Everyday Accessibility: Cultivating Accessibility with Sea Grant Field Experiences and Outdoor Places
Julia PetersonSavannah E
Part 2: Many Sea Grant programs offer field experiences or site visits associated with their education, extension, or research programs. These field experiences serve school children, teachers, municipal officials, conservation leaders, resource managers, entrepreneurs, interested publics, community-citizen scientists, other scientists, and volunteers. They provide an opportunity for learning, hands-on engagement, and demonstrations. They raise the visibility of Sea Grant’s work and its attention to locally relevant places, issues, and efforts. And, they are often appealing and highly memorable. Somewhere between 13%* and 27%^ of the non-institutionalized US population has a disability. These disabilities affect people’s mobility, cognition, hearing, vision, and ability to live independently or take care of themselves. Are there ways that Sea Grant programs can increase the accessibility of field experiences that are so meaningful to those who are able to participate in them? This session will provide an overview of a NH Sea Grant initiative to improve the accessibility of its Great Bay EcoCruises, experiential educational cruises open to the public aboard the university’s research vessel, in partnership with Northeast Passage, a university unit dedicated to providing accessible recreation and sports opportunities to people with both visible and invisible disabilities, and research vessel and laboratory managers. The session will draw on lessons that can be applied more generally from that experience to other field experiences that SG programs might offer. The session will also provide co-learning opportunities for participants to share their experiences with designing, developing, delivering, and evaluating more accessible Sea Grant field experiences.