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Making the outdoors work for everybody

To mark the start of Accessible Outdoors Month, ParalympicsGB's programme manager tells us about this social media campaign, part of the Every Body Moves efforts, that wants everyone to enjoy being active outside.

1st July 2025

by Barry Lloyd
Programme manager, ParalympicsGB

I’ve lost count of the times people assume better inclusion means compromise or something that’s expensive, difficult or time-consuming. It doesn’t.

What it really means is changing how we think and design spaces, activities and experiences so they are built with everybody in mind.

It also means not asking large parts of society to work around barriers that shouldn't be there in the first place, because 24% of the population are part of the disabled community and, what many don’t realise, is that any one of us could join them at any point in our lives.

At the heart of Accessible Outdoors Month is a simple message: being active outdoors should be for everybody, in whatever way works for each person.

That could mean simply stretching in a quiet garden and moving through a local park, or taking on something more high-energy like skateboarding or climbing.

The campaign returns this July for its second year as part of ParalympicsGB’s Every Body Moves, powered by Toyota.

Closing the gap for an accessible outdoors

Too often disabled people are left out of the picture when it comes to getting active, particularly outdoors.

There are different reasons for this: the terrain’s wrong, the facilities don’t meet the community’s needs, signposting isn’t accessible or access just wasn’t a consideration. 

When access isn’t considered, people are excluded. Not because of their ability, but because the environment wasn’t built with them in mind.

According to Activity Alliance's research, only 44% of disabled people say it’s easy to access outdoor spaces, compared with 78% of non-disabled people.

And yet, around three-quarters of disabled people want to be more active and many of them want to do that outdoors: on beaches, in parks or through forests or towpaths, to name just a few.

So the demand is real but it’s not always being met.

Accessible Outdoors Month is our way of showing how, together, we can start to close that gap between demand, provision and uptake.

It’s a social media-led campaign platforming real people and real experiences that launched in 2024 with community-led content showing accessible beach days, inland water sports, inclusive cycling, adaptive mountain biking and all-terrain wheelchair walks.

We didn't use glossy ads on our campaign, but simply honest, joyful stories rooted in lived experience.

When access isn’t considered, people are excluded. Not because of their ability, but because the environment wasn’t built with them in mind.

We saw standout examples right across the UK along with moments of challenge and connection with people saying: “Let’s try to make this work for everybody.”

We saw people refusing to ignore the problem and we saw movement in every sense of the word.

Together, those short clips reached over 240,000 people and generated more than 4,000 meaningful engagements.

The need for collective action

This year we’re attempting to go even further by shining a light on more inclusive ways to get active outdoors.

That part’s a given and this time it’ll include urban parks, coastlines and more examples of the disabled community choosing to move in whatever way works for them across our great outdoors.

We now want even more of you to get involved and embrace the idea of a truly accessible outdoors.

At the heart of the campaign is the social model of disability, which tells us that it’s the environment, not the individual, that disables people, so meaningful progress relies on collective action and everyone (designers, organisers, providers, funders etc) has a role to play.

The outdoors shouldn’t be a privilege.

It should be welcoming with everybody in mind, so we’re encouraging organisations, community groups, clubs and disabled people to join the conversation and we want you to share what’s happening in your area.

Post about your experiences and help grow visibility using the hashtag #AccessibleOutdoors, all in the spirit of celebrating the great examples we know are out there and that crucially encourage change, so more and more of our outdoor spaces are available to everybody.

Throughout July, we’ll be curating and sharing those stories through our social media channels with @EveryBodyMoves and on our website.

We’ve also launched the ‘Every Body Moves Club' on Strava to help more people connect, so please follow along and join the conversation with like-minded people.

Every Body Moves is co-produced with disabled people and exists to transform how sport and physical activity are delivered, represented and accessed across the UK.

Campaigns like #AccessibleOutdoors help shift public perception, influence design decisions and create ripple effects that stretch far beyond a hashtag.

There’s still a way to go, but the more people taking part or spreading the message, the closer we can get and I hope you’ll be part of it.

Follow #AccessibleOutdoors Month or join us on social media by searching @EveryBodyMoves on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, Threads, TikTok, YouTube and LinkedIn.

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Accessible Outdoors Month

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