Good afternoon, I work for a national charity that provides lifesaving and drowning prevention services across the UK and RoI. Our innovation team has received a suggestion from a member of staff that we should be providing 'trackways' on beaches to enable wheelchair users to access the beach and waterline, even the flagged bathing area. I am very aware that as a non-wheelchair user I should not proceed to develop or reject this concept until I understand the customer needs and desires of the target group so I have been looking for a suitable forum to discuss beach accessibility issues with wheelchair users themselves. I am aware that a local National Trust beach provides balloon tyre wheelchairs for visitors to access the beach environment, but would be very interested in whether wheelchair users feel they would welcome better provision being made for increased accessibility to the beach / water, what activities would be enabled if access were provided and concerns / suggestions that the wheelchair user community might wish to communicate so that I could respond to this suggestion from an informed position. Many thanks, Tim
trobertson |
05/10/2015 |