Nature experience for impaired people and tourism for all is an important topic in the EU. Destinations like national parks, nature reserves and other locations for nature experience begin to implement such offers. Hence, guidance for such destinations is missing to judge on the prerequisites onsite and to enable decision makers to start with implementing relevant installations and alterations. A good catalogue of nature education activities for environmental educationists is still missing. The German Association of Blind and Visually Impaired People has invented guidelines for nature trails and other purposes. Partners from environmental education organisations in Germany, Poland, Hungary and Spain active in European lake regions in this project also collected expertise in some aspects of that topic. Together, we want to incorporate these experiences in the Lakes without Limits project, broaden our own knowledge, and pass it to the others. Lakes without Limits aims on working to improve adult education for nature experience by developing, testing and disseminating educational material to foster skills of environmental educationists with respect to disabled people. It will provide guidance for two questions: 1. How can environmental educationists improve their offer for guided nature experience with impaired people? These educationists can either be employed in a nature conservation centre, or freelancer or volunteers. 2. How can nature trails be prepared and/or altered for the unaccompanied use of impaired people. The target group here are managers and environmental educationists responsible for such trails. The material developed will enable its users setting of personal pedagogical goals and following the success thanks to correspondent checklists. The whole material will be available for the broad audience. Concrete examples for work with impaired people on nature conservation/experience will be produced: barrier free brochures, audio guides, 3D-Material, Sign- and Simple Language Films. The focus will be on tourist destinations in participating countries Poland, Hungary, Germany, and Spain, as well as areas of special conservation interest. With this, we want to bring forward the inclusion of disabled persons in the EU and foster the sensitivity to nature for all Europeans. We wish to generate momentum for nature experience for impaired people.
Nature experience for impaired people and tourism for all is an important topic in the EU. Destinations like national parks, nature reserves and other locations for nature experience begin to implement such offers. Hence, easy to apply guidance for such destinations was missing to judge on the prerequisites on site and to enable decision makers to start with adjustment/implementation of relevant measures. Partners from Germany, Poland, Hungary and Austria decided to develop a practical catalogue of nature education activities for environmental educationists and incorporated their experiences within this project, broadening their own knowledge, and passing it to the others via developed materials. At the project preparation stage, we aimed to work mainly in European lake regions. When developing the project, we noticed that the lack of knowledge is obvious in nature education generally. That is why, after a consultation with the National Agency BIBB, we changed the acronym of our project to a more general perspective: “Nature without barriers”. Thanks to this measure, we reached of broad public and our intellectual outputs have reached many more people Europe wide. The project “Nature without Barriers” (prev. “Lakes without Limits”) aimed at improving adult education for nature experience by developing, testing and disseminating educational material to foster skills of environmental educationists with respect to disabled people. With the developed materials, we provide guidance for two main questions: 1. How can environmental educationists improve their offer for guided nature experience for impaired people? 2. How can nature trails be prepared and/or adjusted for the unaccompanied use of impaired people. Within the framework of the project we developed: • Guidelines for adapting nature tours to the needs of disabled people • Practical solutions for redesigning nature trails for barrier-free independent use • Model description for a barrier-free reconstruction of nature trails: elimination of physical and communication barriers • Methodology handbooks for the work with the four target groups: mobility, hearing, sight and cognitive limitations Respective handbooks give an overview over the main challenges in nature education for impaired people. The material developed enables its users to set personal pedagogical goals when developing concrete measures and to follow its successful implementation. The whole material is available for the broad audience on the webpage www.nature-without-barriers.eu. Concrete examples for work with impaired people on nature conservation/experience form an important part of the project, e.g. a barrier free webpage, a film for all, leaflet in Easy-to-read etc. An important feature of the project is the international implementation by five partners in four European countries: Global Nature Fund (Germany), German Federation of the Blind and Partially Sighted (DBSV, Germany), Umweltdachverband GmbH (Austria), Stowarzyszenie Ekologiczne “Etna” (Poland), and Lake Balaton Development Coordination Agency (Hungary). This cooperation allows us to pool knowledge and experience from different countries and create transferable models. The focus of the project remained on nature destinations in participating countries Poland, Hungary, Germany, and Austria. Both the website and all materials are available in four languages: English, German, Hungarian and Polish. With up to 600 webpage accesses monthly became the project page www.nature-without-barriers.eu a recognized site to consult on barrier free nature education. With the finalisation of the work on these educational materials, we as a team are just starting our exiting journey through the implementation of barrier free offers in nature education. In each participating country, we were able to build networks consisting of nature educationists, organisations representing impaired people, tourism providers, accessibility consulters etc. Together, we will continue to work on the topic spreading the information via various channels. The project "Nature without Barriers" is an official project of the UN Decade of Biodiversity within the framework of the special competition "Social Nature - Nature for All". The UN Decade thus honours exemplary projects that combine nature and social issues and demonstrate the opportunities that nature and biological diversity offer for social cohesion. This three-years’ work resulted in development of new guidelines for both guided und self-determined nature experience, and in implementation of new ideas and trends for more accessibility as well as a better networking of relevant stakeholders. With this project, we brought forward the inclusion of disabled persons in the EU and foster the sensitivity to nature for all Europeans. The growing demand for consultations, interviews, cooperation has shown that interest in the topic accessibility in nature education is growing.