The Park and Facilities Catalog offers a large selection of ADA picnic tables

Inclusiveness is a major theme today with any park or facility and when it comes to site furnishings, supplying ADA picnic tables is a very simple solution and process.

For one, the Americans with Disabilities Act has provided guidelines to make picnic tables ADA compliant.

The American with Disabilities Act was enacted 1990 by Congress and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush

The legislation was written to help protect people with disabilities from being discriminated against in the workplace.

In addition, facilities

Sleeping Dunes National Lakeshore staff has added a motorized chair so the disabled can now access trails to the lake. (NPS Photo)

As the big bubble of Baby Boomers gets older but still want to remain active in national and state parks, there will be a need for more wheelchair access.

That includes ADA Picnic Tables. These are picnic tables with extended tabletops that allow a wheelchair to fit underneath so a disabled person can join the family for a meal. (There are also ADA picnic tables with center access).

The Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in Michigan is extending this wheelchair access idea to trails as well.

They have added a heavy-duty wheelchair with big treaded

Wooden picnic tables at the Chesapeake Therapeutic Riding center in Abingdon, MD. (Photo courtesy of CTR)

The Park and Facilities Catalog is proud to be the supplier of Wooden Picnic Tables for an organization with a very worthy purpose.

That organization is the Chesapeake Therapeutic Riding center in Maryland.

The CTR has a unique approach to help people with differing abilities.

They incorporate the use of horses.

Their mission statement is "to deliver healing and learning to individuals and groups whose minds, bodies and spirits will benefit from the transformative connection between people and horses."

If you watch the videos on their website, you can see the results are amazing.

When people interact with horses, something

ADA picnic tables with wheelchair access in the center

How accessible are your parks or facilities for providing ADA picnic tables, grills or even bleachers?

Because here is an important statistic. The National Park Service estimates that 1 in 5 Americans has a disability. (One reason why the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law in 1990.)

For that reason, back in 2012, the National Park Service created a group, the Accessibility Task Force, to study and find ways to ensure that parks are accessible to people with disabilities.

That task force created a strategic plan called "All In! Accessibility in the National

Picnic tables in the education area at the Tashjian Bee and Pollinator Discovery Center at the popular Minnesota Landscape Arboretum

Visitors to the Tashjian Bee and Pollinator Discovery Center will now be able to sit on new wooden picnic tables to learn about the vital role these little flying workers play in the world's ecology.

The world-renowned research center is part of Minnesota Landscape Arboretum at the University of Minnesota in Chaska, MN.

The arboretum covers 1,137 acres and offers an amazing display of gardens, trails and natural areas with 5,000 different species of plants. It is considered to be one of the premier horticultural field laboratories and public display areas in the world and was named Best Botanical