The deep quiet tranquility of the forest should be accessible to everyone

Access to nature — when the forest is not for everyone

Have you ever gone for a walk in the woods and suddenly encountered an obstacle that made it difficult for you to continue the walk? Could it be a toppled tree across the path, that the path has become flooded and overly muddy, or because there is too much scrub making the further road impassable? Most people will have the bodily prerequisites to be able to take a detour further into nature, and for some, these types of obstacles will even be perceived as positive because they force one on new adventures and new unplanned paths. However, for people with mobility impairments, these types of obstacles do not equate to adventure, but rather barriers that mean that they cannot take part in the good nature experiences like others. If you are in a wheelchair, you cannot necessarily take a detour from the path and move onto soft forest floor instead. Mud can mean that the wheel of the wheelchair is stuck. A branch across the path means you have to turn around and thoughts may revolve more about what you miss than what you might experience on the way back. One way to solve it may be by use so-called universal design, which is a kind of extended concept of accessibility (read more here).We'll come back to that. First, it is important to understand why one should be able to get out into the deep quiet tranquility of the forest at all.

Many more would like to leave

In 2021, Danish disability organizations created A study that foundThat as many as 60 percent of their members would like to visit nature more often than they do. It is further backed up in a Danish research study, which shows that people with mobility disabilities visit nature less often than the rest of the Danes despite the fact that they have exactly the same views and preferences for visits to nature as people without movement disabilities. This is due in many casesthat nature is impassable due to physical obstacles, such as a muddy forest floor, narrow paths or lack of disabled parking, but also that people with mobility disabilities experience being looked at by others because they have to use a special handicap path or because of a lack of faith in their own abilities to be able to overcome the barriers they may encounter in nature.

Nature is good for our health

Research showsthat being in nature is good for health, and access to green spaces for everyone is also part of UN World Goals. So how to improve access to nature and support the good nature experience? We have studied this in two PhD projects that are part of research project Move Green, which is about finding solutions to some of the challenges that hinder people with mobility disabilities from getting out into nature.

A paradox

Accessible nature comes with a paradox: when we try to provide access to nature through landscape design, we smooth out paths, remove roots, and build platforms. It is sympathetic, but in doing so we risk designing solutions that are going to remove us from nature. We can look at nature, but we can't touch or smell it. We can walk on the raised, even path next to nature, but we cannot walk in nature, and we cannot always be followed with friends and family because they follow a different and more impassable path.In this way, some accessibility solutions create a different 'space' in nature, which cuts people with disabilities off from being part of a physical and social community that we know is important for both the physical and the physical mental health. In a well-accessible natural area, you will be able to move around freely and the solutions are carefully adapted to the landscape.

The good nature experience

Physical accessibility can help create opportunities for good nature experiences, but if you have repeatedly encountered obstacles in nature, your focus may be on the path to look for branches or bumps, which can make you worried or annoyed, or you, like everyone else, may just be preoccupied with everyday worries rather than the experience in nature right here and now. That's why we're exploring whether we can support the nature experience through a series of audio narratives on an app that guide people's attention to the nature experience — it could be bird sounds, the sensation of autumn leaves between our hands, the substrate beneath us, the smell of spring, or the story behind our location. The nature narratives are linked to the site and can be used by people both with and without movement disabilities. The tales have been tested this spring in the Arboretum nature area by a smaller group of people with movement disabilities and the results are to be used to develop the final version of the app over the coming year.

Universal design as a solution?

By focusing both on nature and on how we experience nature, we broaden the concept of accessibility to not just physical access, but access to equitable and authentic nature experiences that can support health. The way of thinking about accessibility comes from the concept of universal design, which is a relatively new term in the Danish context. It was originally developed by an American architect who was also a wheelchair user, in a confrontation with the usual way of designing, which often came to be about an 'us and them', and where people with disabilities could easily be referred to a special solution. In universal design, we focus on the experience of being able to participate on equal terms in all aspects of life. It's not that we should all have exactly the same experience, but that we should have an equal experience. Of course, it is not always easy to create such solutions. What do you do, for example, in a place like Møns Klint, where you have to go down 497 steps to see the cliff from the beach? Not everyone can take that many steps down and for a wheelchair user, a parent with a pram or someone with a broken leg, it will be impossible. At Møns Klint, a wooden bridge has been built instead, which runs through a forest along the cliff and ends in a viewing platform from which you can look to the cliff. It is not the same experience, but an equal experience that allows everyone to have a magnificent experience of nature, regardless of their bodily prerequisites.