Disabled water users are an under recognised part of the water activity and sailing community despite recognising as much as 20% of the participating population. Helping disabled participants enter and remain in the sport is important to the sector’s health and commercial welfare. Ensuring disability access can improve income generation by reducing early exit from the sport by participants who acquire age related disability. In the face of increasing levels of disability in the UK population providing equitable access also represents a new potential growth sector for the marine industry.
Nearly half disabled adults in the Active Lives Survey 1 are active. This is lower than the 69% of the abled community but represents a significant market and participating community. Derivative modelling from the Active Lives Survey in 2021/2 suggested that the proportion of disabled people who had participated in a given activity at least once during the previous year was: 11.7% in sailing, 12.8% in rowing, 7-9% in surfing, canoeing or open water swimming, and 19.6% in angling. The modelling of these numbers is based on a multivariate prediction model the description of which is described in the paper “Who in England Engages in Outdoor Water-Based Recreation and Who Does the Most?” 2 The clarity of the methodology around the multivariate prediction isn’t clear enough to fully replicate the analysis, and so my comments are based on the reported findings.
Disability on the water is not talked about much outside the context of para and inclusive sport. However there is a much larger population of participants in water activity who, in the context of the UK Equality Act definition of disability, are disabled. Many of them do not primarily identify as such perhaps because the disabilities they carry have been acquired in the context of age related conditions such as arthritis.
There is a perception that what matters in making marinas disability friendly is the provision of sanitary facilities. This is supported by the results of boater satisfaction surveys where a single variable relating to the quality of sanitary facilities is highly correlated with satisfaction 3. In reality however ensuring disability accessibility in waterside facilities requires a whole system approach encompassing way finding, ground conditions, gradients, shelter and more.
- https://sportengland-production-files.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2025-04/ActiveLivesAdult-Nov23-24_V9-23-04-25-10-03-03-02.pdf?VersionId=aZVjaW4MK37mqMAWm_Th9un7WRjSeF7u ↩︎
- https://www.preprints.org/frontend/manuscript/121ecdd9af7a261f2da0a6aa065090a0/download_pub ↩︎
- Christensen, C. P., Y. Shen, J. Kokkranikal and A. M. Morrison (2023). ʺUnderstanding British and Danish sailing tourism markets: an analysis based on Kanoʹs Evaluation Matrix.ʺ Tourism Recreation Research 48(1): 30‐42. ↩