Lori Danielson, president of Eastside Audubon Society.
President’s Letter: Birding for Everybody!
By Lori Danielson
I recently learned about a nonprofit with a mission to share the joys of birding with people who have disabilities and to ensure birding is accessible for everybody. The organization is named Birdability (https://www.birdability.org) and they want to make birding accessible to people with mobility challenges, blindness or low vision, chronic illness, intellectual or developmental disabilities, mental illness, and those who are neurodivergent, deaf or hard of hearing, or have other health concerns.
With the technical assistance of National Audubon, Birdability has created an online, crowdsourced map to describe the accessibility features of birding locations all over the world. The map will become a valuable resource for everybody who wants to get outside and go birding, but not many sites have been added yet. Descriptions of the birding sites can be contributed by anyone with knowledge of the accessibility features of a certain place.
Birdability’s presentation during National Audubon’s online conference in early October excited me with its ambition and made me eager to see how Eastside Audubon could support the effort. Looking at the Birdability map, I saw only one location within Eastside Audubon’s territory had been described. There must be more accessible birding sites here than that, so I’m going to be using Birdability’s site review checklist when I next go out to see if I can add a good location to the map.
If you’d like to learn more about what makes a birding location accessible to people with disabilities and perhaps contribute a site description to the Birdability map, learn more about access considerations at https://www.birdability.org/access-considerations and download their site review checklist. Let’s share the joys of birding with everybody!