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Lee County Parks & Recreation offers 28 special-needs sports programs for people with disabilities. More are on the way.
The county is making kayak ramps accessible for wheelchair users. The department is also working to create a floating dock on which people can be transferred from a wheelchair to a kayak, senior supervisor Amanda Gutierrez said.
Parks & Recreation is one example of a public entity that has gone above and beyond compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, ADA Advisory Board of Southwest Florida director Kevin Berry said. Berry credited Gutierrez (pictured) for helping to make Lee’s 12 parks accessible to those with disabilities. Gutierrez says she isn’t satisfied.
“I try to think through every disability and what programs we can create,” Gutierrez said. “It’s about the right to a quality of life. Everyone has the right to a quality of life no matter their abilities.”
Gutierrez said her staff has worked tirelessly on making her parks compliant. Parks & Recreation has even developed an internal grievance procedure for prompt and equitable resolution of ADA complaints. The parks system has an ADA compliance officer.
“When I get a (complaint), I meet that person out there at the park and I say, ‘Show me what needs to be done and we’ll get it done,’” Gutierrez said.
Creating new programs, such as sled hockey and wheelchair tennis, isn’t always easy.
“I use government money so I can’t just provide equipment for one individual,” Gutierrez said. “I have to be able to say 80 percent of people in this community will use this facility or program.”
Gutierrez challenged FGCU engineering students to create a floating dock transfer system for wheelchair users to kayak.
Lee County was also one of the first groups to use Mobi-Mat, which is a portable rollout pathway for wheelchair users, on beaches. Mobi-Mat provides wheelchair accessibility on unstable ground such as sand.
Gutierrez said Lakes Regional Park in south Fort Myers is Lee’s most accessible facility for people with disabilities because of its playground and trails.
Beth Haller, Ph.D., is Co-Director of the Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (www.gadim.org). A former print journalist, she is a member of the Advisory Board for the National Center on Disability and Journalism (https://ncdj.org/). Haller is Professor Emerita in the Department of Mass Communication at Towson University in Maryland, USA. Haller is co-editor of the 2020 "Routledge Companion to Disability and Media" (with Gerard Goggin of University of Sydney & Katie Ellis of Curtin University, Australia). She is author of "Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media" (Advocado Press, 2010) and the author/editor of Byline of Hope: Collected Newspaper and Magazine Writing of Helen Keller (Advocado Press, 2015). She has been researching disability representation in mass media for 30+ years. She is adjunct faculty in the Disability Studies programs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Texas-Arlington.
From the Ft. Myers News-Press in Florida:
