Making the outdoors more accessible for everyone

By Outdoor Access and Recreation team, NRW

The Outdoor Access and Recreation team has been working with site managers across Natural Resources Wales to make the outdoors as inclusive and accessible as possible so everyone can enjoy Wales’ diverse landscapes.

A group of people including a lady in a wheelchair stop on a path and look at the wildlife. — Family enjoying a NRW site together (Natural Resources Wales)

Over the last few years, the team has worked on a variety of projects from commissioning disability organisations to carry out site and trail assessments to producing guidance and training for land managers. And in the process we have been on a learning curve from making assumptions that accessibility is not just about good quality surfaces and flat level paths to appreciating that the definition of accessibility is not fixed. In many cases paths may only need small changes on the ground or more detailed information on potential pinch points.

Equipment such as trampers and adaptive bikes and trikes can help people to access more challenging and adventurous routes, which means that the definition of what is accessible is personal and constantly changing as well as being about how welcome people feel when they visit a site or trail.

Description not Prescription!

We started to explore a more visual approach to information provision which sits alongside the text based information on the NRW website by working with Experience Community CIC Experience Community: Outdoor Activities For All Abilities to create films about some of our trails, adding to the information we already provide on our barrier-free routes.

Working with the managers of our NNR and woodland sites, we drew up a shortlist of trails which didn’t fall into the obviously accessible category, but which could offer some challenge to people with disabilities and open up more of the Welsh landscape and the fantastic trails which give access to it. We then worked with Experience Community to carry out assessments with site managers to see which trails could be candidates for filming. You can see videos of disabled visitors visiting trails at sites across Wales.

Our Trails for users of adaptive equipment webpages host films showing longer and more challenging trails that people with adaptive equipment can use. The films show route surfaces, uphill and downhill gradients and elevation – all described by a disabled person as they negotiate the route. Each film has both voiceover and subtitles available in English and Welsh, making them digitally accessible too.

The Accessible visits page also includes full details of our barrier-free, wheelchair and buggy friendly walking routes.

Helping people make informed choices

By presenting this information showing disabled users negotiating path surface, camber, gradient, gates, latches as well as points of interest, disabled people, their friends and family can make informed decisions before setting out. It’s useful for families with young children too!

Path assessment and improvement

The team extended the work to assess and provide information about accessible opportunities to the Wales Coast Path and we have been working with local authority partners to identify potential path sections. This has then led to assessments of these sections which helped to inform improvements on the ground.

Two people on a bike cycle on a path with a lake in the background. — Enjoying the Caernarfon section of the Wales Coast Path (Antur Waenfawr)

As an off shoot to this project we ran a pilot to test Phototrails on the improved sections in northern Gwynedd. Phototrails comprises of mapped visual and text information focusing on parts of the path which users need to know about before setting out – another way of showing what to expect on a path visually.

Visit the Wales Coast Path website to link to the phototrails information on sections of the Wales Coast Path accessible walks on the Wales Coast Path

Promotion of opportunities to enjoy the outdoors needs to be inclusive too

According to recent research commissioned by Natural England, visual representation/image diversity is key to addressing inclusion of underrepresented groups in outdoor settings. Outdoor recreation teams and National Trails and Wales Coast Path teams have been busy creating a more diverse image bank for NRW and drone and video footage for the WCP and National Trails which are available for partners to use - Portal | Visit Wales

Continuing collaboration with Visit Wales and other tourism partners helps to ensure that we make the most of the opportunities presented by themed campaigns. The Wales Tourism Ambassador Scheme Wales Tourism Ambassador Scheme – Ambassador Wales has provided a particularly targeted opportunity to connect with tourism partners in the local authorities and national parks as well as the business community. By inputting into the content for the Ambassador training modules, we have raised the profile of the Wales Coast Path and National Trails in Wales for this audience and enabled tourism providers and authorities to advocate for the trails and highlight the benefits of trails to the visitor experience and sense of place.

NRW’s accessible places to visits, trails and Wales Coast Path sections are all featuring regularly in the Tourism For All Natural Resources Wales and The Wales Coast Path - Bangor - Accessible Holidays - Tourism For All website and newsletters, another targeted promotion partnership for people looking for accessible tourism visits across the UK.

The latest promotion partnership with Visit Wales has involved the creation of engaging social media content with a disability ambassador, Pippa who spent 3 days exploring and showcasing the north Wales coast along an extensive accessible section of the Wales Coast Path showing the landscape, accommodation and eating and drinking options along the way.

A group of people gather under a sheltered area of a building. — An inclusive access training session at Ynyslas Visitor Centre and NNR (Natural Resources Wales)

Training for inclusive access

Staff training underpins the work to increase and improve accessibility in the outdoors. We have commissioned Disabled Ramblers, Sensory Trust and Experience Community to help staff identify more opportunities and make our sites as welcoming as they can be to a diverse range of people. Internal staff and colleagues from partner organisations have attended these sessions getting an insight into the variety of barriers many people face in getting the benefits from visits to the outdoors, how we can make visiting our sites more inclusive and what different communities need from a visit. These sessions are a mixture of classroom-based discussion and consideration of principles and on-site learning about applying least restrictive access.

Based on the inclusive access guidance steering NRW’s inclusive access work elements covered included:

Equality Act 2010; Protected Characteristics, NRW’s remit and duties as a public service provider and application of best practice to trails and sites
Awareness of the diverse needs and perspectives of visitors
The importance of sense of place and welcome to the visitor experience as well as accessibility of infrastructure
Accessibility at each stage of visitor journey from decision to visit to the arrival – the ‘access chain’
Assessment considerations/criteria in the context of the least restrictive access principles
Considering the site and trail from the perspective of different visitors, a chance to try out some adaptive equipment and lots of discussion!

Guidance on inclusive access to the outdoors

Underpinning the training is guidance to help ensure that access to the countryside and open spaces is equally available to people of all ages, circumstances and backgrounds.

The aim of the guidance is to provide a realistic, practical and effective approach to access improvements, creating more accessible places for more people.

We worked with Natural England and Sensory Trust to update By All Reasonable Means: Guidance on Least Restrictive Access to the Outdoors. By All Reasonable Means guidance Sensory Trust

Two people, one in a wheelchair, on a path at Llyn Crafnant. — Llyn Crafnant Circuit (Natural Resources Wales)

The guidance is designed to be used by our site managers and any organisation creating, managing or maintaining outdoor recreational access facilities to improve inclusive access to the outdoors at the woodlands and reserves they manage.

By providing a framework for improving access, the guidance encourages land managers to identify those standards and techniques that are most appropriate for a particular situation.

The guidance:

looks at how to make trails, sites, facilities and associated information more accessible and inclusive
considers how to improve the experience at places that are already accessible

It uses the ‘Access Chain’ to focus on access as a chain of events that start, for example, at home, where a decision to visit a site or route might be made, and to where a visitor returns to after experiencing the outdoors.

The appendices include access standards for different types of sites, links to relevant legislation and organisations and guidance on path auditing and action planning.

The guidance is aligned with UK wide Outdoor Accessibility Guidance | Paths for All which was launched in April 2023 and provides the detail for all elements of access infrastructure.

Find Out More

If you would like to know more about our work to improve access for all, you can:

see a summary of our work improving access to the outdoors for all
read By All Reasonable Means - a toolkit about equality of access to the countryside and open spaces produced by the Sensory Trust in collaboration with, and on behalf of, NRW and is regularly reviewed as accessibility develops
go to our accessible visits website section to watch our new videos about trails for users of adaptive equipment and find out about our accessible trails and visitor centres

If you want to know more about Experience Community’s work, have a look at the Experience Community website to see some of the films they created for other organisations such as Yorkshire Water, National Trust and National Parks.

Find out more about the work of the Sensory Trust – Inclusive Nature Experiences

Accessible places to visit

To find out more about the accessible trails and facilities we offer, go to:

We still have a way to go to including the range of demographic groups in engaging with the outdoor environment so most importantly of all - if you have any good practice (and challenges) you’d like to share with us we’re always keen to learn more from other organisations.