. Private employers and governments often buy package access to Aira and other accessibility apps for all employees to use. State accessibility coordinator Theresa Montano, who is blind and accompanied Shusterman on her Chatfield walk, said Amazon buys access so that sight-impaired shipping center employees can navigate steps to pack orders.

Montano uses Aira at her state job, saying the guides on the app can share her computer screen and help her get through an online task in 30 minutes that might take her four hours without help or through older accessibility tools. 

Adding Aira for state-owned lands was wrapped into the overall $250,000 budget for free Aira use on state property and with state websites. The additional utility is an obvious plus, Montano said. 

“This gives blind people the same opportunity to come and enjoy it by themselves or with their family if they want to, and be independent,” she said...

Shusterman walked away taking more from the big picture experience, rather than any particular scenic detail. 

“For me, it was, you know what, I could go for a walk on this path, and I could feel completely safe, and I would enjoy a nice walk and get some exercise, in an unfamiliar area,” Shusterman said. “It’s definitely a real confidence boost for me.”  

-via The Colorado Sun, June 11, 2024

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

Okay, this is super preliminary, but since we've been talking about zoo accessibility I wanted to launch a project I've been planning for a couple months.

One of the hardest things about visiting zoological facilities when disabled is the lack of knowledge ahead of time, right? Often the information on the zoo's website about accessibility doesn't contain everything folk need to know to plan a visit. I think we can probably help fix that, even if it's with just crowd-sourced knowledge!

This is a google spreadsheet for recording accessibility information for various zoos. It is super unfinished right now, FYI. That's partially because I need to fill in more of it from my own experiences, and partially because there are things I didn't note or experience - which I'd love for y'all to chime in about.

Categories for the spreadsheet so far include rentable assistance options, service dog information, accessible bathroom locations, mobility, vision, auditory and sensory issues (or accommodations), food allergy options, and general notes. I'm also including the information each zoo website provides, and guest assistance phone numbers, so all the information is in one place.

To add to this crowd-sourced zoo accessibility resource:

Send an ask to the blog, or comment on the appropriate cel on the spreadsheet (if the facility you want to comment on is already listed).

Provide the name of the zoo/aquarium/sanctuary and the approximate date you visited.

Tell me your experiences / information, and what categories they belong in.

Feel free to submit photos, if that's useful info! I'm going to see if I can find a way to host them and link in the spreadsheet.

I'll take information as it's submitted and integrate it into the sheet. If the zoo you've visited isn't on the list yet, I still want to add it! This resource is going to stay US-based, however. (I just don't have the capacity to manage an international one).

Obviously, I can't personally verify everything people submit, so this is very much a resource and not a definitive guide. Date stamps are crucial important for keeping track of what's recent and what might have been updated since someone visited.

Let's make zoo, aquarium, and sanctuary visits more accessible for everyone!

[brophers-to-gophers]

Look I’m not trying to be shady but you can’t convince me that Steven wasn’t the biggest driving force behind this lol. The podcasts make him sound like such a finance bro + he grew up wealthy. I remember his response to someone struggling financially was to “get another job and save money”. Even his Instagram post about this is wildly out of touch. “For those who won’t be joining us in the next chapter”. My guy I’m sure plenty of people would love to but you’ve made it inaccessible now.

[carsthatnevermadeitetc]

Toyota APM 2020/2023. Some of the Accessible People Movers that were originally designed for the (delayed) 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games have been repurposed and transformed into cat buses for the Expo Aichi Memorial Park in the Japanese city of Nagakute. The cat buses have been designed to resemble the cat character from the 1988 Studio Ghibli animated film My Neighbour Tortoro. The APM is fully electric with a range of 100km and a top speed of 20km/h (12 mph). There were around 200 APMs made for the Olympics, it’s unclear how many have been turned into cats

[kiteou]

An oc named star who’s just a normal high school student who trying to get by,but then gets roped up in the misadventures of the main four boys.now she basically has to look after them so they won’t die to stupidity.

[parisoonic]

i really wish we got the tf2 tv show because i think, about your talk about how pyro ends up being a foil to the other characters, pyro is such a wildcard of a character that if you need someone for an episode to complete a dynamic it's pyro. he's designated driver. he's the mcdonalds employee. he's scout's ma. she's helping miss p dismember bodies. it's coming in through the dog door

your ask got me thinking about how i'd use pyro in a show and IDK if anyone else has seen Solar Opposites but how they split the Pupa's screentime between A + B plots in the first/second season would be spot on the money for me. Pyro could be there, in the A plot, in small ways (like you said, at the back of the bus or en rotue to the episodes mission) but then gets sucked into a 'mundane' B plot for some tonal levity within the episode. Pyro's gotta run that FTSE 500 company! They've gotta seduce the Ballicorn comic writer in order to read the never-published final issue! They've gotta earn an Astrophysics PHD in order to steal their Professor's Pokemon topped pen....that sort of thing. And then occassionaly they can show up with the deus-ex-mechina for the episode with the rest of the team being none the wiser (other than vaguely baffled as their flamethrower could've REALLY come in handy fighting those haunted scarecrows).

[smoov-criminal]

can we have a conversation about how abysmal the state of "handicapped" parking spaces are in some places? ive been to two separate places in the last week that labeled a normal spot as an accessible one and just painted it blue. ive been to hospitals and doctors offices that had like 3 spots total. sometimes they're even more inconvenient than the regular spots because they were put somewhere stupid just to get away with the bare minimum. this sucks

[dandy-dog]

Okay, so I just realised something and I'm not sure if it's me overthinking things but I feel like it raises an interesting question. When you go to the registration center, Rambley says that Ed's face isn't in the park's guest list:

Rambley directly after this asks if it's Ed's first time visiting Indigo Park. Which implies that the park stores a list of all of it's previous guests to some extent. However, Ed states throughout the game (both directly in the DMs with Laura shown in the game's opening and implied in the flavour text for the collectibles) that he's been to Indigo Park before. So if that's the case, why isn't Ed registered in the park's guest list anymore?

[lovesodeepandwideandwell]

Dare I say it, the way Parks and Rec failed in its conclusion was by succumbing to the capitalist construction of the self as an infinite growth optimization machine (where the optimized self is the work self)

[disabled-dragoon]

Love (/s) how the problem with disabled parking always seems to boil down to "You need to leave the spots for truly disabled people. If you can walk you don't need it." and not "People can exist in various states of disability that would all benefit from those spots. There really should be more."

[pekasairroc]

Just as Maddie was judging if she was in range for her goggle’s thermal vision, she froze. There, in the dark of the horizon, a figure haloed in a green-white light blinked into existence. Phantom. The ghost floated above the tallest point of the play structure, a dome covering the second level. He lay on his back, hands laced behind his head, with one leg bent at the knee and the other folded across it. He pushed off the dome with one foot, slowly rocking back and forth – like he was having a night stargazing, not defying the laws of Earthly physics.

Okay I can't float nor was I gonna climb too high on the playground at midnight but here's what I could do with the laws of Earthly physics. I love @peachdoxie's Danny Phantom fic Trust Your Instincts and loved this scene since 2022. Finally had a chance to recreate it on Halloween night.

If you like mysteries, ghosts, sci-fi, moms being badass scientists, or cartoons from 2004 you should read this excellent fic that combines it all.

[nuyokaiart]

Quick traditional Hwa