New Richmond initiative aims to improve outdoor accessibility

Shira Standfield has been a fan of outdoor activities her whole life. But it all changed when she sustained a spinal cord injury 30 years ago.

Since then, she uses a wheelchair, but that hasn’t stopped her from participating in indoor activities.

“I just started to play pickleball … and I also used to play wheelchair basketball, that was my sport, and I was on a women’s national team for a couple of years and went to the Paralympics,” she told CityNews Thursday.

While she managed to maintain her recreational lifestyle and have proper accommodations for their boat, Standfield still faces challenges in outdoor activities.

“Sometimes inherently things are well-designed and they’re easier to access, and sometimes it’s just difficult and you can’t – no matter how badly you want to do something, it’s so hard to access something,” she explained.

Rick Hansen also sees this as a problem, especially for boaters.

“That’s one of the biggest barriers out there, almost every marina that exists, every boat that is being built is actually not accessible,” he explained.

The Rick Hansen Foundation aims to remove the barriers for people with disabilities that limit their ability to participate in outdoor activities like boating, thanks to its Accessible Outdoors Program.

“When you’ve been struggling to gain access and you feel perhaps that you can’t have access, then maybe that part of your life’s been taken away from you. To actually have the door open up into your new world and know that you can actually participate again, you can live your life,” Hansen said.

For Laetitia, who has been blind since her 20s, she appreciated the design of the boat, especially with its features like speech-to-text recognition and dedicated headphones — it gives her a way to enjoy boating again.

“Having those headphones, you can easily communicate and understand what the neighbour says and follow any type of conversation, and even know who’s talking. So the whole experience is accessible even for people who have hard of hearing, having those headphones is helpful,” Laetitia said.

For more information on the Accessible Outdoors Program, visit the Rick Hansen Foundation website.